The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Election 2021 - The Insiders

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Our political insiders give us the inside story on the first 24 hours of Canada’s election campaign.  What was THE moment if there was one? Did anyone make a lasting mistake? What about the questions to the leaders - were they worthy?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's Monday. The bridge is back. That's right. The bridge is back. I never promised you a rose garden, but I did promise you the likelihood of an election campaign starting in the middle of August. That's what happened yesterday. So today begins our special bridge podcasting and programming of the election campaign. We've got a special program in store, and it starts right after this. A can of pet food, where every ingredient matters. Some companies like to brag about their first ingredient, but the A Can of Pet Food team is proud of their entire bag. That's because every recipe has been thoughtfully sourced

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I've spent, I guess, the last month or so on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth telling you that we would do special election programming during the election campaign. And as we're now into it, the programming starts today. Each day of the week, for the five weeks, or most of the five weeks, I'll explain why in a moment, most of the five weeks, we're going to have special programming each day. And today, we start off with a segment I'm calling The Insiders. And if you've followed me in the past, you've seen that I've had segments called the insiders at different times on different programs with different people.

And today I'm really excited about the three people we've got on the insiders for this campaign. Supriya Dwivedi is associated with the Liberal Party. She's going to speak on behalf of what they think the campaign is doing, what the message is they're trying to do, and what they think of the others. Tim Powers is with the Conservatives. He's been a long-time strategist, great guy, funny guy, smart guy. He's with Summa Strategies in Ottawa. Supriya is with Enterprise Canada, another strategic advice company. And Kathleen Monk is with the NDP, and she's with Ernst Cliff, the Ernst Cliff Group in Ottawa. So the three of them will be helping us go through the campaign on the Insiders segment each Monday. So representatives of the three major national parties.

And they all had their day yesterday. How did it actually go? Well, we're going to talk about that. Now, I did warn you, I suggest to you that this is the plan for the next five weeks, but there is one little interruption. It starts to take place later this week i've been trying very hard for most of this year actually to get back to the arctic to do a documentary that i'm doing on the cbc later this year which is going to be a discussion about the changing nature of our arctic and climate, sovereignty, the whole bit. And we got a great opportunity this week.

We're going to go on board the Navy's new Arctic patrol vessel, the Harrah DeWolf, for a number of days as it's beginning its passage through the Northwest Passage, historic route. But we'll visit a couple of communities. We'll go to Pond Inlet. We'll go to Grease Fjord. And we may make a couple of other little stops along the way and arctic bay will close it out for us so i'm really looking forward to that and not only am i looking forward to that trip and the

work that i've got to do in terms of the documentary but i'm taking some of my portable podcast gear with me with the hope that we'll be podcasting from these different areas, including on board the ship. So fingers crossed on that one, but that'll be for a couple of days, four or five days, starting later this week. But the rest of the time, the rest of the 35, 36 days of this campaign, the podcast will be devoted to the election campaign. And there's going to be, as you know, lots to talk about on that front. And we got a glimpse of what to talk about yesterday. So without any further ado, let's get started with the first segment of the insiders are going to kick off our election coverage.

And, you know, if you were wondering, Tuesdays will be kind of a reporter's notebook. Althea Raj and Rob Russo, who've been with us before, are going to kind of give us the helicopter view of what to watch for, what to look for, what are we missing, what are the questions that need to be asked. So they'll be on Tuesdays.

Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, Good Talk. No paywall. Everybody gets it. Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. They'll give us their big picture on the campaign. So looking forward to that. Friday is what I'd like to do with Friday, starting a week from this Friday or possibly the following Friday. I haven't quite sorted it all

out depending on my travel schedule. I want your voice. I want the voters' voice. So I want to hear from you. So whenever you have thoughts during these next few weeks, write them down. I will get to them. Whether it's, it won't be this week, may not be next week, but it'll certainly be the third week. And I want to get as many of your thoughts as possible. Keep them focused. Keep them short. You know, I don't need the six pagers. Just give me your thoughts on things as they develop through the campaign. Not the obvious. Give me your, you know, your smarts. You be the analyst. Give me your smarts. You be the analyst.

You be the strategy person. You tell me what you're thinking. All right. We're going to get things underway here with our first segment of the insiders. Comes up right after this. This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. All right, let's get started then. Tim Powers is, well, he's where the world begins, or at least the day begins, in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Supriya Dwivedi is in Oakville, Ontario. And Kathleen Monk is in Golden Lake, Ontario. She's been doing the mom thing today, dropping her kids off at summer camp. So good for you. Good for all of you. And thanks for joining us. Let's get started with a sense of, you know,

there's always a lot of pressure about day ones of a campaign. Do they get off to a good start? And, you know, who said the right thing? Who said the wrong thing? So let me put it this way. I want you to point, each of you, and I don't care which party you point to or which leader you point to, but in terms of one thing that struck you yesterday, in terms of the you know the opening performances on the part of the three main party leaders which which one struck you in a way that you think you know may have some bearing on the direction this campaign ends up taking and because the day starts in newfoundland why don't we start in st john's uh with you tim the world starts in newland, Peter. So it's good you start here to get us going. I think what was fascinating for me is Trudeau threw toxicity in the trash bin right

off the bat. There was a lot of pregame spin that he was going to talk about. The parliament was toxic and he couldn't work. Instead, he pivoted to it's a pivotal moment. We need to now make a choice for the future most important election since 1945. He clearly was hearing the cackles from the crowd that toxicity wouldn't sell. So he's tried to reframe the argument, but the opposition leaders don't seem to be having it so far. He loves to grab onto one word and answer, kind of hammer it. It's like somebody said to him in the pregame discussions, pivotal, pivotal. That's the word we want today. We want to come out with pivotal.

And pivotal kept dropping all the way through his statement and the answers to his various questions. Supriya, what was your one moment or the thing that you, your pivotal moment? What do you point to in what you saw yesterday? Honestly, what I found a little bit surprising is just how much the two opposition parties were referring to the fact that this election is unnecessary. I mean, it's all well and good in the pregame or in the lead up to the election to, you know, have that kind of talk and have those sort of talking points out there. But it's a little like complaining about the refs. So you can complain about the refs all well and good, but if you get to that free point that, you know, the free throw

line and you can't sink those buckets, that's on you. And I feel as though there's a certain point, which ideally would have been yesterday, where you want to switch from that pre-campaign mode into campaign mode, where you're no longer complaining, but you're actually, you know, out there with your message. And that's the main thing that people are taking away from it. You know, there were times when I was watching that yesterday, knowing full well that they were going, the opposition leaders I'm speaking of were going with the, there shouldn't be a campaign now when they started to make the argument as to exactly why there should be a campaign. They seem to be going like off their own message a little bit at times.

Kathleen, and I've left Kathleen to the last because you always leave the best to last, and Kathleen is actually sitting in her car outside the summer camp because she's not allowed to use tech inside there. So she's joining us from her car near Golden Lake, which is, i don't know it's it's somewhere on the edge of the algonquin park and i know i know it because that's where i that was the first place i went to in terms of a canadian experience when we moved to canada from

malaya in the mid 1950s and from everything i hear it's as pristine now as it was then, you know, almost 60 years ago. It really is. The water is beautiful. The forest is lush. And the kids are having a great time. So I'm just hiding out with my car, with my coffee, my newspaper, and a microphone so I can talk to you. So tell us, what do you look at yesterday? What was your one moment?

Yeah, I thought it was, my colleagues have touched on this a little bit, but I thought a couple of choices by the Liberal Party. One for Justin Trudeau to walk out with his full family, right? All three kids there in tow. I have two boys. I know how hard it is to get boys to dress up and and look nice and show up to their with their mom to an event. So that that was a message he was trying to send, right, that they are a family, that this election, as you've already noted, is not only a pivotal moment, but it's a consequential moment. And I actually enjoyed how the Liberals tried to flip this script on the opposition parties by actually saying, okay, you say we shouldn't go into an election, then tell us tell us why Canadians don't deserve the opportunity to have a say in this at this consequential, this pivotal moment in our in our time and and hearkening back to the 1940s.

And that really Trudeau positioning this election as important as those post-war moments. So I thought that was really smart with him. I think we'll probably talk about this a little bit more on the podcast, but we have to get into the fact that, you know, Aaron O'Toole just didn't move from the Western Hotel in Ottawa. That was a really interesting choice. And I am certainly not going to be the pundit that says that was a wrong choice. I think it was fascinating what the Conservative Party headquarters has chosen to do by keeping him in that basically makeshift Conservative TV studio. And I think that there could be some strengths to that move on behalf of the Conservatives. Yeah, you don't sound too unhappy that going to different provinces, different areas, as well as his studio.

It reminded me a little when you point that out, and others have kind of mentioned that was not a mistake. I remember when Trudeau started in 2015, and Supriya, you'll remember this this in 2015, when he did his opening statement, he didn't take questions. And there was much discussion and debate on that day. Was this a huge fatal flaw? Was this a big mistake? And, you know, by day three, nobody remembered it. But nevertheless, you know, we tend, especially in the journalism class, you know, making a lot out of little things. And especially on day ones, we're all looking for the big mistake.

You know, did they make the big mistake? Did anyone make a big mistake yesterday? Supriya, why don't you start us? Yeah, I think my face tends don't know if Mr. O'Toole's answer to the question when it comes to vaccine passports or mandated vaccines for the federally regulated public service, if his answer isn't just going to be some variation of journalists asking him again and again and again to pin down a more either forceful answer to land in one of either two camps, you're either firmly pro vaccine or firmly anti vaccine. And I understand that

there's obviously a gradation there with respect to how you want to implement that policy. But I don't know if that answer is going to be good enough for the public, particularly when we're seeing, you know, cases now start to up creep and there's warning of a fourth wave and it's being primarily driven by unvaccinated people. Right. And I don't want to put all unvaccinated people in the same camp because of course there's all sorts of reasons and there's all sorts of marginalized groups that have yet to have that ability or have that opportunity to go get a vaccine. And you don't want to paint everybody as some, you know, Reddit Joe Rogan listening sort of complete nutter anti-vaxxer.

But there is obviously a contingency of that in Canada. And it just seems like you're trying to be too cute and a half by doing the wink, wink, nudge, nudge to that group by trying to, you know, straddle the line a little bit. Who's Joe Rogan? He's no Peter Mansbridge. I'll tell you that. to that group by trying to, you know, straddle the line a little bit. Who's Joe Rogan? He's no Peter Mansbridge. Biggest podcaster in the world. I think Joe Rogan. Anyway, Tim, do you want to, do you want to respond to that?

Cause there has been a lot of, you know, talk around the vaccine position of Aaron O'Toole and, and the conservative party in general. Yeah. Well, I was sitting on air Canada's flight trying to get here last night, and they were thanking me for their patience, which is a very Air Canada thing to do, as we all know. I got a news release that the Conservatives put out at 10.07 p.m. Eastern, 11.37 in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the Conservatives were clarifying, yet again, their position on vaccines. So I think, as Supriya has said, they know how vulnerable they are here. Yesterday in the Prime

Minister's news conference, he cited that stupid, and I'll stand by my word here, stupid remark made by Conservative backbencher MP David Yerdiga out of Fort Mac talking about mandatory vaccines being a tyrannical thing. And of course, on Friday, Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, said he was for a form of mandatory vaccine. So the Conservatives didn't get this right over the weekend. They tried to correct it at 10.07 Eastern. We'll see what things look like at 10.07 Eastern tonight if there's another press release coming out. That was a mistake. The Conservatives are kind of all over the map on vaccines in terms of looking at the different Conservative governments. Palliser's out there in front in Manitoba, way in front of everybody else. He's now joined by Quebec in terms of vaccine passports. Jason Kenney making it

clear he's not in that camp and Aaron O'Toole depending on the day, depending on the weather, depending on the time whether it's eastern or coastal. You're right Peter. I was just going to say this is going to be a challenge I think for Mr. O'Toole going forward. Any of us who know Mr.

O'Toole know that in person he's a very personal, engaging, smart fellow. He's going to be struck, as leaders are, and this will be a theme for all the leaders throughout the campaign, how they find a balance between giving their own voice and giving the message voice. And the message voice on the conservative side right now is there is some concern about, you know, that little pocket of People's Party, a little pocket in the West that really have a hardcore libertarian view that we shouldn't force vaccines upon people. I think those

arguments are wrong, but I'm not the leader of the Conservative Party. So Mr. O'Toole is trying to manage that. But in the process of managing it, he's created his first sort of problem. And today, Kathleen, I'm sure we'll elaborate on this, the NDP are going to try and force the Conservatives and the Liberals a little harder on this by saying, let's get all this mandatory vaccine requirements in place by Labor Day. Can I just jump in here really quickly, though? Sorry, Kathleen, I know it's your turn, but I just think we should be moving away from calling them mandatory vaccines. We're not pinning people down and jabbing them in the arm, right? We're saying that for certain sectors, particularly sectors that are interfacing regularly with members of the vulnerable public, so whether you're on the education side dealing with unvaccinated under 12

children, or whether in your long-term care, or you're working at cancer ward or something like that with immunocompromised people, then perhaps you should find another means of employment or you're subject to other, you know, mitigation efforts such as regular testing. You know, you're upping your PPE level or whatever it may be. I think the image of somebody pinning somebody down and, you know, jabbing them forcefully with a needle is kind of what the Max Berniers are trying to put out there. And I don't know if we should be taking that bait. Kathleen? And I don't know if we should be taking that bait. Kathleen. Listen, I think it was really smart of the liberals to try to to wedge O'Toole off the very beginning, like the statement by Justin Trudeau mentioned several times that there are other political parties or political leaders who would not support our moves to have an international vaccine accreditation would not support our moves to ensure that those who want to fly domestically or take a train domestically will be required to

show proof of vaccination. I mean, he, you asked at the beginning of the show, Peter, about, you know, the first day jitters, and we're always looking for that, that one fumble, that one critical error on behalf of one of the leaders. And I think that the Liberal team thought long and hard about how they could force O'Toole into an error. And as that scramble that we saw yesterday, that, you know, O'Toole wasn't clean at answering the question in the scrum in his statement. He was asked repeatedly by reporters time and time again, and as Tim mentioned, had to actually send out a clarifying statement later in the day.

So if you were taking a tally on day one, I think you certainly would say, you know, that O'Toole took the biggest hits on day one of the campaign because of that scramble to correct around vaccines, vaccine passports, and then some additional stuff about the studios. But if I could bring us in one, maybe you're going to say this anyhow, Peter,

but one other direction. I think what's so important about day one on campaigns, and particularly the first week, is that we're all trying to set a narrative, right? Like, where are the leaders? What situations do they put themselves in? Where regionally are they? What story are they trying to tell? Listen, there have been campaign workers and staffers devising the first week of the campaign for months now. And so actually tracking, you know, where the leaders are, where they chose that perfect photo op, what message they're trying to send is really important and gives us lots of clues, frankly, about what kind of campaign they're trying to run. Are they running a defensive campaign? Are they running an offensive

campaign? Are they going into ridings they feel they need to keep and solidify? Or are they being aggressive and they're going into territory they're hoping to claim? And I think when you kind of break down where the leaders are and where they're going, you can see a lot of that foreshadowing, if you will. Wow. Nice. You gave us all the questions. Are you going to give us any of the answers? I'm happy to. So I can speak for Jagmeet Singh, for instance. It's been 20 years like that with me and Kat. Only 10 years with Peter, 20 years with you, Atim, and working on Supriya, I think we're about five. So we'll see. But I can tell you for sure, with Jagmeet Singh, you know, if you look at the history of the NDP, you scroll back to 2008, that famous shot of Jack Layton in front of the Parliament building shot from the Gatineau side, of course, that was a, we were trying to construct that, that shot, that image, if you will, and message in 2008 that he could be prime minister. Our job back then then, excuse me, was to to prove that he could even be in the game to run for prime minister. We came up with a slogan with I'm Jack Layton and I'm running to be prime minister.

And internally, remember, New Democrats laughed at that comment. Like, what do you mean you're running for prime minister? But every normal Canadian thought, of course, that's what you're doing. But that image spoke a lot. But similarly, if you go back to Jagmeet in 2019, he went into London, Ontario, because he wanted to actually pick up seats in the southwest of Ontario. He wanted to build back Ontario. And so that's where he went aggressively to pick up seats. So you've got to look at where the leaders are going and what message they're trying to send. So Jagmeet Singh today in this 2021 campaign, sure, he started off in Montreal yesterday. That's potentially a growth area. He was in Laurier St. Marie.

But more importantly, today, you see him in Toronto Danforth. And you also see him in Brampton, because the party sees growth there. And so they want to be in those ridings. And you also see him in Brampton, because the party sees growth there. And so they want to be in those ridings. This is more of an offensive campaign, where they're saying, okay, we're going to try to pick up these seats. They're signaling that they're on the warpath, if you will, to gain seats. And so it'll be interesting to track leaders. We know that O'Toole is going to be having to pay attention to some of those prairie seats and that he normally would take for it and take for granted. Right. And that whole Fraser Valley where those those B.C. seats that were locked in normally for for some of those conservatives are not safe any longer. But, you know, sorry, Peter, I was just going to pick up on Kathleen's point about what so O'Toole as we all said got criticism for the ballroom but the ballroom makes sense if you're arguing part of your argument is it's a dangerous

time to have an election so having a big event with lots of people when you're leading the charge that this is not the right time is not unwise in the first couple of days that and they spent a whole piss pot of money uh getting that studio built um He's got to change that approach. But as he sets the scene and again, just to O'Toole and Singh on this and Blanchett, to be fair, I mean, they they want to frame this as the self-centered or selfish, as Mr. Singh calls it, election that Justin Trudeau has launched. So you want to demonstrate the that your actions are legitimate by being safe initially and focusing on that casting doubt. I mean, that's not going to sustain itself over time, but that was part of what yesterday was about. This is really about Justin Trudeau making unsafe choices.

Aaron O'Toole, I'm trying to make a safe choice for now and have you see all of this. Supriya, do you want to weigh in on this? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a salient point. The only thing I would say is that I think for everyone here right now, you know, we're really parsing into this and really trying to get into the mindset of what went into the sort of thinking to have him sitting in that studio. But if you're a regular voter and you're being told that indoor dining is safe, you're being told that it's safe to go to a movie theater, you're being told that indoor dining is safe, you're being told that it's safe to go to a movie theater, you're being told that it's safe to send your kids who are unvaccinated with potentially an unvaccinated teacher in a classroom where they're jammed with 29 other kids, that argument

kind of falls short. And I think the argument of it being just a generally unsafe environment tends to fall somewhat short, even if I, you know, may or may not disagree with some of the substance of it, that there are safer ways to do the election. And I think we should all be just, you know, kind of grateful for the fact that we are still in the tail end of summer. Right. So like a lot of the things that are that can be done campaign wise, you know, can and should be done outdoors. Absolutely. Where possible, it would be very different if we were smack dab in the middle of February. Right. And everyone was sort of jammed into like gyms and whatever, taking questions from people. All right. A lot of what all three of you were saying boils down to this sort of,

you know, what's the ballot question? And I know this is kind of the easy way out for journalists at the beginning of these things. And you kind of watch it change through a campaign, depending on how things come up, like Afghanistan yesterday, like haiti on the weekend all these things can have an impact but if you had to define in one sentence one sentence what the ballot question is i know that'll be hard for some of you to try and boil this into one i won't mention any names here but um give me the one sentence ballot question, at least out of the gate. What is it? Tim, why don't you start? Who can?

Well, I'll steal O'Toole's because it's a form of that I think they will all be asking. Who can secure your future? I think that's what they're all trying to say in a very different way. All right, Kathleen. Who will keep you safe and our community safe? I think that O'Toole's line is really smart. I think I've heard it in focus groups a lot, that word secure. So I think they're right to play off of it.

But when you look at the three slogans, forward for everyone, being the liberals, secure the future for the conservatives and fighting for you, the New Democrats. It's interesting. There's a thread you could sew through all of them. Yeah. And I would say mine would be similar insofar as it's some variation of who do you want to lead you out of this, right? And who do you want with you on the other side? And I think as the campaign sort of goes on, and perhaps unfortunately, as we do start to see some uptick in terms of case numbers with respect to various provinces across the country, that will turn into some variation of we're not completely through the other side of this. So that's why you need us, aka the liberals, to continue doing what we've been doing for you.

But this time, you know, have your say to ensure that we're not, and again, Peter, I'm falling into your trap of not just one sentence here. But you see where I'm going with this, right? Where they're able to sort of say that this is why we need that mandate. And that kind of cuts into the opposition's argument thus far where they're saying, well, you don't even need a majority. We haven't been you know, we've been giving you everything you want. But the reality is, you know, if you're a liberal government, that's certainly not true. And Peter, for these things to work, I think there has to be a grain of truth.

Right. So there was a grain of truth in what the prime minister said yesterday. He's hardly going to stand up there and do the Joe Namath. He's a football player, by the way, Kathleen, and guarantee that, you know, he's going to win the Super Bowl or Mark Messier. You probably know him. He's a hockey player saying he's going to win the Stanley Cup and he wants this for his own purposes. We've all gone through hell, in manner of speaking, for the last 18 months. So everybody is kind of thinking about, yeah, maybe this is a pivotal moment. It might be as pivotal as the prime minister would like them to believe, but he's planting that little bit of a grain of truth that he wants everybody to play off. And he believes he has the best set of arguments.

We'll see in 36 days if that's the case. All right. I'm going to wrap this up with one question. While I was watching all this yesterday, I got increasingly frustrated at the fact that these candidates, these leaders were not answering direct questions. And I put a one line on Twitter, something to that effect. Why don't they ever answer direct questions? And it got enormous response, as occasionally some of my tweets do, as all of yours do too. But what I found interesting was the response wasn't just likes. It was comments, and there were hundreds of them.

And the frustration kind of came through on the part of many voters, I assume, who just find that situation unbearable. Then they were asked a very direct question, as each of them were, and especially O'Toole and Trudeau to some extent, were dodging the question, asked repeatedly. So there's two sides to this thing. There is the answer. There's also the question asked repeatedly so there's two sides to this thing there is the answer there's also the question and so i want to be fair here uh to my uh colleagues um many of whom are good friends uh in terms of questions that were asked yesterday because some of them i found

like they didn't really reach the bar that we're looking for on days like that. These constant questions to Trudeau about, will you resign if you don't win a majority? Well, you know, nobody was asking O'Toole if he'd resign if he didn't win. Or Singh, if he doesn't win, is he going to resign? You know, and really, quite frankly, are any of them going to answer that question? No, it's a stupid question, right? So I'm asking you to tell me of the questions you heard yesterday,

what was the worst one? You don't have to name anybody. You just pick the one. You just pick the one I think that I would pick because I think it's a completely constructed narrative. There's no, you know, there's, I mean, quite frankly, I would have been tempted to just answer straight up. No, heck no. If I were the prime minister, because just, just to put an end to it, right. Like there's no chance that he is going to, is currently facing that sort of situation within his own caucus around the

cabinet table around the cabinet table, around, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So if anything, that would have been my sort of criticism. But I agree. I think the question was silly. And I think it's just something that journalists were asking for the sake of almost other journalists. And we're not thinking about their audience necessarily. Well, I disagree. I disagree because when that first question first came up in the Trudeau presser, you know, it was Tonya McCharles and followed by many others who repeated Raymond Fillon from TVA. Others supported that question. And if I was I think that from a staffer perspective. as staffers where we have to prep our bosses for your questions, Peter, for questions like this. And we go through what I call the murder questions. Other people have different names for them, but like the hard questions that you're forced to answer. And so I disagree that it was a bad question, but I actually agree a little bit with Supriya because Supriya said he should have just

answered it. And I agree, he should have just answered it because the framing of the question is like, you're calling this election. This election doesn't need to be called for another two years. Folks have said they'll work with you. And I agree that that's a process story and that will move along. But why not have a prepared answer as opposed to having to move and kind of squeak through it like he did yesterday? And I think that's why you got so many comments, Peter, on your tweet, because people are frustrated with that. Just answer the question authentically in some way that obviously would be contrived because your staffers would have prepped you for it.

But have some way to answer that question that seems authentic. In media training, we call this transitioning or pivoting. Bridging. Bridging, exactly. Where you have to touch the answer lightly, and then bridge to where you want to go. And he didn't do that. I felt it was a really I felt you know, by the time it was in the third or fourth time, I think by the time that TV I got to I was like, Oh, my God, just answer the question already. Just just say no, no, I'm going to keep on fighting for Canadians, because he can change his mind later. You know, that's the thing about politics. They say they're going to run for four years, and they quit a year in like, that's the thing about politics they say they're going to run for four years and they quit a year in like that's the thing that people do but you can at least say

at the beginning you know uh some kind of authentic answer and let's face it if he only ends up with a minority or less he's not going to be under tremendous pressure to uh exactly say goodbye but anyway we're not there at the moment but tim you get the final word well i well fittingly i'm channeling john crosby as you know peter former boss relative of mine who never had trouble going off message and delivering his own message and somehow the vision of the cod moratorium and him being chastised for why he's closing the fishery said i didn't take the goddamn cod from the sea. Well, I hardly expected to see Justin Trudeau say, I'm calling this goddamn election because I want a majority. Two reasons why.

One, all of these leaders are products of a political marketing machine and a professionalization of politics that we've never seen. So people like us give them advice and they believe it's better to be marketed and scripted because it gets them where they want it. Second, we're still haunted by the ghost of Kim Campbell's 1993 election when she famously said, not time to talk about anything. Well, I'm paraphrasing, but elections, not a time to talk about issues. None of them want that moment. And it's shocking, really. I wish they would have that moment. You know, Stephen Harper, he didn't use the Crosby language, but he wasn't shy in, what was it, 11, 2011? He wanted a majority.

He said he wanted a majority. I'm here to get a majority. And he wasn't shy about it. And for some reason, Trudeau, those words never spilled out of his mouth yesterday. Listen, this has been a great first go-round for the insiders. That's what we're calling you. I've got to warn you that next Monday I'm going to be in the Arctic on board the Navy's new Arctic patrol vessel going through the Northwest Passage.

So we'll miss next Monday, but we'll meet again in two Mondays from now. So if you have camping duties again next Monday, Kathleen, you'll be free on that. But listen, I thank you all for joining us. It's been a great conversation, and we look forward to many more throughout this campaign. Take care. And there they were, the insiders.

And, you know, it's funny. When Tim mentioned the John Crosby remark about, I didn't take your goddamn card. Pardon the language, but I'm just reporting the facts. I can remember that night at the National, when that first came across, it came across on the wires before we saw the pictures. And we all looked up, this was the 80s, right?

And you didn't use that kind of language if you were a public figure. I mean, very few use it now. But you certainly didn't use it then. And so the initial response was, oh, this must be wrong. Nobody could have said that. And then we all agreed it was John Crosby. He said it. We know he said it even before we see him saying it.

And sure enough, he said it even before we see him saying it and uh sure enough he said it and it was it was it was quite the moment uh he was being sort of almost physically attacked by all these cod fishermen who were you know understandably upset about the cod moratorium that's our cod i went fishing for cod uh two years ago with Mark Critch on his wedding day. He took me cod fishing off the coast of Newfoundland. And I even caught some cod. David Cochran was there as well. I caught the first cod before Cochran, which really upset him and still to this day does.

But that's nevertheless. Let me make this comment before we sign off on day one of our special election coverage. If Justin Trudeau was looking at the history books, he may not have quite looked far enough, because we did a little research here on liberals and majority governments. This is the 44th general election. Of those 44, four have been held in September before. None, not one, has resulted in a Liberal majority. 1878.

I remember that campaign. That was a good campaign. I was on the train. John A. Macdonald won his second majority government, defeating Liberal Prime Minister Alexander McKenzie. 1911, Conservative Robert Borden defeated Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and gets a majority government. That was the government that lasted through the First World War. It was extended, I believe, by a year or so because of the war. 1926, after the King-Bing affair, the PM was conservative Arthur Meehan, but he'd been PM for just three months.

Mackenzie King won the most seats, 116 in a House of 245, so not a majority. But he had support of the Progressive Party. In fact, there were nine parties that won seats in that election. Nine! Can you imagine? That was 1926. 1984. Brian Mulrooney's conservatives, progressive conservatives, defeat Liberal PM John Turner. The PCs won 211 seats.

And still to this day, no other party has won that many seats in an election campaign. In addition, our first election, 1867, happened over several weeks from August 7th to September 20th, same day. That, of course, resulted in Sir John A's first majority Conservative government. It's obviously unlikely that anybody put this fact sheet in front of Justin Trudeau unless he figured, hey, I don't care. I'm going to set a precedent here. I'm going to break this track record of liberals not getting majorities in September, held elections. A couple of you have written to me asking for my thoughts on Afghanistan.

I'll give them very briefly. I've given them before on this program i've been very insistent when we've discussed afghanistan before that the minute the taliban saw an opening they'd be in and through the country like knife through butter because there was no will there was the ability to fight on the part of the Afghan army. There was no will because the people had lost their will. They're no fans of the Taliban. They celebrated 20 years ago when the coalition forces moved in and threw the Taliban out after 9-11. But after a few years of basically civil war, the people said, enough's enough, we want peace. I remember them, I was in Afghanistan a couple of times,

03 and 06. 03, the people loved the coalition forces. By 06, they were looking the other way. And people were telling me, people at the front, Afghans, that, you know what, we just want the war to end. And if it means the Taliban are back, then the Taliban are back. We just want peace. So the only surprise for me over these last couple of days is that it's been a surprise at all to so many people that this happened and happened so fast.

After first Trump and then Biden pulled American troops out, you could almost set it like clockwork. Now we have this mess on our hands, all of us, but the Afghans who'd worked with, in our case, the Canadian forces and Canadian diplomats who desperately want out. We've managed to get all our people out, the Canadians at the embassy. Now, are we going to get more of those who risked their lives to be with us? This is a horrible story. I've got to tell you, if I was someone who had lost a husband or a wife, a daughter or a son in Afghanistan in the last 20 years, I'm not quite sure how I would be reacting today. We were the country that stood there 2006 saying, we won't cut and run on you.

Those were the words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Afghanistan. Within a couple of years, we'd cut and run. Now everybody's cut and run. And they've left behind the sad, sorry tale that we're witnessing. A lot of good was done in Afghanistan.

There's no question about that. But we didn't follow through. And now we're looking at the result of that. All right, going to leave it at that for this day. Tomorrow's the bridge. Reporter's Notebook, Rob Russo, Althea Raj, will give us a big-picture sense of what we should be looking for. What are we missing in terms of stories?

Why are leaders doing certain things? Kathleen touched on a little bit there about why they go where they go. But let's look forward to tomorrow and the Reporter's Notebook. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.