The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Did The Liberal Caucus Stop The Slide?

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Chantal and Bruce go through the fallout from the Liberal caucus.  Can some new promises about housing, groceries and the HST save Justin Trudeau and his party? And are we on the verge of a cussfest��between the Liberals and the Conservatives? Strong language is up for discussion!

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's a Good Talk Friday. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto. And we have a lot to talk about today, as we always do on Good Talk. And it's Good Talk we talk about on Good Talk.

I think. Alright, I'm confused. You suck at everything. Whatever that was. I'm confused. I'm a little well, I don't know whether I'm confused or surprised. I'm in my normal state of confusion, I guess. Here's the situation.

We're here to help. I know you are, and I'm going to call on you right now to help. Or not. We're trying to make you lose your train of thought here, and we're doing well, I can tell. Yeah, you are. What I don't understand is how a couple of announcements, you know, trotted out that could have been made any time over the last six months or even six years. Those plus, you know, a nice group photograph with a bunch of caucus members standing, smiling and apparently adoringly at their leader as he spoke at the microphone yesterday.

This is 24 hours after many people were expecting some form of public hanging to take place in the Liberal caucus in London. That's not what happened, and suddenly the talk is, oh, they've recovered, it's all going to be okay. He's had a great 24 hours, and he's silenced the critics. That's being Justin Trudeau. Is that really the story, Chantal? It's a bit more complicated than that.

You and I covered the constitutional discussions, and I remember thinking back at the time that there was something manic about how we went about the constitutional coverage. went from Canada dead, I'm trying not to use the F word that used, or Canada saved. From 24 hours to 24 hours, there's a deal in the making and Canada is saved or everything is falling apart. And there is a bit of that. That being said, what happened over the past two days, the caucus meeting, was fairly predictable on the one hand, because if you are a liberal MP, you are not going to hang a leader in the morning in public when you do not have a substitute that is demonstrated to be able to do better than the current leader in voting intentions. And that's a major difference, for instance, between how caucus felt when Paul Martin was in the picture, or even when in other parties, when Brian Mulroney was standing just behind Joe Plarik, or John Turner was standing behind Pierre Trudeau,

Jean Chrétien. Justin Trudeau doesn't have that kind of person at this point that liberal members can say, well, this guy is going to sink us and we have this person who will save us. So the best thing to do is to kind of keep it inside the family until for further notice. I'm not saying that will last forever. The polls we saw this summer, if they are still as disastrous in the spring, the mood is going to become uglier. But between now and then, I think most MPs have decided that they are going to let the prime minister give it a try. You said they all looked happy. Well, they did applaud a bit too much for people trying to work at the news conference. But some of the cutaways did not show people giddy with excitement, put it this way. And I'm going to give them a break here. If I were asked to stand behind someone giving a news conference with a bunch of other people for half an hour, I probably wouldn't look terribly happy about being there.

It's a strange idea, and I understand the optics. I think we will – I'm going to stop there because I have stuff to say about the announcements themselves, but I know that Bruce wants to jump in. Yeah. Give your sort of general assessment, Bruce, before we break it down. Yeah. Well, you know what? What I was listening to you say, and now the story is that everything is fine.

I hadn't heard that story. That is not what I took away from it. I'm sure there are some people who are kind of pushing that. But I do think that what happened this week was mostly predictable but also there was some stuff that couldn't have happened that helpfully did i think that the prime minister was exposed to uh some fairly blunt assessments from his uh members of parliament about what they were hearing at the doors i think think that that is a productive part of politics. I think overall, my general sense is competition has arrived at Canadian politics

to a degree that it hasn't been for a while. And it's a productive thing. Even if you're the kind of voter who doesn't like what Pierre Polyev has to say, Polyev is putting the Liberals on notice that he'll beat them unless they improve their game. And I think that's a good thing for the health of democracy. Now, whether Justin Trudeau has the ability to do what he would need to do in order to compete more effectively with Pierre Polyev remains to be seen. But this week's meeting was a stress test of that, an internal stress test of that. And I would have been more than shocked if that blunt talk that

happened, I believe happened behind closed doors, caucuses secret, so you never know exactly what happened. But I would have been shocked if it had spilled out publicly after the fact. I think members go to those meetings thinking, it'll be better if we have this conversation behind closed doors rather than outside. And so when they have the conversation, then part of the contract is you don't go out and relitigate the same thing, at least not right away. You wait to see whether or not some of the things that were prime minister was working on to try to exit the defensive posture that the government is on. Put himself on the on the front foot a little bit, help the caucus feel that they have some things to say. And I think it couldn't have waited any longer for the Liberals to have this conversation with the House returning next week.

And we'll see how that goes. All right. Before we break it down with the policy announcements, remind us again, especially for those watching on YouTube, what's your dog's name? Theo. Theo likes to come in for a quick hello in the morning yes yeah theo came silent one theo came in opened the door walked in and listened to about two seconds of your analysis and then turned around left now he's heard it i rehearse it with theo you know this is not just me talking at live right theo and i talk about it and he's like okay yeah

you're on the message it's good carry on I assumed that he assumed he walked in in the middle of you saying that things had gone you know like semi all right for Trudeau and that Theo was actually a polyev voter and so he just said I'm out of here

or I don't think I said that when does he say? It's still, it remains a dog's breakfast. Dog's breakfast. That's what he's gone for. Yeah. All right. Well, let me break it down into the policies because, as I said earlier, some of these could have been announced a long time ago.

And, in fact, you know, the housing thing was announced a year ago, but they actually put the money to a particular project this week, just happened to be in London where they were holding a caucus meeting. And then, you know, it's always good to target the enemy when you're in trouble, and so they targeted the grocery chains. And then what was the other one? They put some money back to those small businesses. GST housing, taking off the GST on the construction of residential rental housing.

Zoning changes expected from the municipalities to lift restrictions and a requirement to build close to public transit, or else you can't access the Federal Infrastructure Bank. And if all of this sounds awfully familiar, what I've just been saying, it's because you probably heard a variation of it in Pierre Poiliev's mouth all summer. And that is called how you neutralize an issue. In clear, you embrace what the other guy has been saying, you don't say it like that, leaving him to sputter that you copied him, which actually

gets you nowhere with voters. And I think that package, as it was announced yesterday, I cannot tell you that it's going to do miracles. I think there are shortcuts in the strategies of both the liberals and the conservatives and what they promote on housing. But it certainly will make it harder for Mr. Poitier to say, I have a plan and he doesn't. And to say he's got my plan, it kind of puts the conservatives in the position of maybe attacking the liberals on housing. But at the same time, it's hard to go after something you've been saying that you would do if you were the prime minister to resolve the issue. I have to say, watching yesterday's two announcements for the first time in months, I'm not saying it's going to work, but at least I understand the rationale behind the strategies in this housing case to take away enough of the

parts of the conservative proposal to make it hard for them to show a big difference between the conservatives and the liberals on housing. And on groceries, well, as we were reminded, rightly, on the National on Thursday night, back in his end-of-year interviews, Mr. Trudeau was asked about groceries and the NDP's contention that something should be done about them and basically dismissed the idea as not particularly interesting or effective. And now, Justin Trudeau yesterday was basically singing Jagmeet Singh's song, I think because it's probably good politics, but I also think because there was a clear signal there that they are giving the NDP as many reasons as possible for Jagmeet Singh to go to his

party's convention next month and say, this deal still works for us. Look at what we got on groceries, our battle. And here again, I can totally understand the strategy, i.e. keep the NDP happy so that parliament keeps going so that everyone gets time to try to reverse the trend in voting intentions. Stealing your opposition's platform ideas, policy ideas is right out of the liberal playbook for decades, right? They've done this to the NDP and the conservatives over many years. And you're right. You know, it doesn't it tends not to backfire on them. And it tends to take away the impact of the criticism

coming from the other parties. We'll see how it plays out this time. Bruce. Well, wasn't the biggest one of those of all, the Zap, You're Frozen, and then the Inflation Reduction Act example? Sure, but they made that move after the election. It's like the before the election moves, but you're right. The wage and price controls, 74.

And what about the Clarity Act on Quebec secession? A terrible Reform Party idea that was led by Stephen Harper. It became Jean Chrétien's great accomplishment on the unity front. No one seemed to feel any shame, and it certainly worked wonders for the liberals. Shame in those situations, the appropriation of an idea that's popular, shame doesn't come fully loaded and there's no shame price to pay usually. I think that's absolutely right. I think that there's no question that you could have looked at the initiatives

that the prime minister announced yesterday and said he could have done those months ago. In the case of having a sense of urgency and using the bully pulpit on food prices, he should have done it. I think we talked about it maybe a year and a half ago when we were coming out of the pandemic and those food prices were as high as they were, that probably would have been a better time to start the process of the conversation with everybody in the supply chain that's responsible for the components of the price that food inflation is still running quite a bit hotter than other aspects of the economy, inflation in other aspects of the economy, it's a good thing to do. And it was a good political move, I think, by the government to put itself less on the defensive when it comes to cost of living.

They announced a couple of things, as you both have said, on the housing side. The HST on rental is, I think, a challenge for many people to understand how that's going to create a specific benefit for them in any kind of near term. But I happen to have people that I know in the building community who've been telling me for a while, and you can see it in the reaction after the announcement that that is going to unlock a lot of building of rental accommodation. So it doesn't solve the home ownership question for those who are looking to buy a home, but it will help ease some of the pressures that a lot of people are feeling about rental accommodation, especially in our cities. So I think these were

useful political policies. I think they're probably good public policy ideas, although the grocery one is still to be defined. It's really just we're going to have a conversation and we're going to expose the light of public scrutiny on the grocery chains to a degree that hasn't been the case before. Whether that's completely fair or not, I think it's too soon for me to have a judgment on that anyway. But the last point for me is, what does it really say about what Trudeau is trying to do? In addition to he's getting well behind in the polls and he needs to take some dramatic actions, he is at his best in terms of public support when he looks like he's helping defend people against the things that they are most worried about. past that has been climate change. It's been prejudice and bias in society and a pushback

against minority groups. But it isn't that right now that people are most preoccupied with. It is the cost of living. It is the health of the economy that they live, not the global economy or the macro economy even in Canada. And he hasn't been particularly visible for most people in terms of defending their interests and looking like he's aggressively interested in that for, I was going to say for a good while, but I don't know that I've ever seen him really play that role. The other time that he played the role of I'm going to help defend against something that you're worried about is obviously COVID. So what he seemed to be doing yesterday, whether it was deliberately thought this way or not, is moving into that role of the things that you're most worried about, I'm preoccupied with, and I'm going to take steps necessary to help you. Whether it takes, whether people still want to listen to what he has to say, whether his ideas will seem more appealing than Pierre Pauliev's, and I just read

Pierre Pauliev's policy, and it is a little bit more detailed, but basically the same as the one that Mr. Trudeau is talking about. I don't know how that's going to go. I think to some degree, it depends whether the liberals can come together as a communications force, deliver the messages consistently, stay on that plan of defending the consumer's interest and fight back against the conservatives. It's a lot on their agenda. And next week will be an interesting one to watch. But I was also interested in, well, I mean, the MP standing behind Justin Trudeau, it's kind of par for the course. And if you're an MP there, even if you don't feel like it, or you're not happy, what are you going to do? I don't want to be here and just make gestures to say no, no, no.

But I was interested in the fact that he had Chrystia Freeland next to him on the one side. I don't think that she was heard from during that news conference. And François-Philippe Champagne, who has been all over the place, making good news announcements with premiers who are not friendly to the government, Premier Ford in Ontario, Premier Legault, they're about to announce some other investment. He has probably been the most visible federal minister over the past six months that has been at the same time visible and associated with good news. So no Marco Mendicino, I didn't mean you. Someone who

seems to be hyperactive. I was looking at him making some announcement this week and I was thinking, does this person ever sleep? Because it's like that battery commercial, always on the go. But that's the person that Trudeau called on to talk about the grocery issue. And it was very interesting to watch François-Philippe Champagne, who's worked in Europe and is one of the rare real retail politicians in the Quebec caucus and in that cabinet, talk about the French example and the fact that Carrefour and the big grocery chains there have been forced or are being forced by the Macron government to freeze prices on a host of products. And I thought, you know, this is a good cop, bad cop. Justin Trudeau is saying, I'm inviting you for coffee in my office, which is about as friendly an invitation as being called to the principal's office when you're in high school. But you've got François-Philippe Champagne saying, think of all those bright ideas they're using in France to force prices to be frozen. And I think we're going to see more, as we have seen more of Dominique Leblanc,

we're going to see more of François-Philippe Champagne going forward over the next few months because this is a government that seems to have discovered that retail politics finally matters. Okay, Bruce, I know you want in, but I just want to pursue for a second the Chrystia Freeland thing because I found that increasingly of late, she looks out of sorts in some of these things. And I don't know whether it's because she's upset or she's disinterested or what.

And this from a person who has been seen for the last few years as a potential successor to Justin Trudeau. Am I reading that wrong? I mean, is there something going on with Chrystia Freeland or not? Does either of you want to weigh in on that? Yeah, Chantal. Over the course of those blunt conversations that took place behind closed doors, my understanding before they happened was that the criticism was going to

extend beyond Justin Trudeau to the finance minister. I did not talk to very many liberals who were going in there to say, great, Chris, we're on a roll here. And if only you weren't there, we would be in deeper trouble. So I don't think that this was necessarily a pleasant couple of days for the minister. Okay. Bruce, sorry, I cut you off there. No, no. I wanted to pick up where Chantal was going with the mention of François-Philippe Champagne's role. I thought that it was interesting that he is becoming seen inside the liberal apparatus, the caucus, the cabinet, as the person who's doing quite an effective job of talking with and about the business community and the economic marketplace

and articulating a kind of an optimistic, focused, energetic, or maybe focus isn't the right word, but an energetic agenda on the economy for the Liberals. I think he's done a better job of that than anybody else has. And that when something goes bump in the night on an economic initiative, he's also quite adept at responding to it. The PBO report on the subsidies for EV battery manufacturing was a good case in point in the last two weeks where there was a risk that the story that was going to develop out of what the parliamentary budget officer said was going to make the Liber support for that sector seem economically foolish. I thought he did a good job of kind of stepping into that fray and putting a lid on that pretty quickly by describing the weaknesses or what he saw as being the shortcomings of the PBO analysis.

And so he's not only good at talking about the economy in terms of positive somebody that you maybe didn't expect into a communications role that they didn't have before. And so that was one. And another one that I noticed may be similar, and maybe I'm overreading it, but Mark Miller was doing some of the spokesmanship around the caucus to the media, to some of the media anyway, describing the conversations in the way that he felt that they should be described. And I have a lot of time for his brainpower, but also his communication skills. He doesn't over adorn things. He speaks in terms that people can understand and relate to. And he has that sensibility for not sounding like everything every day that every liberal does is perfect, but that there can be some, you know, some messiness in the kitchen or whatever the metaphor is that we

want to use. He's pretty good at that. And I noticed he was doing that and champagne was doing what he was doing. And I thought they do need more of this kind of innovation and how they look to individuals to, to bring different messages to the public. Okay. I want to talk a little more on that, but I got to take our first break. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on The Bridge. For this Friday, Chantel and Bruce are here. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167. Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Okay, I want to pick up on the Mark Miller thing because, you know, I know he has a pretty good

reputation and he's now in the immigration portfolio. He had been in the Indigenous file for, I guess, right back to 2015, right? I think he's been there all along and enjoyed that file and worked hard at it. In terms of blunt talk, I saw him quoted, and I assume the quote was accurate, last week. And this raises the question, do the liberals have to be much more blunt in their challenge on Pierre Polyev? Because Polyev said some things about Miller's handling of one of his files. And Miller shot back, and excuse those who, you know, we try to keep this, you know, fairly clean in terms of the language here.

We're the cleanest podcast in the world, I think. So carry on. You've been appropriately warned. We don't want some of our clips to go viral. Yeah, good point. Keep this. Well, let me just say it. In response to Polyev, he called him a serial bullshitter.

Now, that's pretty blunt and I just wondered whether is this going to be are they going to take the attack on Polyev to a new level seeing as clearly whatever they've been doing hasn't worked the guy's got a 15 point lead in the latest poll

and be able to back that up with some facts, right? You had a challenge like that. Is this something they're going to trot out in their ability to, or their attempt to challenge Polyev? Who wants to run with that? Not whether or not it's a good thing. Do we think that that is what they are about to do? I think they're going to, first of all,

thank you for saying the exact expression. That word is probably, if I were doing a list of the cuss words that I don't want my five-year-old grandson to say, that would be down the list of things I'd worry about. It's not the most egregious one, but it is what he said. And it was a bit out of the zone that government politicians normally, or politicians maybe more generally, normally occupy. And I think that was probably by design. It was to make a point that landed with some notice. So as to whether or not we're going to hear more of that specific kind of language, or really whether it's a signal that the government or at least some people in the

government are determined to try different things, to grab a share of voice and say some things that make people think twice about this growing support for Pierre Polyev. I think it's the latter. I don't think we're going to have a cuss fest. I think we're going to have a variety of different things tried to stop and get voters to think about Polyev in a different way. And whether it's too late, I don't think it is. I think there's a lot of time left on the clock if the Liberals pursue the politics of their situation more aggressively and more creatively. So I'm not saying I think that's the most creative thing that could be done, but at least it is kind of breaking the mold of government speaking like governments do in language that people don't hear because it a timing announcement. So Mark Miller, from what I saw from quick research,

was appointed to the Indigenous file in 2019. I suspect as part of that shuffle that worked out so well when Jody Wilson-Raybould was moved from justice to, where was it? Veterans Affairs. But so that is, but that was quick research. As for the change in tone, well, I don't know if that's going to work, but it's essential, maybe not to pry off a lot of votes from Pierre Poilievre, but at least to give liberals, those that remain and those that may be tempted in giving a second look to staying rather than leaving, a sense that the liberals are engaged in this debate and in this conversation.

It doesn't really work terribly well, or it has not for the liberals to just wait for the media to call out Pierre Poiliev. And the media has done the fact check issue on both parties. Yesterday, it took a matter of minutes after the prime minister said he was removing the GST on rental building construction for a journalist to dig out the promise to do exactly that that dated back to 2015. But all of that is not enough if the people who are constantly being attacked for being responsible for everything that is bad that happens to you over the course of a day never ever respond except with bromides. There was a column this week which I thought was accurate. from the conversation and allowing Pierre Poilievre to define them as opposed to them trying to define the person who most stands to have a shot at replacing them.

I think many, many liberals have been itching to have a more direct conversation, if you want to call it that, with the conservatives. And I think a lot of voters have been looking at this saying, well, you know, who are these guys? They're the government. And all they keep saying is, instead of getting into specifics or saying this is wrong, the answer is, you don't understand how good we are. Yeah, right. So we'll see where that goes. But yes, I expect a much tighter back and fro between the government and the opposition,

the official opposition over the next few months. Stephen Guilbeault is somebody who's adopted a more pugilistic stance in the last week or two as well. I think it's to his credit and to the government's service that he's done that. And I think that on that issue in particular, it's an interesting one because the government has definitely been on the defensive around carbon pricing.

And to the point where you felt like, okay, this was a policy that many people thought was a good policy. Many people probably still do. I think it's a good policy. However, the politics of it had become a losing game for the liberals to the point where you thought if they're talking about carbon pricing, they're losing ground because the cost of living is an issue and polyev is kind of using it as a cudgel um and i don't think the answer for the liberals to that uh those attacks by polyev was to kind of explain the rationale for using carbon pricing as a policy tool or to describe again how serious the problem climate change is. But to go on the attack against the lack of a plan on the part of the

conservatives, it's still maybe the most gaping hole in the policy lineup for Pierre Pauliev as he tries to, if what he is trying to do, and it looks like it is to me, trying to develop a platform that looks appealing to mainstream Canada and devoid of those culture war features that keep mainstream Canada from entering the conservative net. The missing piece, the big missing piece, is something that feels credible on climate change. However, that might not be a problem for him if the liberals don't highlight it, if they don't sort of take it to him. And the

way to take it to him isn't he doesn't care about the planet. It's that he doesn't understand the economy because the right climate plan is a plan to shift the economy and be competitive with the rest of the world as they do that. And I've seen evidence in the way that Stephen Guilbeault is talking about this issue, that he's moving into that space. And he didn't really occupy that space before. So I think this is also a sign of the government kind of addressing some of the weaknesses in their strategy. I would qualify that with the notion that Stephen Guilbeault can do part of the job on this, but the real way to do it is to get ministers who have economic portfolios, thinking François-Philippe Champagne, among others, to engage in that field.

Because if Stephen Guilbeault is not going to convince Canadians of the economics of this battle, someone who has economic credentials in the eye of voters is going to be doing that. And that won't be Justin Trudeau. No, I agree. And I think Jonathan wilkinson has been on that page and uh and champagne somewhat and uh and i think it's right but i think the missing piece in some respects has been a sense that the environment minister was at a counterpoint almost to the uh to the decarbonization and economic renewal agenda and i don't think you could look

at what he's doing now and say that he still looks like that. In fact, it looks more like there's alignment in the government rather than depending on which door you went in, you might get an economic point of view or not. Okay, let me take that from a different angle. What do you both have just suggested in the last few minutes? Because you've named three or four different ministers who've taken a changing tone in the way they've dealt with the issues as they confront the opposition leader. And as a result, I'm wondering whether the prime minister is leading or following,

given what we witnessed from him in the last couple of days. You know, it's been an interesting spring and summer for the prime minister. He's been traveling a lot while a lot of this stuff has been bubbling at home. Inflation, you know, housing issues, the polls have plummeted. He comes back and in 24 48 hours drops a few announcements has his photo up um and you know i got to be careful here bruce jump on me again not saying that he's come back but that there's a tone in the coverage that it's been a successful couple of days for him and may have blunted some of the drop that they've had. We'll see as future polls come out.

But here's the question. You watched him yesterday, and one of the troubles he's had in front of the cameras has always been kind of the sincerity factor and whether people actually believe that he's that he believes what he's saying and i was wondering what you thought about yesterday's performance in terms of the sincerity level on the part of justin trudeau did he seem sincere on these issues the key key ones, housing, groceries. Did he seem sincere? Chantal?

I rarely watch politicians looking at the sincerity index, not to be cynical, but I am well aware that there are two Trudeaus. The one I saw at the convoy inquiry when he testified, and the bland, mealy-mouthed, not terribly sincere one that always has my back and that I had to have virtual lunch with for almost two years during the pandemic. I totally believe that Justin Trudeau is leading the government at this point and not following, that he's not a king that is so lost his way that his suitors are trying to tell him, go right or go left. But I am reminded from past experience that there are many ways to lead. Jean Chrétien, when fatigue was setting in, used Paul Martin to the hilt in all kinds of ways as someone who would, as a team that would continue to lead the government on the economy.

Now, I have no doubts that the one who was leading was Jean Chrétien and not Paul Martin at that point, but it served the purpose. And I think Justin Trudeau probably understands that this magic has worn off and that he needs to showcase people on his team who are effective or more effective than he could be at this juncture in his term at carrying out the government's missions. What struck me most wasn't even the prime minister. It was that, you know, over the past few weeks, because it's not just a good two days, I thought the launch of the inquiry into Chinese interference with Dominique Leblanc leading

that announcement also gave the government more than a decent day. But what strikes me is that I've seen very few of those new ministers. There were so many new ministers that we so desperately needed in July over the past couple of weeks. And it seems to me that the government is banking on its experience hands for salvation, which again begs the question, what was the purpose of the government shuffle that we saw? That feels like a year ago now. On the point of...

It hasn't aged well. Look, I think that Justin Trudeau is at his very best as a communicator when his knowledge and his competency shines through. I think that's been true in debates. I think it was true in the convoy hearings. And I think it was somewhat true yesterday. And it was true at different points in the COVID experience. He is somebody who's disciplined about making sure that he is kind of briefed on the merits of different ideas and I would say it is in the area of competence and being willing to kind of take a little bit of time to make sure that you're putting the right policy mix in place. And there are some really important policies that his government has brought forward for which he deserves credit and doesn't receive very much anymore because that's the way that politics goes. However, the drawbacks for him, I think, are less in the area of communication. I'll agree with what you said. And I remember that we were saying this kind of thing about him before 2015.

And so there's a version of his communication style that a lot of people just don't love and came to like better than what Stephen Harper was with, too slow in terms of acting on the normal dynamics of government. So you have people across government who are really frustrated with the way the center slows them down, prevents them from taking bold action, doesn't give them a strategy to work with, doesn't give them a communications framework that they can feel enthused about, but still holds all the cards from the standpoint of power. And you could have said that that was a reasonable way to approach things in 2016 with a large number of rookies around the cabinet table and a significant advantage in public opinion terms. But this many years later, with a lot of experienced hands and 15 points behind,

it's a terrible situation. And so for me, yes, he needs to be better at talking in blunt terms about the things that people care about, but he's going to need to solve some of those management challenges in his government or he's going to be back in the same soup in a month, in two months, in three months, in four months, and that winter is going to feel miserable for him. To Bruce's point about it worked when they had rookies that they could order around, it makes you wonder whether part of the rationale behind the cabinet shuffle

and the bringing in of so many rookies was to take out of the cabinet people who had become experienced enough to stand up to the orders coming from the center and to what everything Bruce has described I've heard for months now. And you kind of wonder, do you like to boss Wookiees around more than you like running a government that actually performs and delivers? And I think that question should be put to the people who are in the prime minister's office. Okay, we're going to take our final break. Then we come back with our last segment of Good Talk for this Friday. And welcome back. We're into the final break, final segment of a good talk for this week. Chantal and Bruce are here on Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. Well, they're actually not here. Chantal's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa, But they're here like in the airwaves, right? In the same time zone.

In the same time zone. We are. Monday, the House of Commons sits again after its summer break. And there has always been this misconception on the part of some of the public who feel that, geez, they sure get long holidays.

They've been away for months. For some of them, it's not much of a holiday. They're back in their constituency offices, and in some cases, they're getting hammered by their constituents over various issues. So they're coming back. And one wonders what the mood will be like. We've talked a lot about liberals today, but there are more than liberals in that House of Commons.

It is a minority parliament. We've got five minutes left. What is the expected mood of those MPs as they come back to town, sit in parliament to discuss the nation's business. Chantal? I think the opposition parties are all going to be in a fighting mood, but who they need to fight is not necessarily always the same party, i.e. the government. I think the Bloc Québécois and Mr. Blanchet's leader are coming back to the House thinking

Pierre Poilievre spent the best part of the summer attacking the Bloc whenever he's been in Quebec. And I don't think for a second that Mr. Blanchet wants to let him get away with it, especially since, and at the same time, I have to argue that the Bloc Québécois really does not want fatigue with the liberals to set in so deeply in Quebec that people start thinking about changing the government rather than sending Bloc MPs to keep the government in check. So the crossfire will be interesting. That is also true of the NDP. There's a convention coming next month. Jagmeet Singh will have to go to a confidence vote,

but he will also have to talk about his pact with the liberals. So he too has a balancing act, and he too is looking over his shoulder at the conservatives, thinking that like the government and like the Bloc Québécois, none of the parties have an incentive in allowing the official opposition to lead the opposition parties or to look good. And that should make for interesting dynamics going forward. I do not expect the government to be at peril of falling through a confidence vote any time

before the budget in the spring, and we'll see where we are then. So basically, we're not going to have a suspense over will they survive the year or not. I don't think that's in the cards or in the mood of two of the three main opposition parties. I think for the Conservatives, Peter, this is the first time in a long time that the Conservative caucus and the leadership will be understanding that this session of Parliament is in effect a bit of an audition for them with Canadian voters. Are they ready to be government? they sound like people who are capable of running an effective government rather than just being effective politicians? The distinction being, do they seem kind of, have they matured enough in the role that they have as critics of government policy to put questions that have bite, but also sound like they're coming from someone who would do a

better job than the government. So I think there's an audition quality for the conservative front bench, especially coming into this. And part of that is the role of the director. Will Polyev's office and team cause them to have a successful audition is part of the question there as well. So I'll be interested to watch that. They haven't always been able to keep that kind of message discipline or that through line in the past. They've got people with different perspectives who are capable of saying some really kind of wild things sometimes. But I haven't seen much of that lately, and I'd be surprised if they don't approach this audition scenario with a fair degree of energy and commitment. On the liberal side, I think there's really two tests that they need to pass.

One is the are they out of gas test, and the other is are they too self-satisfied test. Because on any given day, when ministers stand up and answer questions in the House of Commons, they can look like they're out of gas or sound like they're too self-satisfied. I think they know now how serious their situation is. I think that the timing of this caucus was quite helpful for them in terms of galvanizing a sense of, OK, we all see the same risks and we have a certain commitment to energize and to support one another. But that's I think the game plan for them is to is to show that they've got a lot of energy and that they've got they believe that they've got some important things to do going forward for Canadians, not just looking backwards. In the last minute here, do we end up seeing a different Polyev this fall and going into the next year?

Is there a transition likely from the sort of attack dog to the statesperson? I doubt it. Well, he won't be wearing glasses. Can't wear his T-shirt in the house. I don't think he can resist it. He always, there are many times when he should walk, you know, just ignore the temptation. And he doesn't seem to be able to ignore those temptations.

And the role of leader of the official opposition does cast you in that role. His problem is that that bump in the poll, it came when Canadians were no longer submitted to a daily showing of the attack dog in the House of Commons. So the more you see Pierre Poiliev in that kind of partisan attack mode, I suspect the more you risk turning off those recent converts to supporting his party. Do you have 15 seconds, Peter? You have 30 seconds. Oh, great. I think that one of the things that he's adjusted over time is that he's not saying Canada sucks anymore,

which is kind of an interpretation of this Canada is broken thing. He is not saying crypto is king and these guys don't get it. I want to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada. He is very critical of Justin Trudeau, but he ties his criticisms, I think, more to specific policy weaknesses that he sees on the part of the government. And I think that makes more people hear what he has to say and say, well, he makes a good point or he's making a point, at least that's relevant, not to a personal dislike of the prime minister or a hatred of every liberal in the country or a kind of a deep affection for the furthest right wing of his party. And I think for him, that's been a productive shift. All right. That's how you turn 30 seconds into 60 and well done.

Good for you. Good luck to you. Good luck to you, my friend. Have a great weekend. Both of you, Bruce Anderson, Chantelle Hebert.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. We'll talk to you again on Monday. Take care, guys.