The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Fourteen Points -- Now That's A Lead!

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

As poll after poll drops showing the Conservatives with, in some cases, a huge lead, the party meets in convention in Quebec City.  Can anything stop what seems like a steamroller for Pierre Poilievre? Bruce and Chantal bring their thoughts to the Good Talk conversation. Also should premiers be lobbying the Bank of Canada on interest rates?

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, Chantelle A. Pears of Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in New York City today. And here is the first Good Talk of Season 4. And it's good to have you both with us as we launch the fall season. You know, I was thinking this morning, if I was ever the leader of an opposition party, I couldn't think of anything better than to wake up some morning on the eve or the day of my party's convention, trying to determine how we're going to tackle the governing party, and to look at the front page of the paper and see that I had,

my party had, a 14-point lead. Now, there's no election tomorrow or this month or probably even this year, maybe not even next year, but a 14-point lead as your party meets in convention, it's almost unheard of. It's certainly been a while since we've seen anything like that in Canada. Now, Mr. Polling Man, this is one of yours showing the 14-point lead. It's not exactly out of place. Others have shown 12 points recently some others have shown four or five points but nevertheless it is a huge lead if you believe in this one so tell us why we should well when you say it's one of mine um it's an abacus poll

i'm not the chairman of that firm anymore but obviously was associated with it for a number of years. So I just want to be clear about that. Look, your setup for this, Peter, was if I were the leader of the opposition, I'd wake up in the morning and I'd want to, I'd love this headline that says I'm 14 points ahead, almost as though you'd want to kind of walk around the city or the town and show the headline to people. But I don't think that's how it would work. Or if that was your instinct as leader of the opposition, your staff would tell you, no, no, you're not going to do that. Instead, they would go and find the headline of the poll that says it's a dead heat. And they would give that to you. And they would say, walk this one around and tell everybody it's a dead heat. because at 14 points ahead, this is when some bad things

normally start to happen to somebody who's in that situation. What do I mean by that? Scrutiny. This is when all of the eyes turn to the person who looks as though they're likely to win the next election and all of the questions about, well, would that be a good thing? What don't we know about that person that we should know about? What did they say that maybe we could kind of pick out a little bit and observe some weakness in? So I think it's obviously better news in many respects for the conservatives that they find themselves after this many years of being frustrated in their competition with Justin Trudeau, that they find themselves well ahead in the polls.

But I think that it does come with some significantly increased risks over time, presuming, of course, and this is not always a safe assumption these days, but presuming that news organizations generally do that thing, which normally would happen, which is to increase the scrutiny on the person who looks like they would win the next election. If that doesn't happen, then I think it's real trouble for the liberals, obviously. But it's not a bad day for the Liberals when Pierre Polyev looks like he's a runaway winner of the next election. If you want to get into the conversation about why does one poll show a dead heat and the

other a 14-point, we can do that. But we probably have done that before. You know, you're no fun at all. I mean, I was trying to imagine what it might be like. I wasn't saying you have to run around outside with a billboard. Hey, it's not a great job. If I'm saying it and it sounds like it's not fun to be opposition leader, it's not fun. That's true. If I woke up in the morning and you were the leader of the official opposition, I would probably go back to bed. Knowing that everything was going to be perfect. And wake up to another candidate than the one I've just woken up in. That being said, for a leader who is holding his first national convention and the first in person since 2018, which is no small gap.

It's a crucial meeting between a new leader and his base or the part of his base that can afford those plane tickets and those high-priced hotel rooms in Quebec City to be able to show winning pose. I think Andrew Scheer was telling someone this week, and I don't think I'm betraying a state secret, that he wished that he'd had polls like that going into a convention when he was leader. It makes life easier, and it does make coverage easier, because you are described how many times since last night that I hear some journalists say Pierre Poitier owns his party. I'm not sure that's completely true.

There are three things that can happen from there. People will be listening to the speech that Mr. Poitier will be delivering later today in the lead up to the weekend, with an eye to how he fits the frame of prime minister. So he does have to deliver that kind of a speech and not an attack, official opposition speech. The audience he needs to convince that he deserves that lead in the polls is not sitting in the convention hall. But there are also factions within every party, and more so possibly within the Conservative Party, that see a shot at power as a shot to advance agendas. For instance, if you're the social Conservative wing of the party, you're thinking, if we're going to go to government, I would like to have as many of my own

and as much input as possible in the platform of the next government. And that can be problematic. But otherwise, two words of caution. It's the first time that the conservatives in their current configuration meet as an opposition party with a lead in the polls. That's kind of, wow, it didn't happen to Stephen Harper in opposition. And'll name you one. John Turner met his party in the lead up to the 88th election with a solid lead in the poll. And Ed Broadbent, God bless him, was on his way to 24 Sussex Drive as prime minister based on the polls that summer. And both of them were defeated by Brian Mulroney, who ended up with a majority government. But if I were giving you advice on that morning, it would maybe not be to run with the poll that shows a dead heat because members read all polls and they're going to say, well, he's just saying that.

I would suggest that you give Paul Martin a call and talk about that landslide win that was baked in the polls for years before he became prime minister. And ask him for advice, because I suspect the advice he would give you, based on my conversations with the Martin people before they went into an election that did not result in a landslide, was that they had forgotten that having won the leadership and having won the polls, they had yet to win a campaign. And if we know anything about campaigns, it's that they do matter, especially one that is so far remote. It could be two years from now that we'll be in an election. By then, possibly, there will be a new president in the U.S. We do not know what the climate will be at that point. So you don't take a lead in the polls at this juncture if you're the conservatives to the bank.

Let me explore one thing you brought up there, Chantal. And I think it's interesting, it's the potential for division within the party, especially at a time like this where it looks like they've got it in the bank. Division along the old kind of historic lines within the Conservative Party, the right and the more progressive side of the Conservative Party, if you want to put it that way. It was interesting that Polyev said this week, and this is not unusual for a party leader to say this, but that if the platform is voted upon and policies are put forward, he's not bound by them. He doesn't have to go along with them. And that's true of any party. But was that the right approach to take, knowing that there was the potential there for those divisions within the party? Bruce? Well, look, I think that he has evolved quite a bit over time.

I think that one, you know, this is going to sound like a lot of praise to put on Pierre Polyev, and it's going to make some people who really don't like him unhappy to hear it. But the person he was as a political leader, not that long ago, was somebody who took a lot of risks, said a lot of politically risky things, you know, toyed with some fairly incendiary ideas, hung out with some people who are political trouble waiting to happen to you. He's not that now. I think that what he's done over time, and there are days when he moves off script like everybody else in politics, but I think for the average person who doesn't pay very much attention to politics, if they're hearing a message from him, it sounds more like I'm going to worry about your paycheck, the cost of your house and make sure there's enough doctors to take care of your health.

Those are pretty mainstream issues. I think that what he did effectively is crack the ice that encased the prospects of the Conservative Party. And he was unlikely as the person to do that, at least compared to Aaron O'Toole, because he looked like he came from that school of thought in the Conservative Party that kind of enjoyed the, you know, the kind of the harsh Conservative message. Well, he's definitely been pretty disciplined in staying away from it. And I think there is a also there's been a bit of an evolution. He's he never says anything nice about Justin Trudeau, but he doesn't sound every day as though

that's the only thing he wants to talk about is what a horrible person, what a horrible leader, what a horrible prime minister Justin Trudeauau is. He talks about what a conservative government would do, and he makes it simple and plain for people to hear if they don't want to pay too much attention, if they don't want the long version. And I think that, well, Chantal's absolutely right. I completely agree with her that there's tensions within all parties, and maybe more particularly with this one. The speech that he gives to this convention is going to tell us how committed he is to the bigger paychecks, cheaper homes, more doctors line of argument, which is what is building his lead in my view or whether or not he's going to kind of enjoy the uh the sense of enthusiasm for him and revert back to some of those themes which uh limit his

progress i don't think he'll do that because i think that everything that he's doing is relatively well calculated right now and it's really putting the the it's putting the onus on the liberals to do more than say, well, the election's not now, you know, interest rates are probably going to come down at some point. There are, you know, good things for people to think about that we've done. And eventually that will sort of balance things out. I think that's a very risky bet for the liberals if that's the one that they're making and they're going to need to do more if they're going to be competitive with this guy. So your question was, was it the best approach to warn ahead of time that resolutions do not bind leaders and that they will be the word they use, they will be considered, which is a far cry from we will be taking our marching orders from anything that is on that floor. I think, yes, that that was a wise thing to do.

It was also wise to remind people, including those who cover conventions, that this is a fact of life in every party. It's not just Pierre Poirier. No party leader walks out of a convention having taken marching orders from a list of resolutions. But in Pierre Poirier's case, that is even more important because he knows that the liberals will bounce on whatever resolutions they think will attract attention outside, I'll give you two examples.

The gender identity debate is a touchy one for the conservatives. It has divided conservative parties in places like New Brunswick. So it can be a dangerous issue for the party. That's one of them. On a more local basis, there is a resolution that calls for the funding of Radio Canada along with the CBC. You're having a convention in Quebec City

and you do not want to come out telling Quebecers that you are going to defund Radio Canada for conservatives with a long memory. Those small culture cuts, those modest cuts in 2008, cost Harper gains in Quebec that would have ensured that he got a majority. These issues matter here. So you want to be saying that. You want to be taking distance from whatever outcome on the resolutions

for a different reason. Like Bruce, I expect the bread and butter speech to prevail. It is what unites the conservatives and allows them to reach outside their tent. And so you do not want to be taken off message by whatever happens on the floor of the convention. I'm sure this group, this team of strategists, took every precaution to ensure that accidents did not happen at the convention. One of their problems always will be that loose lips from delegates build some fairly poor branding reports about a party. That's one issue.

But you can't see everything coming. I don't think that Aaron O'Toole's people ever imagined that they would lose a motherhood resolution that says climate change is serious. And that did a lot of damage to Mr. O'Toole, more so than I think most people could have expected. But those are accidents. And I'm assuming that they're spending the weekend crossing their fingers thinking we can't have an accident like that. The list of resolutions, by and large, looks fairly innocuous. But the debate around those resolutions could also reveal

stuff that maybe does not reflect the leadership or even the caucus, but reflects poorly on the party. Bruce? Yeah, I just wanted to add, I think the idea that you make it clear that you're not going to be bound by every resolution that can come up in advance is actually sending a not just a kind of a good defensive message to your party it's sending a message that skeptics about your party uh might welcome um you know there are a lot of voters who would consider the liberal party or the conservative party. And in the past few years, maybe a number of years, they've looked at the Conservative Party and said, I don't know. I would need to know that a leader of that party would keep some of the instincts in the party that are there suppressed. And so him taking that kind of measure doesn't have much risk of him looking as though he's a kind of an authoritarian style leader. I think that it's already clear that he's that kind of person who's not going to be taking direction from the grassroots of his party.

So it has a salutary effect, I think, for those who might be paying attention outside the party and might be considering it. And I think Chantal's point about preventing accidents, the kind of which happened to Errol Toole, is obviously really important. But there might even be an upside to taking this message for Pierre Polyev in this particular scenario. Can I ask, before we move on to a different topic, can I ask this question? The Conservatives have spent a lot of time, and I assume millions of dollars, this summer, creating a new image for Polyev. Now, Bruce, you said a lot of the new attraction to Polyev is based on the policies he's been espousing,

and that's entirely possible. But they've gone to a lot of trouble to create this new image for him. And they've gone from the beginning of the summer where they were more or less tied a couple of points ahead of the Liberals to this huge lead. At the same time, television airwaves, for whatever they're watched these days, especially in the summer, have had this new image, this transition of Pierre Polyev from the kind of staid, you know, suit and tie guy to a guy who's now in a muscle T-shirt with a blazer and no glasses

and, you know, almost always with his wife in the pictures as well. How much of that has had to do with all this, do you think, Chantal? I think that they used the summer wisely, that it paid off for them to use the summer stage to feature someone other than the attack dog you see in the House of Commons in the context of question period, where it's really hard to be the leader of the official opposition and not look like you're an attack dog. That's basically your job. And to tone down some of the over-the-top rhetoric that Mr. Poitier was using. I think those ads, I agree, I'm not going to

disagree with you and the notion that people don't watch as much TV in the summer, having confessed to not owning such a thing as a TV. But there are people watching. Those ads can't hurt, especially at the time when my sense has been all summer that the liberals have offered the public on those issues very much of an empty frame. And so it wasn't even a let's compare because on the one side, there was an empty frame and then there was Pierre Poilier kind of remaking himself in front of whatever audience was available. So I think they've wisely looked at where they were after the last by-elections in the spring, decided that they needed to do something about Pierre Poitier's image and went about changing it.

There are small things. I'm going to give you a really small example. In this province, calling a political leader just by his first name when you're attacking him is really considered disrespectful of the function. The notion that you would go around and say, Justin is like this, Justin is like that, is so reductive that it doesn't go down well. This is also the place where we say vous on Radio-Canada and on other programs to people we've known for 30 years, and we would say tu, tu, normally. And I was listening to Mr. Poiliev in French, and I watched

him catch himself. He started saying something about the prime minister. And he said, Justin. And there was just that short pause. And he says, Justin Trudeau. And I thought, yes, because when your clip says Justin Trudeau, people are going to listen to that clip. But when you just say Justin, people are going to say, who the hell are you to be speaking about someone just using his first name in a professional context. They are small things. But in the end, he was talking about the leader of the Bloc Québécois, calling him Monsieur Blanchet. Well, that works in a place like that.

They don't look like big things. It's like the glasses and the T-shirt. But they do go to a different branding than the one people had of Pierre Poiliev at the end of the spring. Bruce, your final thought on this topic? Well, I think the makeover has been rather obvious for these kinds of things, which sometimes is a double-edged sword. People get to poke fun at the idea that you're trying to manifest

some different physicality, and that can go pretty wrong. In this case, I at the idea that you're trying to manifest some different physicality and that can go pretty wrong. In this case, I don't think that it has. I think that the advertising, in particular, the one that's narrated by Mr. Poliev's wife is very effective. When we did a little bit of research that we'll put out probably next week, we asked people what came to mind about Mr. Poliev when they saw this ad. And we're going to put out a word cloud, but I'll scoop myself. The biggest word that comes to mind for people is family. And so they're positioning him as something that people didn't necessarily know about him and which generally they find positive. Transformation physically has been designed to soften the image of somebody who's this kind of firebrand who only kind of eats, breathes and sleeps his political hatred for his opponent. More of a family person.

He's obviously been out on the road meeting with large numbers of people in different communities. And every time he does that, he offers some signal of respect for the community that he's meeting with, which is a little bit different than the earlier version, which I felt was a bit narcissistic. It was like, look at me, Pierre for PM all the time. So I think he's softened in that way, too. And I wouldn't be surprised to pick up on Chantal's point if he didn't change the way that he refers to Mr. Trudeau a little bit as well, to show a little bit more respect for the function, because the last five percentage points or 10 percentage points of voters that he's trying to win, using that shorthand, Justin, sounds as though you're in a club of haters of Justin Trudeau. And those voters aren't in that club and they don't necessarily want to

be in that club. And it doesn't bring them close to Mr. Poliev if he acts so disrespectful of Justin Trudeau, I think. So I think the evolution has been well thought out. I think it's effective. And I would just add that they saw some things that were useful for them to change in the way that they were approaching politics for Mr. Poliev. He saw them maybe himself. On the liberal side, I think that the liberals looked as though at one point they felt like they needed to make some changes and then they didn't really make significant changes, either in the way that Mr. Trudeau tours, the way that he presents his argument, the people that he sees, the things that he talks about, the agenda that he's laid out, the cabinet that he shuffled to. It's really been just not very impressive, I think, from the standpoint of being competitive with

the person that they're facing heading into the next election. I would say one thing that where the Conservatives have got to be careful, and that's playing the family card, which is, you know, a card that's been played many times over the years. And I'm sure when it was the beginning of the summer, when they mapped it out, they had nothing else in mind other than to just simply play the family card for themselves. But given the way events have unfolded over the summer for Mr. Trudeau's family,

you've got to be careful that you're not trying to draw the comparisons. It's just, you know, it may be a little thing, but you've got to be careful how you play that. You wonder whether there will be an image makeover for Justin Trudeau. Are they going to drag out the old canoe commercial again that they used in 2015? Are they going to do something? It'll be interesting to watch. I mean, most of this summer and most of this year, for that matter,

the Prime Minister's been on the road visiting countries around the world on official business and summits and what have you. At some point he's got a, I shouldn't say, he hasn't been touring the country because he has. He pops up at picnics and barbecues and what have you throughout the summer. But he just seems to have been on the road overseas a lot this year. And if there's a contrast of images and if there's been a transition going on in the summer of 23 for Pierre Pelliev,

it'll be interesting to see how the Liberals respond. Okay, we're going to move on to a different topic, but we've got to take our first break. We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk, first edition of the Season 4, Chantel's in Montreal, Bruce is in New York City today, and I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto.

Okay, topic two for today. Three of the provincial premiers kind of took on the Bank of Canada this week, demanding they reassess their position on interest rates and the damage the premiers feel that it's doing to the country and that the Bank of Canada has got to change its policy direction. And those premiers were Ontario, BC and Newfoundland. This is kind of unusual. It's, you know, others have spoken out about interest rates in the past, but this seemed like a coordinated attack of some kind. And there was blowback, saying this isn't their business. They don't have a monetary policy as part of their portfolios.

Good thing, bad thing that the premiers weighed in on, or at least these three premiers weighed in on interest rates. Bruce, why don't you start us on this? Well, I think it's kind of a natural thing, to be honest. I don't know if I'd qualify it as good or bad. I understand that our friend Andrew Coyne doesn't like it when politicians talk about what the Bank of Canada should do. But it is like suggesting that politicians shouldn't do politics.

They're going to be aware of the fact that interest rates and the increase over the last year and a half or so have really caused a lot of consternation for a lot of people. And that there's even more coming because we're entering into a whole cycle of mortgage renegotiation in the coming months, which is going to be a major financial pressure point for a lot of people. It might not be right now, although it has been for some people, but that's going to increase until interest rates come down. And no one knows exactly when that horizon is. The law was a lot of speculation. And most of the speculation seems to be that sometime in first quarter of next year, perhaps we might start to see some easing of rates.

But in the meantime, if you're a politician and you're not evincing some sort of angst on behalf of your constituents. You're missing the plot. And so I, you know, is it grandstanding? Sure. But a big part of politics is taking a position in front of that grandstand of your voters and letting them know that you want to add your voice to theirs, that you understand what it is that's causing them frustration, pain, fear, anxiety, and that you're at least going to put into the conversation the fact that as a political leader, you're concerned about how high interest rates have

gone so quickly and the consequences for the economy. Does that mean that the Bank of Canada is kind of cowering and hoping that no more premiers send those letters? I don't think that that's how that works. And so I think it's a bit presumptuous to imagine that the Bank of Canada is staggered by the interventions of the provincial premiers saying, wouldn't it be great if interest rates weren't so high? Chantal? It certainly is hard to conclude that this is something organized or based on ideology when you look at who the premiers are and the fact that they hail from different parties,

from left to right. So I don't think that Mr. Ford in Ontario takes advice from the new Democrat premier of BC on how he's going to be handling issues like that. But I do think that the premier of Newfoundland and the Premier of Ontario were both copycats. They saw what the BC Premier, who was first off sending that letter, did, and they thought, for reasons that Bruce explained well, they thought, huh, this isn't a bad idea. It makes me look like I'm speaking for my people. It is at no cost to them in the sense that monetary policy is not their purview. And it's really hard to talk about their letters as a form of political interference.

Political interference happens when the people who are interfering actually have some sway over you, which is not the case of the Bank of Canada. Now, if two liberal ministers in Mr. Trudeau's cabinet had sent an open letter to the Bank of Canada, we would be having a very different conversation, because that is who the Bank of Canada interacts with, the federal government. Interestingly enough, and I was talking about copycats, one of the first things that predictably happened is the opposition parties, the Parti Québécois in particular, turned to François Legault and said, why aren't you writing to the Bank of Canada? And François Legault said, oh, I'm not going to do that. His minister of finance actually did an interview where he said that we think the Bank of Canada is doing its job. And well, it should, which I thought was interesting because this is not a government that usually throws flowers the way of anything happening at the federal level. So did it influence the bank one way or the other?

I think, Peter, if you wrote a letter to the governor of the Bank of Canada, you would have as much influence as all those premiers, which basically is the influence of the water that falls on the back of a duck, as we say in French. Let me, you know, I agree with that. I think you should write that letter though just to find out well he talked about being leader of the opposition so let's give him some leader would you be surprised if ideas if if the governor wrote back and said that is a hell of a

good idea peter we're going to institute that next week and drop rates we never thought about that oh the interest rate should come down okay but let me let me put it this way there are times um when we think i think generally that we think that the bank of canada and what happens inside that kind of glass tower uh in ottawa that is the bank um that they have they're totally divorced from what's happening in the so-called real world, what's happening to the average Canadian and homeowners and this and that out there. First of all, are they? And secondly, should they be?

To properly do their job, do they have to be divorced from public opinion on issues like monetary policy, which is basically why they exist? Is that the appropriate approach, Bruce? No and no. They aren't divorced. They understand it. They monitor it. They keep abreast of it.

And they should. I mean, part of it is it's good conversation to have because it rarely gets had. You know, the blunt version of it is should any politician ever say anything that might make a central banker think about politics? And that's just dumb as far as I'm concerned. If you're in that role in the Bank of Canada, it's important that you understand the psychology of the country, not just look at a bunch of numbers of economic statistics. The psychology is part of what it is that they're trying to influence by increasing interest rates. They want to know whether people are starting to become more constrained in the way that they're spending their money,

in the way that they're approaching the management of their businesses, the pricing of their services, those kinds of things. And so there's been a conversation that doesn't happen in broad daylight because it sounds kind of unpleasant to say, but about kind of breaking the attitudinal path or the attitudinal direction of the consumer in order to create a safer economy for the consumer at some point in the future. Nobody likes to hear it said that way because it implies that the role of the bank is somehow going to be destructive of something that's working okay for many people right now. But that's at the heart of what they're trying to do. And I don't believe that you can approach that role seriously without being pretty dialed into what's the mood of people. Is it affecting

the way, is what we're doing with interest rates starting to affect the way in which they're behaving in the economy? And to take no pleasure from the pain that some of those steps will cause, but definitely to understand it, I think, is part of how they must approach their job. Chantal? Yes, I think the Bank of Canada traditionally has lacked the communication skills. All of these things that Bruce talks about, for sure, are part of the mix. But when someone from the bank gives an interview and gives the impression that there aren't enough job losses, it's communication one-on-one failed totally. I also, and I know that people who know the economy and are economists think so and know more than I do.

There has not been a lot of transparency on the part of the bank to explain why or whether the 2% inflation benchmark is still relevant at a time when it's control over what's been happening, for instance, in China since the pandemic, which changes so many things on the economic front on a global basis, or the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine and what's been going on in Europe and how that has some implications for inflation. It's one thing to say we are in charge of the monetary policy and we need to bring inflation down but at what point do you say we also live and i'm not talking here about people feeling the plane the pain but we live in a world that is changing really quickly uh where climate change is changing so many economic calculations for the damage that it's starting to wreak. And you don't get a sense of that.

And I think a lot of people can't relate to the Bank of Canada or feel it's disconnected from them, not so much because people who work in it do not understand that they're causing pain for people, but because the bank seems to adhere to a dogma and it does not do any efforts to really lay down the terms of why that dogma is appropriate when everything else around you is changing and everything that you assumed was the way things were is no longer the way things really are. So I'm not saying I envy their job or that of the federal government of today in front of such numbers.

But the fact is that we've rarely lived in a world as uncertain. And that makes the Bank of Canada certainty that it's on the right path harder to understand without more explanation. I think that's an interesting point. And I've noticed in the U.S. there does seem to be more elaborate and recurring commentary from the Federal Reserve Bank and in particular the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, and in particular, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank. And I think that it would serve our discussion in Canada well to have more of that kind of conversation. We get a rate decision. Sometimes there's a little bit of commentary with it but um as you both know people in in the u.s consume with great care and want as much as possible of that commentary from the federal reserve bank around every rate decision that they make because they're trying to interpret uh where things are going. But also, I think they want to know that the Fed is really dialed into

understanding the dimensions of impact that their decisions are having. And they get a lot of criticism. But, you know, that's probably normal, probably how it should be. These are important decisions and they deserve a good airing. Not to say that everybody should stand up and say, I'm going to fire this man if he doesn't do what I want him to do. I think that was completely wrong. And I think one of the things that we did, we were going to talk a little bit about the prime minister and the finance minister reacting to this decision. But I noticed that among the people criticizing the prime minister and the finance minister for saying that they felt some uh that it wasn't a bad day or something like that when the bank of canada didn't entry increase interest rates again i didn't hear pierre paulie say let

me wade into this and say uh i've got a criticism of the prime minister, because I think he knows that what he did before in threatening or promising to fire the governor was a step well over the line that should not be crossed by people who would be in a position, to Chantal's point, of interacting with the Bank of Canada as an independent institution. Well, whatever. But it speaks of just the final point on the prime minister and the minister of finance, Christian Freeland, had a statement out to say, basically, that it was a good day. I think somehow it speaks to the, I won't say panic, but the disquiet inside the government that they really wanted to have a share of a good news day,

even at the cost of edging very, very close to a line. If you're saying that in public, did you pressure the bank in private to stay the course and not raise interest rates, begged questions, but I looked at it as in we will take credit or share and bask in whatever ray of sunshine we can find at this point. And that told me something about the mood within the government and the Liberal Party that speaks to a very depressed mood. Well, whatever one thinks of the Bank of Canada and its direction on policy these days, you can rest assured that the next few months and next few years are going to be challenging ones for the decision makers inside that bank. If you believe economists, and I know that if you get two economists in the room, you'll find two different solutions, two different estimates as to what's about to happen.

But there are more than a few who think we're maybe slowly on the road to recovery, while you'll also find more than a few who are very worried about what may happen in the next year or two. So all of this stuff affects us directly so we'll be watching carefully to see not only how the bank reacts but how the politicians react as well on this issue okay we're going to take our final break we're going to come back something a little different right after this. And welcome back. We're into the last segment of Good Talk for this Friday.

Chantel is in Montreal. Bruce is in New York City. I'm here in Toronto. Okay. You know, summer isn't officially over yet. In fact, it's been like this incredibly hot week, at least in central Canada and along the east coast of the United States where Bruce is. But it does give us an opportunity to reflect back on our summers. And I found, you know, we always have a little preamble before we start recording this on Fridays, and Chantel was talking about her trip this summer

to Denmark and Norway. And some of the things she saw there, which made her think pretty good things and some not so good things about the state of various societies, including ours, these days. So, Chantal, why don't you give us that take? And I know Bruce was over in one of those countries this year, too, in Denmark for a little bit.

But, Chantal, give us your take. So, I told you that my trip had left me enlightened and depressed. And here's the enlightened and depressed mix. I stopped in Copenhagen. I live in Montreal, a city that prides itself as being a bicycle city. And by North American standards, Montreal is probably a pretty good place for people on bicycles. But in Copenhagen, what I saw was that they reversed the equation. Here we say that the bikes cohabit with cars,

that they make do with the reality of cars. But in Copenhagen, cars make do with the reality of cars. But in Copenhagen, cars make do with bicycles. It's a bicycle transit-oriented place where cars happen to figure out their way. And the number of bikes on the way the system works was quite amazing. So the Enlightened is, yes, when you flip the equation, you get results like that. But B, we have not done that. And we are not really that bicycle haven that we think that we are. And then I moved on to Oslo. And I don't know if many people Google it online.

They have a new opera house in Oslo. It's not just an opera house. It's a place where people can walk basically the entire roofs of the opera. They are a public space. You walk up them, around them, the view is spectacular. I never went inside the opera house. And I looked at that and I thought about the fact that we don't do a lot of big things in this country anymore. And when we do, we usually don't succeed at them. And here is a country of comparable size, I'm not in Paris or London, doing things like that.

I was trying to think of the backlash that would attend such a project in this country. Oh, it's for the elite. What do you mean? An opera house. Why would you want to do something like that? And it got me thinking about how hard we're finding it to do big things. And I have to say, I was going on a bike trip, and after two days in Oslo, I wanted the bike trip to start

because I was getting a huge inferiority complex from what I was seeing around me. But, I mean, basically, I guess what I brought back from this is we, I should say, because it's very much in the news these days, I use public transit and I walk when I travel. I don't use taxis and I see a lot of people. a single homeless person sleeping on the street and no one asked me for money, which if you live in downtown Montreal or many other downtowns in this country is an experience that you are not about to have. So I came back and all those usual excuses, climate, we have winter so bicycles, et cetera, well, that doesn't hold when you're in Scandinavia.

They have that climate. Or we are a small country with a small population, so we can't do those big things like that opera house. Well, not true. And then you look at Norway and Copenhagen. So I came back feeling a bit perplexed about the direction of our country, put it this way. Bruce? Yeah, I was interested listening to Chantal talk about it.

I had been to Copenhagen earlier this year. I was similarly really impressed by the public infrastructure in Copenhagen. I haven't been to Norway. And their ability to have built things that were really quite important projects for the quality of life there and for the efficacy of the city. The bike thing was stunning to me. I had spent a couple of days in Amsterdam just before, earlier in the spring spring and was amazed at the number of people who were on bikes there and then I went to Copenhagen and it was like Amsterdam on steroids from a biking standpoint and I completely agree that if the psychology is very different

there around bikes and cars it is a it is a bike I, you know, I compare it a little bit with the really stale conversation that's being had in Ottawa, the city I live in, where you have a mayor who takes his phone out and because he doesn't like the fact that a particular road that runs alongside the the rito canal is reserved for what you know government officials call active use they never just want to say for walking or running or biking and he's filming the fact that he doesn't see very many cars and so he doesn't believe that he doesn't see very many people using it on foot or on bike. And so maybe it's a bad idea to have it reserved for those purposes. He's similarly been elected, not exclusively on this issue, but one of his first kind of major interventions was to say,

my main rival is the bike candidate and I'm not that. And I thought, God, do we really need to have that kind of conversation in our city, especially when we have a public transit investment to the question that Chantal raised about can we build things? A lot of what proved that you can't build LRT well, at least it keeps on breaking down. It's cost enormous amounts of money. The public is rightly infuriated by it. There's no accountability for it. No, we have problems in Canada doing this kind of thing. And we should raise our gaze and we should look around the world and observe the things that we can do. Last point for me,

in New York City, there is so much infrastructure. Some of is brilliant some of it is amazing some of it is kind of world leading but the place is congested with cars uh much more so than i ever have observed here in the past it's almost impossible to get anywhere here by car which in the end is going to create a demand for other solutions. But that's not happening quite the same way as we see in places like Copenhagen or Paris or Oslo yet. Okay, just to close out, I'll tell my bike story. 1976, I was in China, in Beijing and Shanghai. And this was while Mao was still alive, and it was a very kind of dark, foreboding place.

But were there bikes? Oh, my God. There weren't just hundreds of bikes on the streets of Beijing. There weren't thousands of bikes on the streets of Beijing. There were hundreds of thousands of bikes on the streets of Beijing, not because they wanted to ride bikes, but because they couldn't have cars. There were only a few cars, and they were just the Mao types, the elite types. That's done the total reversal now.

China, Beijing, one of the most modern cities in the world. But I'll always remember the scenes of the bikes. They're almost chaotic, nature of it all. Anyway, that's it for this day. First good talk of the new season. Thanks to Bruce. Thanks to Chantel. Have a great weekend, everybody.

We'll talk to you again on Monday. Conversations with Moore and Butts. It's a good one coming up on Monday. Take care.