The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - E DAY PLUS ONE: YOU VOTED FOR IT!

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Canada's 2019 Federal Election. | Thank for subscribing and for submitting a rating and review! * TWITTER @petermansbridge | INSTAGRAM @thepetermansbridge ** https://www.thepetermansbridge.com/ *** Producer: Manscorp Media Services

and hello there I'm Peter Mansbridge this is the bridge for e day plus one that's right e day plus one just plus one it's quarter after three in the morning on Tuesday morning. And I just got home from the studio where I was helping out the CBC on its broadcast on Monday night. So all that trouble over the last, whatever, 40 odd days to lead to this. What did we get? Well, we got a long election night show. We got really late speeches.

And then, hey, they decided to all give them at the same time. Wasn't that a mess? As I think it was Bob Ray said on our show. It was kind of like the English language debate. They were all, like, talking at the same time. But what about the substance of the evening? Well, we have a minority government, as most of the polls had been predicting.

It was going to be very close, and it was. In percentage terms, it was, what, one point, one and a half points apart, the two main parties. But those people who were in the business of forecasting the numbers of seats, well, just about all of them got it wrong. Not even close. Because the Liberals ended up winning their minority quite early in the evening. I'm not going to mention actual numbers here because they may well change by the time the morning comes

because of recounts and late counts. But it was a comfortable minority in seats, somewhere around 25, 30 at least. So that's going to be no problem meeting the House. They'll have to make a determination rather quickly about how they're going to govern, whether they want the support of one of the opposition parties, probably the NDP. If, probably the NDP,

if they got the NDP support, that would put them over the 170 mark and give them a comfortable time in office. But they might not want to make a deal of any kind. However, those negotiations, I'm sure, will take place, or those discussions at least, take place over the next few days and weeks. But we have this very difficult situation for the country in the sense that about 85% of the Liberal seats are west, excuse me, east of the Manitoba-Ontario border.

Very few seats to the west of the Manitoba-Ontario border. They've got a handful in Manitoba, none in Saskatchewan, none in Alberta, and a little more than a handful in British Columbia. That's not good for the country, to have a government with such little representation in half the country. And it's not good for the opposition

that they're barely in the game east of Ontario. The NDP lost almost half their seats the Greens in spite of a start to the campaign which looked promising ended up with three seats Maxime Bernier's party didn't win a seat at all so there's a little bit of a realignment going on now with the parties.

The Greens will have to determine how they're going to move forward because they don't have official party status for one, but they'll still stay as a party, I'm sure. But they may want to have discussions with their leader about leadership. That may happen in the Conservative Party too. It may happen in the NDP.

All those things work against an early defeat of a minority government. You start to get into the formal side of leadership campaigns, that takes time. But for me, the most disappointing part of leadership campaigns, that takes time. But for me, the most disappointing part of the evening, listen, in television I like a little bit of drama, and we had a little bit of drama through at least the first few hours. But when it got around to us knowing what the results

were, and how the country looked to us in terms of what the landscape looked like, in terms of political representation, I was hoping for some great speeches where people reached out, soared in their speeches in terms of what they were willing to do to try and make the country feel more like a country instead of all these different parts. Now listen, we've always known we're a big country. We've always had these kind of divisions at different times. I know in my career there have been more than a few times

where one region has felt like it was being overlooked by the other regions. But we're at another one of those moments in a particularly fragile time. And I expected more from the leaders than we got in terms of the speeches. Justin Trudeau struck me as somebody who was just a little bit too excited

about the fact that he won, kind of overlooking the fact that two-thirds of the country had voted against him in terms of the numbers of voters, and that there was this huge gap in the middle of the country, well, not the middle, but in the western side of the country with Saskatchewan and Alberta having no liberal representation. He didn't mention that until more than halfway through his speech where it looked like they'd put an add-in of a line into a speech that was already prepared.

And I'm sure it was already prepared. And I'm sure it was already prepared. And then somebody added in the line about Saskatchewan and Alberta. I wanted more. This is a moment in the life of our country. I wanted more. And in the conservative speech, Andrew Scheer, like, what the heck? This was like he gave it last week in the middle of the campaign.

It was the same kind of speech until he got around to talking about how great it was that they had more votes than the liberals. In spite of the fact they had less seats. And making it sound like this was something different. Our history shows it's not. It has happened. It's happened more than once. And you know who's been the beneficiary of it each time it's happened?

Conservatives. Conservative prime ministers. Joe Clark in 79, where the Liberals had four percentage points more of the popular vote than the conservatives did. And ironically, in 1962, as part of Andrew Scheer's speech tonight, he talked about the great John Diefenbaker, and he quoted the great John Diefenbaker. But John Diefenbaker became and he quoted the great John Diefenbaker. But John Diefenbaker became Prime Minister the same way

in 1962. He led a minority government where he had the most seats, but he had fewer votes than Lester Pearson. So it's not like this hasn't happened before. Jagmeet Singh was like party time even though he lost half his seats and he gave a speech that went on and on and on and the networks finally had to cut out of it

because the other leaders decided they couldn't wait any longer it was already one o'clock and they were wanting to start their speeches but it too sounded like his campaign speech and they were wanting to start their speeches. But it too sounded like his campaign speech. Just retooled it a little bit. Anyway, it was what it was,

and as one of the panelists said, you know, I guess it was Corey tonight, who did not seem like any fan of Andrew Scheer's campaign style in this past campaign, but he said, you know, the history of our country is we tend to get through these periods of difficulty in the way we see each other. And he's right about that, we do. But you know, you can only push so many times on these things.

We're at a moment and it'll take inspired leadership over the next however many months or years it takes to determine how we're going to handle this. So, final point on the pollsters,

because we talked about them lots during this campaign. I've got to say, at the end of the night, most pollsters were very close, very accurate. Certainly all the pollsters who came out with their final poll showing anywhere from dead heat to one side being up a point or the other side being up a point. Everything was in the margin of error, as far as I can remember, and as far as all the polls I saw, so that was pretty good.

Where they went astray was those that determined that they were going to use those numbers to forecast seats. They didn't all do that. Some made it very clear that they warned people that there was every possibility that one party could end up with more votes while the other party ended up with more seats. And that is what happened.

But some projected seats, and they weren't even close, at least not the ones I saw. I think Frank Graves from ECOS are certainly the closest on seats. He was a little bit out on the actual split on percentages. But I think as a general rule, they might want to reconsider the seat projection thing. And certainly aggregators should, in my view, should reconsider doing seat projections. However, that's just my view. And, you know, you can take it for what it's worth. Anyway, if I sound, I'm not actually down.

You know, I'm kind of up, but it's after you've been in the studio sitting there for six, seven, eight hours, you do get a little tired, especially of talking. So I'm a little bit tired. I'm disappointed in those speeches. And I'm looking forward to seeing how we work ourselves out of this situation. It's not like we haven't had minority governments before. Here's a couple of fun facts.

First of all, Joe Clark's record is intact as the only person who's ever beaten a Trudeau in this country. Pierre Trudeau never lost a riding election, and he only ever lost an election as leader of his party once, and that was to Joe Clark. Justin Trudeau has not lost his riding, and he has not lost a general election. So those records are intact. In terms of, you know, the constant comparisons with his father, Pierre Trudeau's first majority government was followed by a minority government.

In fact, he never put back-to-back majorities together. Pierre Trudeau. Justin Trudeau starts off exactly the same way his father did. A majority government followed by a minority government. So what do we learn from what happened in that Pierre Trudeau minority government? We learn that in between 72 and 74, Pierre Trudeau and David Lewis of the NDP worked out an arrangement, nothing formal. I don't think there was anything written down. But the NDP supported the Liberals and in return they got certain legislation they wanted. One of them was the Petro-Ganada

bill. So it'll be interesting to watch. Will there be some kind of an arrangement made between the Liberals and the NDP now? It might benefit Jagmeet Singh, who's going to be under some pressure from some members of his own party, because they lost almost half their caucus. They're broke.

They certainly don't want to go into an election right away. And this may be a way of also preventing a leadership race by having some kind of arrangement over whatever. Singh, I think, tonight was saying, you know, pharmacare, that's our big thing, pharmacare. Well, the Liberals say they want pharmacare too. Now, they've been saying this for decades, but they said it again in this campaign.

And maybe there, in pharmacare, there's some kind of arrangement. The Liberals have no representation in Alberta or Saskatchewan. The NDP have representation in both those provinces. That's interesting. That could leave some possibilities. We'll see. All right. That's enough of me babbling for early in the morning.

I'm sure we're all going to have many thoughts about what happened in this election I'm going to check in the mailbag and see whether there's anything that came in tonight that is worthy of reading that's right after this All right. I've got the mailbag here in my hand. Reading it off the phone here. Mike McKeever writes from Sudbury. Hey, Peter, watching the CBC coverage tonight, I think you and Bob Ray should do a podcast together.

Bob does a podcast. And I do a podcast. Maybe we should try doing something together. It was funny. We had a number of hits together on the air tonight, and Bob's daughter took a picture of the two of us on her television set, sent it to Bob, and said, you two guys look like those two old guys on the Muppets.

I wasn't very kind. Amy Hainsworth writes from Hong Kong. Just want to chime in with the others calling for you to continue on with the podcast. My husband and I have lived in Hong Kong for the last four years and really wanted to gather as much information as possible to make an informed vote now that we can vote as expats. And you are our primary resource. And she goes on with some wonderful

comments. Living in Hong Kong has taught us both the immense privilege and responsibility we have to be able to gather political information from multiple sources and cast a vote that matters. Responsibility we will likely never take for granted as we live and work alongside seven million Hong Kongers that are battling for that same right.. Amy, you should know that we have been watching that Hong Kong story unfold over these past few months, and it's been quite something to do. She hopes we'll continue the podcast, and I hope so too. All the best to both you, Amy, and Matthew Hainsworth,

listening in Hong Kong. What else have we got here? There's a few others that I've dealt with by responding by email to them. Okay, last quick question. I'm reading it because they are back as a player now in the House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois. So Ryan Duggan from Miramichi, New Brunswick. Long-time listener, first-time emailer.

I know you're likely putting the finishing touches on Sunday's episode. Actually, he wrote this yesterday, so two days ago now. My wife asked me today why the bloc would be given a national platform during the election. Example of debates, if they're only running candidates in a single province. You know, this has always been the issue about the bloc ever since they were formed in the early 90s. Should they be given national status as a party? Well, they are running in a national election. They run a full slate in just one province.

And over time, they've done pretty well. You know, the last few, they haven't done so well, but they finished third tonight. So they're a factor nationally because their presence in the national parliament will have a national impact. And so that's one of the reasons they're given that exposure during an election campaign.

Great season one of The Bridge, by the way. I guess that's a hint from Ryan that he wants to know that there's going to be a season two. There will be. We're just still working out exactly what that's going to be. So stay tuned. Listen, it's been great being with you every night for these last five or six weeks. All culminating in what's happened in the last dozen

hours. And these next few days and few weeks are going to be interesting. There's no question about that, just how things unfold. And it may be grist for more bridges during the next week, and if it does, I will certainly put them out there. But for now, not forever, but for now, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening.