The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Do Conservatives Really Hate The CBC?

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

On a week where the President of the CBC attacks the Conservative Party of Canada and its leader, Pierre Poilievre, Chantal and Bruce wonder about the wisdom of that approach.  And also, whether her appointment should be extended or ended.  Plus, can Jagmeet Singh survive as questions about his effectiveness begin.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, it's Friday, that means Good Talk. Chantal Hébert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Pointe South, where it's a lot warmer than it is here, although it's not that bad here right now. Okay, we have a number of things to talk about on this day. I'm going to do something that I know you two don't really like, because whenever Mansfield starts rambling at the beginning of a show,

it costs them time in their rambles. But I'm going to tell a little anecdote, and I think I have some leeway to do that, because, well, it's about the CBC and ourbc and our opening discussion named after you as well that's that's true um anyway here's my story because i think it provides some context to an argument that has been going on the last few days um i know neither one of you guys were born at the time but back in 72 and 74, in those two election campaigns, Pierre Trudeau versus Robert Stanfield, 72 is very close.

74, as it turned out, wasn't as close. But they were classic political battles. Well, the conservatives, they were unhappy. They were unhappy with media coverage and especially with CBC coverage. Now that was not unusual in that day and hadn't been for some time. The Conservatives were never that happy. The Liberals, quite frankly, were never that happy either. But the Conservatives went one step further. To prove their case that they were being unfairly covered, they demanded a meeting with CBC senior management, including news management. And at that meeting, they'd come with their details and

with their evidence. They plunked on the desk data that showed that in coverage on the nightly news, the Liberals were getting almost twice as much coverage as the Conservatives were getting. And the Liberals said, no, no, no, that's, or excuse me, the CBC said, no, no, no, that's not possible. That couldn't happen. But they opened up the data, the pages, and they looked at the numbers, and it was the case.

The Liberal coverage was far more extensive. So the CBC used as its defense said, well, you know, the Liberals are doing a couple, Trudeau's doing two or three events a day and Robert Stanfield's only doing one. So there's a lot more to cover with the Liberals. And their campaign is more kind of directed to the visual, which is not a very good argument to use. But nevertheless, that was the way it played out to the point where the CBC was

aghast at what they'd just seen. And so when the meeting broke up, the order came down. You are to make up for this. It's wrong. The Conservatives have a point. And we're going to start tonight. We want a five-minute item on Robert Stanfield on his day. There's only one problem. Robert Stanfield's day that day that the order came down, he was in Quebec City. He had one event. There weren't thousands of people in the room.

There weren't hundreds of people in the room. There weren't hundreds of people in the room. There were barely dozens of people in the room. Five minutes of wide shots, tight shots, close shots. Stanfield kind of stumbling through his French. So when I heard this week the CBC president, in defense of her remarks, saying that Conservatives have, since the Harper days, been mad about the CBC, she was wrong. This goes back a long way.

Before that example I just gave. But successive Conservative governments and those in the opposition role have always felt the CBC had it out for them. As I said earlier, so did the Liberals. I mean, Chantal can talk to what has happened in Quebec over the years between the Liberals and the Rajah of Canada. But the conservatives, it has stuck in their craw, and it's always been an issue for fundraising.

Dump on the CBC, brings in the money. Well, this week was a classic case of that, with the CBC president going, for many people, beyond her role in criticizing the Conservatives, and Pierre Polyev in particular and announcing without warning to many of her staff that the CBC was about to change much more rapidly than had already been discussed from terrestrial to digital. Just kind of walk some of those comments back, not the conservative stuff, but it has left the situation very difficult for

those who work inside the cbc about what they can or cannot say right now but also for the government that is in the midst of trying to decide whether or not the current president named katherine tate should be reappointed so it's a really interesting story, perhaps more so for me because of my past with the CBC, but I think it's an important media story and an important story in terms of public broadcasting in Canada and the role that its leadership should play. Okay, that's my anecdote. That's my ramble.

Chantal, why don't you start? Okay, so a couple of points. The president of the CBC seemed to tie shrinking audiences to the fact that the conservative opposition is bad-mouthing the CBC. That's not been Raju Kaneda's experience, and Raju Kaneda, as you know, was bad-mouthed under Justin Trudeau for being a nest of sovereigntists. And in the last referendum, the all-news network on the Radio-Canada side, which is called RDI, R-D-E in French, was called by the liberals R-D-O-I, meaning they're so pro-sovereigntists, this is a nest of people who aren't loyal to federalism.

That did not impact negatively on the audience in any way, shape or form. Actually, they probably did a service to Radio-Canada that in some sovereignty circles in Quebec is often accused of being too federalist. So it was kind of nice to have prime ministers saying, no, no, no, they're the best friend of the sovereignty movement, et cetera, et cetera. So that's one point. Like you, I am totally uncomfortable with the notion that someone who is the president of the CBC would engage in this kind of rhetoric. It only makes life hard for everyone.

Same reaction when Unifor, the union that represents the journalists who work at the Toronto Star, asked all its members to do everything that they could to make sure that the Conservatives did not get elected. Yeah, right. Thank you. I'm about to cover an election campaign, and my union thinks it should tell me that I should undermine the campaign of a given party. I can understand the union's stance,

but that is just bad for journalism and political journalism. But to the third point, which is the end of the current term of the CBC president, which I think comes up this summer, I looked and Stephen Harper did renew a president for a second term. But by and large, the best the others got was an extension and not a full second term. And I would argue that looking at what could be happening within the next five years on

the federal political landscape, Tadzou Canada and the CBC in particular would be better served, thinking of the possibility of a conservative government with a different president, who would presumably be someone who is a Francophone, because they alternate between Francophones and Anglophones. And if you want to find a place where there is a consensus on the need for a national broadcaster, you can start in Quebec. And the Conservatives go out of their way to say, we're not going to touch Radio-Canada. There's a reason for that. But I don't think many Quebecers believe that it's a great idea to cut off the CBC and say, don't worry about yourselves.

We're just going to kill the others. So there will be interesting times ahead. And I think this week should have precipitated a change at the helm when the time comes this summer. Bruce. Yeah. I think that if Catherine Tate does want to be reappointed and I have every reason to believe that she does want to be reappointed,

it's hard to imagine that she could have done something more helpful to her own cause than deciding at this moment in time to weigh in with a comment that could be weaponized against her by the Conservatives again. They're fundraising again on the basis of what she said about Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives attacking CBC. And so what she's done is kind of put a hot potato in the government's lap around her reappointment, which they didn't need to have, which she didn't need to offer, and which if I'm the government, I'm kind of faced with this choice of, well, what are the compelling

reasons to reappoint this person? I don't know enough about her record to probably offer too much of a point of view, but I can't identify anything that I would say, you know, really kind of stacks up on the, she's essential to the transformation that needs to happen in a thoughtful and orderly and appropriate way. On the other hand, reappointing her creates a situation where it almost adds oxygen for however long she would remain in that post. And why would you want to do that? Why would you want to put the organization in that kind of constant state of friction?

Why would you want to put yourselves as politicians in the line of fire for people who say, well, we always knew that it was the liberals' preference to have a liberal-friendly CBC, and this reappointment just proves that fact. So it would take an act of, well, I was going to say political courage, but I actually think it would be not courage. It would probably just be stupidity. Stupidity is a strong word, but that's kind of what I was groping for. The last thing I want to say is that it's not unnatural for there to be some friction between small C conservatives and a national broadcaster. And the reason I say that is that the balance of opinion in Canada,

for as long as I've measured, it is kind of more like 65% progressive and 35% conservative. Sometimes it looks more like 60-40, but it's never looked like 50-50. And so in that context, if you're building a broadcaster and you're trying to reflect the values of the country, just that math alone suggests

that you're going to end up making some people who feel, especially those who feel deeply conservative, that their point of view is not as represented as more progressive points of view. In a way, it would be artificial to take what is the natural kind of balance of those inclinations or values and say, well, actually, we should adjust the way that we provide the news and content so that it looks more like 50-50, because that would be a bit of a misrepresentation. So that's not an

argument in favor of a bias. It's an argument in favor of a broadcaster that reflects the diversity of Canada and the balance of values is going to feel uncomfortable to some groups in society. And that's just a reality. Sometimes I I can look at post media as a generally progressive person and find there's not enough in there that reflects my values. But it's a private company and that's their prerogative to put whatever content they want in their space. This is a public broadcaster. It's got a difficult task and it was was made more difficult by Ms. Tate this week. Bruce's argument was exactly the argument that was used by Radio-Canada defenders

and Radio-Canada people. Yes, possibly the CBC was more friendly to federalism at the time of the referendums, but ignore the reality that 50% of its audience expects its option to be treated fairly, which is the bottom line in any journalism organization, which would be to treat whoever you're covering fairly and use the same lens on all of them, be they liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Québécois, or there is no, there should be no the good and the bad when you can express them as a voter. But as a journalist, you should be somehow a bit more like a doctor. You can't prefer cancer to heart problems to hypertension. You just need to look at what you see and say, this is what I think it is. But what struck me this week was how bad this interview was in the sense that it also

made angry people who are friends of the CBC because of this sudden notion that, yes, we're all, you know, we're going to go the road of the BBC. We're going to be digital all the way. Well, first, the UK and Canada are very different countries in the way that population is spread out. Two, yeah, well, Wi-Fi, I hate to break it to the CBC management, is not something that is available across the country. And three, what does that mean to people who listen to radio? And what also does it mean in emergencies? I remember the ice storm. If you didn't have a radio, you wouldn't have that the CBC is not about what it is about and doesn't have a sense of its core mission and is just musing as if it were a broadcaster's convention.

I found that almost as quieting as the engagement on the partisan field. Let me play devil's advocate. And if you don't see me on that issue going forward, you'll know why. If there's one person in the CBC that they would never touch, it's Chantelle Hebert. Let me play devil's advocate a minute on the partisan stuff. Because for years and preceding this particular president, there has been a feeling inside in the worker bees

that those at the executive level didn't get out there and defend the CBC enough against attacks, wherever those attacks were coming from. And often, you know, they were coming from Ottawa. But the president wasn't out there fighting the good fight, defending what happens inside, especially for its journalists. So you could argue that if there was ever a time to be out there in an organized way defending the place, this might be it.

These last few years might have been it, and especially with the attack by a party which looks like it could be on the verge of power and threatening to defund portions or all of the CBC, putting thousands of jobs at stake. And a national culture that's based on the mandate the CBC, whether it's been doing it or not, that's a separate debate, the mandate of the CBC was, you know, to strengthen the country. So if you look at it from that point of view, what is a president supposed to do when the place is under attack as it is? And this is on the partisan stuff. Do you sort of get out there and kind of flower the words in such a way

that you're not pinpointing any one particular person, even though one particular person and the party he represents is what's attacking the place. How do you handle that? Go ahead. The CBC is fair game. I think any party is entitled to attack it or want to go to voters and say, I'm going to, or I would like to get rid of this organization. I believe it is

outdated and we no longer need it. That's totally acceptable. I don't think there are, it's politically incorrect to have that as part of your platform. As long as you campaign on it and you get a mandate that includes it, I have nothing to say for that. But if you want to sell why a candidate would need the CBC going forward and defend its journalism, you should showcase its journalism, what it does in all areas of the country, how it covers international events, how to this day it still raises the level of coverage of its rivals, because that is what competition does. And if you take away a big player, you are going to allow, in the name of budgets, rival organizations to stand down a bit.

And everybody is going to lose out of it. There are many, many ways to defend the presence of the CBC. But it's probably hard for a president who woke up on the first or second or the first weeks of the pandemic and thought it was a good idea to get rid of the regional newscasts because of the pandemic, at a time when people really relied on information, probably hard to showcase journalism, when your first instinct at the time of great need is to say, I'm going to shutter all my newsrooms across the country until this is over. Can you imagine if that decision had stood, what the consequences of it would have been? And again, I go back to people sitting in boardrooms

in Toronto, I'll include Montreal. So my friend Michael Goldblum won't feel too lonely since he's the chair of the organization, I think these days, who don't have a sense of Canada as a whole, who see it from the perspective of a very urban market and who seem to have lost the perspective as to what services they should defend, but that they have, by decisions or suggestions like that, basically undermined over the past few years. Bruce? Yeah, I think that it's normal and it's appropriate for there to be a certain amount of friction

between people in the political world and people in journalism. It almost is a sign of good health if that friction exists. And part of that friction is people in politics thinking that they're poorly done by in terms of the coverage. And sometimes they are. And sometimes the criticism from politicians creates a reaction, a reset, an adjustment. This is all in the game of democracy and politics and journalism. And while it seems messy sometimes and people can kind of have strong views about it, it is on the balance quite healthy. It's like exercise for our democracy and we should kind of welcome it

rather than wish that there was a way in which everybody could just get along all the time across the lines between politics and journalism. I do think that, as Chantal said, there are many better ways for Catherine Tate to represent the idea of the CBC and the role of the CBC rhetorically and substantively. I think that she made a bad choice, as Conrad Jakubowski made the point in his Globe and Mail opinion, by deciding to weigh in on the convoy. Now, we've talked about the convoy before. We may not all share exactly the same views, but we have opinions about it. I don't think that her opinion, her characterization of the convoy was a good thing for the organization that has to cover news in Canada, including the views of people who were uncomfortable with a lot of the measures taken during the pandemic.

That was a disservice to the journalism of the CBC because it put the target on them for all those people who were saying the cbc is part of misinformation now on the other hand i do think there is an important role for the cbc to advocate in two particular areas one is misinformation and how to do it is not necessarily to decry what others are doing or to extol your own journalism as part of it but but to say, here's what we do to try to counter it. Here's how our standards are used to prevent misinformation from entering into our stories. Find a way into that conversation.

That's a useful thing to do. And the other thing, and Chantal mentioned it, I couldn't agree more. If you look at what's happening to the rest of the media marketplace, the lack of resources in private media organizations for local news coverage has been a shocking decline. And that is an area where if the CBC can't figure out how to do more of it, we're all going to have less of it. We're all going to be more poorly off as a result of that. And on her watch,

that has not been a gap that the CBC has chosen to fill. So I think it's been bad leadership for a long time, to be honest. I don't think she's done anything to kind of convince me that she represents a change for the better. And I don't believe that she has a good understanding of the right role to play for the CBC in contentious political issues of the day. All right. Let me just leave it on this one point and a quick answer from each of you. As I pointed out at the beginning of today's program, there's a historic relationship between conservatives and the CBC in terms of the criticism one has for the other. And many campaigns have been fought in that last 50 years where the threat has been made they're going to cut the budget. You know, they didn't use the word defunding in those days. It was they

were going to cut the budget or they were going to cut television and only leave radio. There were all these kind of things. And I used to talk to conservatives, including in days when they were in government, and ask them, like, how serious is this? And they said, well, you know, it plays really well to some members of the party. It's not going to happen. We're not going to do that. Come door to door with me when I'm, you know, riding in my riding in Edmonton or Calgary or wherever it might be in the West,

and I will have people say to me, don't touch the CBC. Now, that's not a universal feeling in the West, that's for sure, but it did make a point anyway, and it never did in any substantial way. The biggest cuts to the CBC were made by liberals, Paul Martin, Jean Chrétregen like huge cuts um but so you wonder is it different this time is the polyev promise and he keeps doubling down tripling down quadrupling down on the promise about defunding do you believe it bruce Thomas about defunding. Do you believe it? Bruce? Yes, I do think that the instinct of this iteration of the Conservative Party would be to

push forward with that. I don't think that it has the same quality as a debating point or a political point that it had in previous iterations. I agree with your characterization that it was a it was kind of a useful talking point in the past for conservatives, but that it never really emerged as such a prominent theme as I think it has now. And I think in the hands of Pierre Poliev, if he's prime minister, I think the CBC should brace for a significant change in its mandate and its funding level. Chantal? I'm with Bruce on that.

I would note, though, that as usual, the CBC is more likely to suffer the death of a thousand cuts, then outright disappearance, because to go where Pierre Poiliev says where he wants to go, you would basically have to have a majority government. Don't count on the Bloc Québécois to support the conservatives on the way to putting in the lock and the door of the CBC. That's not going to happen. Obviously, the liberals and the NDP wouldn't be going down that road either. So possibly, I also think that there will be more or a stronger pushback on that plan than the conservative expect.

And they have been very poor in the past at measuring issues like that. And I bring you back to the quote unquote culture cuts that cost Stephen Harper a majority government because he lost his standing in Quebec over it at a time when conservatives were busy telling each other that this was good politics because they went after people who wore tuxedos and gowns and drank champagne at galas, that backfired spectacularly. And I do think that there, you know, I'm like you, I travel, I see as many people, and I'm only on TV, on the CBC, I see as many people talk to me in Western Canada who have seen me on TV, not only in Calgary and Edmonton and smaller places.

I figure there must be an audience somewhere for those people to know this. And I don't find by and large that I'm welcomed with bricks when I travel in other regions of the country because I'm on the CBC. So, yes, I think it plays really well to a hard base. But I note that this conservative leader really likes to play to that base more so than the average conservative leader of the past. It's funny, actually, that, and I can attest to this, that Chantel was probably one of the most, if not the most recognizable figure on the CBC, and she didn't even work there. I mean, she appeared Thursdays for 10 minutes.

Yeah, but that 10 minutes, you know, someone used to say, what was that sentence? The most watched, well, yeah, the only political panel in prime time. Right. That was the trick. We didn't have to acknowledge that, but I came up with that line. We used it for years. It was great.

All right. Enough on the CBC. Thank you for allowing me to have that discussion. We'll move on. We'll take a quick break. Right back. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on The Bridge.

You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, your favorite podcast platform, or on our YouTube channel. And you can find it by going to the link that's on my Twitter or Instagram post, and there is no charge to watch this scintillating discussion in video. All right. I've raised this a couple of times in the last month or so, and nobody really tends to kind of bite on it.

It doesn't seem to get much traction out there. So he's going to try again? Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't know what's coming next. No, no, no. It sounds like it's time to go to the fridge and get some orange juice or something. No, it's not about the Maple Leafs. It's about the NDP and their support for the government propping it up,

supposedly through until the next election, not due until 24 or 25. But there's a big announcement this week on health care, and there have been other announcements, and there's a budget coming, and the rumblings within the NDP, and especially from the leader of the NDP would seem to suggest that in spite of everything you see in the polling data and the research data, that Jagmeet Singh is getting a little bit anxious here about continuing support. Now, is that just brave talk or is there something to it? Chantal?

For sure, a lot of paint is being put on the floor where in the NDP corner and at some point there may come a time when Jagmeet Singh will have to decide whether he walks over that paint to get himself out of a self-created corner or whether he does withdraw his support and ends up in a campaign that not a single poll suggests he would win or make huge progress over. But I'm going to reverse your proposal. Your focus was on Jock Mead saying tough talk, but mine is more on what this week's events on the healthcare front signaled about the budget. And what it does sound like it's signaling is a restraint budget, a budget that reigns in a lot of spending and sets a fiscal course that probably makes the liberals in their strategies at least more competitive with the conservatives

on the notion of managing the economy. At the same time, if you look at the priorities that Justin Trudeau agreed with, in theory, with the premiers, and that he showcased in his lengthy, lengthy address to the media after the meeting with the first ministers, did you hear the word pharmacare? Did you read it? And this pharmacare issue is a cornerstone of the partnership between the NDP and the liberals. It is not a cost-free endeavor. So I'm looking at those two signals, this silence on PharmaCare, and at the same time, the signal that the budget will not be a big spending budget in any way, shape or form. And I'm thinking that this is going to be a hard budget for the NDP to support. Add to that all the talk that you hear from Jagmeet Singh over

how bad the meeting was. You can add to that the assertion talking to premiers that no, Justin Trudeau did not go in there and lecture them about using private for-profit health care to deliver public services. And what you have is basically a mix that makes it very, very hard or much harder for the NDP to not support the liberals. Now, if they don't, because let's go all the way to that they should prepare for an election because the conservatives even if as they have supported the proposal or the main proposal of the prime minister to the premiers are not about to support the next budget and nor will the bloc quebecois so it's going to be a tough winter for the DP and possibly decision time for Jagmeet Singh.

Rose? I think of Jagmeet Singh's political leverage as kind of sand in an hourglass. And as time goes on, he has less and less political leverage. And he has essentially none come the time of the next election. He'll have to make his case then on the basis of its merits. But between now and then, he does have the ability to apply pressure to the government in ways that appeal to the voters that he's trying to appeal to. How effective he is at that does to some degree come down to, I guess, two things.

One is his willingness to threaten an election. And you can't do that more than once or twice before it no longer has any potency. And the other is how you use the stage when you have the microphone and people are looking at you for a comment on what's going on. And so if you're not going to threaten to drop the government at every opportunity, you have to make a case that is at least interesting so that people will register that the NDP represents an idea that maybe you should think about more and support the party more. I don't know that he's been as effective in that second framework as he could be. And when I look at the public opinion numbers about him, he's still relatively popular, but nowhere near as popular as he has been. And I

don't think it's because he's taken positions that people don't like. I think it's because people don't really know what to make of him and what role he's playing really in the Canadian political landscape. The best example of an issue that is tricky for the NDP right now, but on which I don't think they're succeeding, is this health care situation. I do think it's a very difficult situation for Justin Trudeau on some level because the premiers have succeeded in creating the expectation that he has some major responsibility for all of the things that are breaking down. And on the other side, you've got people saying, well, the one thing that we're not sure should happen is more privatization of health care, if you like. But at the same time, there is so much private delivery of public health now that no government, provincial or federal, could say, well, we've woken up to this situation and we're going to flip the switch and that's got to stop right now, which is essentially what the NDP is arguing for. And I think a lot of Canadians

understand that that is not a practical alternative when people have these enormous backlogs for surgeries and for other health services. I don't think the NDP argument, which is essentially everything should be done in the public sector by public servants, i don't think it feels very practical to people who are looking for a very practical solution i think it sounds ideological in a time when people are saying well i might agree with the ideology um but we need practical solutions and so i i don't think the ndp has has helped itself very much and i don't think that the threat is very real in terms of wanting to have an election. And I think Jagmeet Singh needs to find a way to fashion a message that will create some stickiness for the NDP brand, but I don't think it's there yet.

Bruce, can I just ask you, you've often talked to us about what your data shows as the base for certain parties, that the Liberals have a base of support no matter what happens to them or how much disfavor they may be in. They're going to vote Liberal. You say the same about the Conservatives. What's the base of support for the NDP? What is kind of untouchable? It's going to be there no matter what, no matter whether the campaign turns into one of these, you know, if the Liberals don't win, the Conservatives are going to win,

and if the Conservatives are going to win, you better help the Liberals. And they drain off some of that NDP vote that we've seen that many times before. But what's the base of support for the NDP? Well, you know, the way I always answer that question is a little bit different, I think, from what people consider to be the normative base of party support. So for me, the base of the Liberal Party is probably about 13 or 14 percent. Same for the conservatives. And it's probably more like nine or 10 for the NDP. That's the number of people who say, I will only ever vote for this party. Now, in practical terms, the base of the NDP looks more like it's between 16 and 20 or 21 percent.

And the liberals and conservatives are more in the kind of 30 to 35, 37 range. But any party can have a catastrophe. Any party can have a kind of a breakout moment where those kind of normative base numbers really don't apply that much. I tend to think the parties are all better advised to understand that the number of people who are absolutely committed to them, no matter what, is pretty small relative to the current kind of horse race numbers. That's totally anecdotal, but my impression would be that the core NDP vote has become more fragile over the past decades, rather than the opposite, in part possibly because the liberals in their latest incarnation, it's even more obvious, but even under Jean Chrétien,

gave a lot of new Democrats more comfort with the liberal brand. And that could change again. But we never talk about Jagmeet Singh's tenure, but he has been in the job for long enough to measure progress or non-progress. And it's impossible not to note that under his watch, the NDP has basically disappeared from Atlantic Canada. It's gone from Quebec, not coming back anytime soon. It's gone from the GTA, the larger Toronto area. So all of the signs point to a party that is shrinking. And that's not the case provincially. But if you look at how more pragmatic the NDP's provincial wings in Manitoba, in Alberta, in British Columbia are versus the happy warriors, the little tribe that sits on Parliament Hill, the gap is really

significant. A lot of the time, Rachel Notley and John Horgan, who has just left the political scene in BC, sound more like Justin Trudeau than they sound like Jagmeet Singh. And certainly in government, they have acted in ways that make them closer to the federal liberals. Let's be serious here. A federal government that decided tomorrow, as Mr. Singh is saying, that would pay 50% of the bill for health care and enforce the Canada Health Act in a way to forbid provinces or punish provinces who use for private health care would basically be doing two things. making a mess of public finances federally for a long, long time to come, and making a huger mess of the Canadian health care system. That's the reality versus the speech. So that doesn't mean there won't be an election triggered by the NDP deciding that it's got nothing to lose or that it can't support the budget.

But if I were the new Democrats, I would think that it's maybe time for some fresh rhetoric and fresh thinking because I heard this week Nikki Ashton was making one of those pre-question period statements. An MP from Manitoba once ran for the leadership of the party, very committed to the new Democrat orthodoxy. And she was making the point that the liberals and the conservatives only live for big business. I was walking past my computer when I heard that and I saw myself and you can see yourself 40 years ago watching an NDP leader saying it's Bay Street and remained black and white for all of that time, while most

of us live in nuances, it's still the same formula, rehashed. It's not even inventive. And the way that it's presented, they were more inventive back then than they are today. So bottom line, yeah, maybe a federal election, but to me that would be very perilous, possibly more comfortable, though, than trying to have your cake and eat it too by being the partner of the government and at the same time saying they are the worst ever government

that you've ever seen for the little people. Kind of a disconnect here. Okay, Bruce, we better move on because she's targeting everybody who comes into her sights here today. She'll be after us in a minute. We've only got a couple of minutes. It's been a tough week here. As you know, this is distracting from the tragedy that has been

the real news in Quebec for the past week. Terrible story. Terrible story. Terrible story. Okay, listen, we're going to take a final break. We've got a couple of minutes left. I want to try something a little different that I haven't warned you about. So stand by. Back right after this. And back for our final segment of Good Talk

with Chantal in Montreal and Bruce. We were sort of saying point south where the weather is warmer. The beach is clear. Great spot. Okay. Here's what I just thought of this now. And I thought of it mainly because of something I saw yesterday, but I'll ask you, and I'm sorry, I haven't given you any warning, but I'm going to start with Bruce because I'm almost certain I know what his answer is going

to be. If there was an image this week, a photo, a picture, something that said to you something about the week. What might it have been, Bruce? Well, look, I think the pictures coming out of the State of the Union, of the heckling and everything, that was kind of interesting. But I think in the Canadian context, it almost wasn't a handshake-handshake between Daniel Smith and Justin Trudeau. It was one of those rare moments where people get to see the physical manifestation of the political awkwardness that we've been kind of understanding exists. And I gather that the Premier of Alberta was put in a situation anyway

where she felt like she had to address it yesterday and kind of explain it. And she said that before they were in front of the cameras, they also shook hands and that handshake was fine. And there was a, there's a whole kind of drama underneath that, that I think is interesting. So just as an image, it was interesting. And I was glad to see that the conversation between the two of them, even as she recounted it yesterday, is a more positive conversation. I understand everybody's got to kind of play their political roles, but they've also got to solve some problems. And it sounds like they're talking about things that might.

It's not an image that we saw, but it's an image that was planted in our brains by a story in the Toronto Star. And it is the picture of Premier Doug Ford traveling to Dominique Leblanc, the Federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in Atlantic Canada. That's okay.

But the picture that can't get out of my head is the picture of them apparently sitting on the porch smoking cigars. And if you looked at the rest of this week and what happened at the health negotiations, someone called, one commentator in Quebec called Premier Ford, la taupe fédérale, the federal spy at the premier's table. You can almost imagine them puffing on those cigars and kind of becoming real chums. And then yesterday, a news conference from Queen's Park with the premier was saying all nice things about the federal government.

He's Mr. Ford is grateful. Grateful is his word that he has met with the prime minister. And Dominique Leblanc is looking on all smiles. And you can't get those cigars out of your head. This is really the part of politics that you don't see when you see the fake handshake. But that is where things happen. It's personal relationships. I think the federal government has done a

good job of figuring out that Premier Ford actually reacts well to respect and friendship as opposed to cold shoulder and stay in your basement when the federal conservative leader is campaigning in your province because we don't want you to be around. And it has paid off this week. You know, I couldn't help but think when I read that story what Dominic Leblanc's doctor was probably thinking because it's not like Dominic's had an easy time in these last few years on the health front. Smoking a cigar, even for a few moments,

was probably not going to help things. But you're right about where deals are struck, they're struck in the background, and that's always been the case. And some good deals have come as a result of that. Some not so good as well, but some good ones. My image, I have a number of images, the images of the store you talked about earlier, Chantel in Montreal, this tragedy of the daycare.

That one, I saw an image from Turkey just yesterday of a father at a site of one of the buildings that collapsed with his hand, holding the hand of his child who was trapped and died in his hand. You know, you look at that and you go, my God, you know. But I don't want to leave it on that. I'll leave it on this. I saw an image yesterday of Chris Hatfield, our astronaut hero, with the king, King Charles III. And they were yucking it up in what looked like a, you know, a private meeting of some sort on space.

And a friend of mine sent a note, said, what's next for Chris? Chris is a friend. What's next for Chris? Knighthood? And I said, well, no, no, no, that doesn't work, you know, like for Canadians anymore, they can't get knighthoods. That's not the way it's supposed to work. He's got his Order of Canada and deservedly so.

And the friend came back and says, yeah, but those rules are only for earthbound people. I thought, that's good. That would be a nice exception. We could make that for sure. All right, gang, this has been a an interesting uh discussion and thank you for allowing me to spend the first half hour on the cbc it's always been you know an issue when you were at the cbc to talk about the cbc in any kind of you know um way that might uh you know upset

the those at the top. But I haven't worked at the CBC for six years. A couple of contract things, and I feel kind of liberated to have that discussion. And perhaps it went on longer than it should, but it allowed me to not only to say a few things, but to listen to some really interesting comments that both of you made about the future of what is an important part of Canada. You can argue about the way it's run. And as Chantal said, we should have those arguments and we should have them much more than we have had over the years. And employees should be allowed to speak out. And sometimes do um but uh this has been a particularly starting a new show no where i'm i'm i'm padding time for the last 30 seconds of our slot we're

here for your therapy anytime you need it well your comments were very therapeutic and i'm glad you made them and it uh it will help me as I move forward in trying to understand what is going to happen to a place that I was passionate about for a long time, still am. And I think the country is, deep down. When you ask, do you believe in a national public broadcaster, the majority of Canadians say yes. That doesn't mean they endorse the way the CBC has been operating,

but they believe the need of a national public broadcaster. And let's hope they always do. All right, that's going to wrap it up. I filled out the remaining few seconds. Thank you much. Have a great weekend, you know, wherever you happen to be. And the same goes to you out there in our audience. So that's it for this week we'll be back on uh monday and

monday by the way is the return of the moore butts conversation that'll be a good one that's monday um that's it for now talk to you again on monday take care you guys