The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson are back with the first Good Talk of the 2021 election campaign.  Topics range from the impact of a PC win provincially in Nova  Scotia, to how Premier Legault in Quebec may impact how Quebecers vote federally which could impact the final national result, to the power of visual ads whether on TV or online and what the early ones are telling us.

Are you ready for some good talk? Akana pet foods are rich in the protein and nutrients your dog or cat needs to feel and look their best. Available in grain-free, healthy grains, and singles for sensitive dogs. Akana, go beyond the first ingredient. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Yeah, good talk. We haven't had good talk for, it feels like, a couple of months. That's because good talk has been on hiatus, as we say, for the summer months. But as we promised you back in June, we promised you that if there was an election call, good talk would be back.

That means Chantel Hebert and Bruce Anderson are with us. And hello to both of you. Good to have good talk back for the first week of the election campaign. Chantelle, I want to start with you. The progressive conservatives win in Nova Scotia. What should that mean to us in the middle of this election campaign where Atlantic Atlantic Canada is sort of the bastion of Liberal support, has been for the last few elections. It's been a stronghold. Should they be worried after the result last night?

Well, they should take note of two obvious facts. Campaigns matter. The pre-election and the early election polls pointed to a fairly easy liberal re-election that obviously has not been happening. And the NDP has not done too poorly on this night, which probably is something that the federal liberals should worry about on the federal scene. You're already seeing polls that show the NDP polling and Jagmeet Singh personally polling in a different category than in 2019. And I'm guessing the other lesson, though, is for the conservatives before they make too much of this, because although I am not familiar, never met Tim Houston, the Tory leader in Nova Scotia, I do know that he has spent the better part of the past few years making it clear that he is the leader of a party that is not the Federal Conservative Party on climate change, on a number of other issues, and with an outright rejection of social conservatism. So, always hard to take provincial results and say, well,

this is the way the trend is going nationally, because usually the provinces go blue when the federal government goes red and vice versa in Ontario, Quebec and other areas of the country. But still interesting reminders about how campaigns matter for those who are on the hustings federally. And it is important to keep in mind, as you basically just outlined, that in many provinces, it is the progressive Conservative Party and they do stand differently on some key issues, as you pointed out, than the Conservative Party federally. And that is the case in Nova Scotia. It's a PC party that will form the next government.

Bruce is actually in Nova Scotia this week, but he's not working. He's not out there doing strategy. Well, that's not entirely true, Peter, because here I am. You know, I've been immersing myself in this election, just trying to be ready for we've had good talks, but we haven't had good talks. So I've been really looking forward to this. And you're right.

I'm in Nova Scotia. I'm on the South Shore tonight. And there's a couple of things that stand out for me. It's somewhat related to what Chantal said. First of all, I think this is a message of sorts for the liberals federally to take away, which is that incumbency during the pandemic and even approval of pandemic management isn't a guarantee of re-election. I think that if anybody was operating under the assumption that, you know, more than half the battle was won at the federal election by virtue of the fact that most Canadians now give the federal government pretty good marks

for pandemic management, that they weren't going to have to do a lot more than that to win the election. I think this is just a reminder that things can turn on you and that people can appreciate what you've done, but they're really ultimately looking to the future somewhat and they want to know what's next and they want to feel good about the choice on offer. I wouldn't take that too far, though, because I think the other point is right, which is that there are provincial and progressive conservative governments. If I'm not mistaken, New Brunswick is an example. Prince Edward Island is an example. And Nova Scotia joins that list. So does that automatically mean that there's some sort of

a populist conservative wave that will help Erin O'Toole? I don't think that that's the logical conclusion. I think that it will give some measure of optimism to the federal conservatives who've really been needing that in the last several days. But I think that the more astute among them will recognize that these provincial progressive conservative parties are different than the federal conservative party, which to me is underneath the hood. It's pretty fractured. It's not a unified party. It doesn't stand for one thing. And if it does, to some degree, stand for one direction, it's probably not the direction of the Conservative Party in Nova Scotia.

All that having been said, and I think I'd probably agree with just about everything you just said, it's not going to stop Aaron O'Toole from having a big smile on his face for the next few days saying, hey, you know, it's starting. You guys didn't believe me. And look what happened in Nova Scotia. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in terms of the overall reaction to Nova Scotia last night.

Let me just ask you something bruce because i saw your your colleague david coletto from abacus on uh on some program last night talking about the issues that were that canadians looked at as the most important ones in this campaign and as you suggest you know the pandemic's not number one anymore. In fact, it wasn't number two or even at number three. I think there were a number of issues that came before the pandemic. And that's, you know, when pandemic management was key to what the liberals federally are trying to suggest.

This is why we need to be re-elected, because we had a plan to deal with the pandemic. We have a plan to deal with the post-pandemic period. But pandemic is always up there. However, in terms of many Canadians, according to Abacus's polling data, and I think some of the other companies are suggesting the same thing, it's just not up there at the top anymore of the issues that are

confronting Canadians. You know, I think that David was right to put his finger on the fact that we always know that if you're not really worried about some larger existential issue than that for most people. The cost of living is going to be a thing that you're preoccupied with. Are your wages or your incomes keeping up with the cost of the things that you need and want in your life? And so I think it's quite useful to remind us of that. But the second thing I would say is that there is this tyranny. And I think it's caused, I love you both, but you've been journalists all your lives and journalism loves to say, what's the number one issue? And in polling, you know that that's kind of the wrong question,

right? Because if you're a young parent and you're paying $1,000 a month for childcare or more, if you've got a couple of kids and you hear about a $10 a day childcare policy, the prospect of having that is going to be a huge affordability issue for you. Now, does it show up as childcare? If it did, would it propel childcare to the top of the number one issue hot list? No. But could it still matter to a lot of voters? Absolutely, it could. Climate change will matter to a lot of voters. So I'm always a bit skeptical about what's the number one issue, because there are more than one issue that matter to people. And some issues matter greatly to some people and not at all to others. And I do think on the pandemic, we can say that fear of the pandemic might not be as big an issue as it was six months ago. But our data, which we'll publish tomorrow,

shows that fear of the pandemic has grown significantly in the last two weeks. Does it make it to the number one issue in the federal election? No. Does that matter? In my view, no, because it's more important than it was. And people are going to focus on this subset of the pandemic, which I feel is the skirmishing among the parties where I think the liberals probably took the most politically advantageous position last week, saying we're for mandatory vaccinations in a number of scenarios. And I think the NDP tried to equivocate a little bit about it, but basically say we are, too. And I think the conservatives used equivocating language, but basically tried to

signal that they weren't for that idea. And then since then, I think they've been trying to say, well, we're for basically the same thing, to try to take the edges off the differences between the parties and neutralize what they probably thought was a liberal party advantage on that. I don't know where that issue is going to go. I don't know how aligned the parties ultimately will be and whether voters will see an important distinction there. But I would be reluctant to accept the proposition that the pandemic is no longer the number one issue in a number of aspects, including when I look at the Conservative Party economic policy, a lot of which is about pandemic-related stimulus or post-pandemic stimulus, policies that you wouldn't put in place if the pandemic hadn't happened. So I think pandemic is still obviously a very important issue.

And I think other issues like child care are a subset of affordability. And I think those will matter too. Okay, just before Chantel jumps in, for the record, it's the pollsters who ask the question. That would have been my first point. Well, I didn't rag the puck long enough, because I thought you'd forget about the shot I took before you got a chance to answer. You ragged it long enough, but you couldn't get away with that.

I'm with Peter. All right, fine. Who puts up those lists of major concerns? We never do. Why would we? We couldn't care less, to tell you the truth. That being said. Peter could.

He loves polls. You know that. Today, the health authorities in Ontario, the premier of Quebec, held different distinct news conferences to basically warn Ontarians and Quebecers that we were not going to be going into the joyous fall and winter that they had hoped for, stopping the end of summer restrictions or bringing in new ones. So the pandemic will still be front and center. But there was something that Premier Legault said in his news conference when he was asked. So having said that, because he interrupted a tour of Quebec, put an end to it to come back to Quebec City and hold these weekly news conferences on the pandemic again. Don't you think that Justin

Trudeau and all of the others are being irresponsible by having a federal campaign? And the point he made was that going forward over the next couple of weeks, the pandemic is more of a provincial issue than a federal issue in the sense that schools are reopening, that health care systems need to either make sure that the workers are vaccinated or not. Those decisions are all provincial decisions. And on that score, I think voters by now do know that, yes, Justin Trudeau procures vaccines, but the person who keeps the schools open with or without masks is called the premier. And so it probably helps, in a way, the federal liberals if things go south, but it also hurts them in the sense that the notion that you should be thankful for the management of the pandemic will be tempered by the advent of this new fourth wave. Now, on child care, yes, possibly. And I live in Quebec where support for child care crosses party lines. It's a matter of consensus, the kind of program the liberals want to see implemented in other parts

of the country. But there is a point where you have to ask yourself whether after decades of broken promises, a lot of voters will not say, I'd rather take the cash in hand that the conservatives are offering me rather than promises from any federal government on child care and future places, keeping in mind that you do not, as opposed to health care, need child care forever as a parent. Once your child is four or five years old, you're basically done with the biggest bill on child care. So, if it's going to take three or four years for this liberal initiative to get off the ground, there may be a number of parents of young families who say,

well, you know, in the end, maybe I'm better off taking a 75% tax credit from the Conservatives rather than wait when it's too late for me to see this new system come in play. It's an open question, but the debate is worth having. Can I ask you a question about Legault? Because I find him and the positions he's taken, especially in the last year, last six months anyway, for the most part have been very popular with the Liberal Party in Ottawa, right? They seem to be aligned, these two politicians, these two political leaders.

He's very popular in Quebec, Legault. And so everybody's kind of courting his favor. What's he up to? What is Legault's thinking on all this right now? Premier Legault is going to go in a re-election campaign a year from now. He is at the top of his game. I watched that news conference. And for those who don't live in Quebec, part of the success of the Legault approach to the pandemic, including curfews and other measures that other provinces did not take,

is that sometimes you feel like you're having a conversation with an actual person who tells you, this is how I see it. I saw it like this a month and a half ago, but that's not happening. Rather than pretending that he knows what's going to be happening in November, his priorities have been clear, keeping schools open. And I think there is a wide consensus in Quebec that schools should be kept open. What does he want? Well, like any premier who is going to be campaigning, he wants money. And on that basis, a lot of the promises of the federal liberals on child care in particular, $6 billion over a number of years envelope for Quebec's child care program, is something that could really help him in a re-election campaign. Because the child care program is widely popular here,

but it desperately needs to be expanded and childcare workers desperately need to be attracted with more money. So a tax credit to parents isn't going to cut it in this province. So from Legault's perspective, I'm guessing that he knows that the Conservatives are not going to be winning Quebec anytime soon, and they would have many problems

for him in some of their positions that are unpopular here. Justin Trudeau has been good for him. And the Bloc Québécois is ultimately, at least on paper, an ally of the Parti Québécois and not of the Coalition Amir Québec. They're both sovereignist parties. So Legault does not need, at this point, a Bloc Québécois to act as an intermediary between he and Justin Trudeau. So I don't expect him to spend a lot of time in the campaign throwing support one way or another. I expect him to keep his ministers and his campaign workers off the federal campaign trail. That's been the traditional position, by the way, of Quebec premiers. How do you see this playing out, Bruce,

in terms of the data that you've compiled already in terms of what's happening in quebec and the influence that the lagoa's has had on on on the direction that some quebecers are thinking at this point well i think two things come to mind for me i agree with chantal that the can you just back off a little bit from your mic? Sorry. Right. I know you've got a kind of temporary setup there, but it's a little close. A couple of things for me, I think.

One is the point that Chantal was touching on, which is that, you know, the strength and effectiveness as a political leader of Premier Legault really undermines the sense of need for a Bloc Québécois. I mean, Bloc Québécois is always an idea that, you know, if the federal liberals are too obnoxious, you vote for the Bloc Québécois because you want something that's kind of Québécois and not obnoxious. And that doesn't seem to be the zone that the federal liberals are in right now. I think Justin Trudeau has made a pretty good effort not to pick fights or enter into fights with, with Quebec. And, and so I think in that sense, Trudeau has been playing a fairly cagey game to try to deescalate tensions

with the Quebec premier, knowing that the Quebec premier is popular, but also knowing that at the end of the day, if he ever tried to undermine the Quebec premier, A, it might not work, but B, it would create more interest in the idea of a strong BQ to go and fight for the Quebec point of view in Ottawa. I think the second thing I would say is that the de-escalation of tensions between the federal government, well, I don't know if I'd say de-escalation of tensions, but the securing of agreements on childcare, in some cases on transit, some cases investments in other areas of infrastructure, the economy, have got the federal liberals into a situation where they've essentially got a non-aggression pact, it sounds like, with Premier Ford in Ontario. They've got effectively a non-aggression pact with Premier Horgan in BC. And better than that, in the sense of the things that Premier Horgan has said about the initiatives of the federal government on transit and child care were not just neutral. They were extraordinarily positive.

And I think that the sense of collegiality, whether it was completely authentic or a demonstration of allegiance on issues in Quebec, I think it has the same effect. How much will it matter? I don't think it really, I don't think we really know. But I do think that if you're the incumbent liberals and you're running for that third election victory, it's probably better if you don't have a whole whack of provinces joining in with the opposition parties, criticizing you every day for everything that you've done or everything that you said you would do and then didn't completely complete. And so, you know, I do think that that federal provincial dynamic, maybe two years ago, would have looked like a more promising tailwind for the federal conservatives than it does right now. But there's still so much to play in this election campaign, even though it's only, you know, what, a little bit more than 30 days left. I don't think the campaign has really, really started for most voters.

And so I'm going to be cautious in how much I interpret of the numbers that I see right now and even the positions that are taken. Okay. I don't think the campaign will start until Labor Day, to tell you the truth. Yeah, I want to get to that in a minute with you, Chantal, because I heard you saying something similar a couple of days ago, and I wanted to pursue that. But before we leave Quebec, and the reason I'm dwelling on this, as we both know, or all three of us know, is that Quebec is you know if the liberals are going to try and

achieve a majority it's an important building block to get there and to do that they've got to do something about the block seats um and so that's that's why i was raising all this stuff about lego but you you're very big on being on the ground, Chantal. You talk to people a lot, not just pollsters and analysts and strategists, but people. Is there any evidence that the Bloc is losing support to the Liberals, that they have a potential of losing some of those seats they have? No. And part of the Liberal problem, the mathematical problem for the liberals in Quebec is the weakness of the Conservative Party, because the Conservative Party tends to compete

with the Bloc for non-liberal votes, and the Conservative vote is weak. That being said, it depends who shows up to vote. There is not in this province a huge amount at this point of engagement in the federal election, but also not a huge amount of either love or hatred for Justin Trudeau, which is actually kind of new because usually Quebecers do not like the prime minister, whoever he may be, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, or after the sponsorship issue, Stephen Harper. So, it's going to play out locally. And Yves-François Blanchet is well regarded, the Bloc leader in this province. He has also gone out of his way to recruit fairly good candidates locally. So this is going to play itself out writing by writing. Blanchet said this week he wants 40 seats coming out of this election. If the Conservatives don't look like they're about to win federally, nationally, it helps Blanchet.

I don't think Quebecers want a conservative federal government to tell you the truth. But there is not a big polarizing issue between Quebec and Ottawa at this point that sends vote to the bloc. So, I'm going to look at turnout on election night. I'm with Bruce. It's really early. Most of the people I talk to routinely on the streets are not at all into a federal election. It's playing out in the bubble for now and on Twitter. And I think everyone knows that people will tune in when the debates happen in September. Okay. I'll get to that point in a minute. We're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be right back. This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge.

All right. Back with Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Nova Scotia. Taking a little bit of a break, but not a break from Good Talk. And so we've been lucky to get him on his holidays to chat with us as well. Okay, Chantel, I want to ask you this point because I heard you saying this the other day, that the election campaign won't really start until labor day which

is an interesting it's the way the americans talk about their elections often the presidential elections as much as everything happens uh continuously on u.s election talk it doesn't really start in election year until after labor day but we've got some time before labor day and things have been dropping already, you know, platforms, policies, mistakes, you know, mini blunders, bigger blunders. But you don't think any of this really counts in any significant way until Labor Day now? I'm going to offer you some pollster stuff,

which is so Bruce feels good about this job, and anecdotal stuff to support my impression that the campaign will not really take off until after Labor Day. The pollster stuff is, if we'd had an election in August of 1993, Kim Campbell would have won a majority government. Yeah, right. In 2015, when Stephen Harper called an election early for later in the fall, I had booked a holiday for a week in the Magdalene Islands. And I took that holiday the third week of August. And I spent the week because I felt a bit guilty about, like, you know, my friend Bruce in Nova Scotia now not offering us inside information

about the campaign there. I felt guilty, so I talked to a lot of people. Now, the Magdalen Islands, for those who are familiar with the place, draw a lot of Quebec tourists from all over Quebec, Francophone tourists mostly, but it's also a federal writing. For all of those people I talked to who came from across Quebec and from that writing, not a single one of them mentioned Justin Trudeau. And I feel bad because I think I wrote a column that said that. That was the third week of August. Now, a month later or so, Justin Trudeau won the plurality of Quebec seats

and the writing where the Magdalen Islands is located, which to me served as a permanent reminder that whatever people tell you in August, please revisit on September 10th or at some point after the Labor Day return to more normal life. I agree with that, Bruce. Mostly I do. I think the run-up to the election has created a couple of things that are interesting dynamics. And I think one of the questions in my

mind is, will those dynamics persist through an election, even if people are disengaged through Labor Day, and maybe only lightly engaged after that? And the different dynamics are the popularity. I'm tempted to say in theory of Jagmeet Singh, but it's there in our numbers all the time. I just don't think we know whether or not it's going to translate into votes for the NDP. And the reason I say that isn't that I think that those voters who like him aren't progressive. It's that the level of motivation on the part of voters for a change is 10 or 12 points lower than it was in 2019. And I can't look at that and not think that this is going to mean a lower level of motivation. Certainly, I agree with Chantal up until Labor Day. I just don't know, even after Labor Day, what we're going to see, whether or not

there's going to be a galvanizing issue or a level of heightened interest or whether really people are going to settle into this. Like if I don't really want change that badly, how motivated am I to look at the alternatives? I think that puts in place a critical question for the liberals, which is a little bit related to what Chantal was saying about the popularity of Justin Trudeau. And as I look at his numbers, 20% of the population really don't like him. Another 20% kind of don't like him. And the others are kind of neutral or positive. And I think for the liberals, you're never going to do anything but that first 20%. But what you do with that second 20% who kind of don't like listening to him talk about what he wants to do or what his government's about, that sort of thing, I think it's going to change the way that they campaign potentially so that they don't make it be so much about him.

So that group of voters who says, if it's all about Justin Trudeau, I'm not sure I feel that excited about voting liberal again. But if it's not all about him, then I don't think I really want to change that badly. So I think that's one of the critical questions for me is, is engagement, is trying to stimulate more engagement really in the liberals interest? And if so, how would they do it in a, in the context where we normally talk about campaigns as being very leader centric things. And, And maybe that's even more true if your name is Trudeau and you're the prime minister. And then the third thing that I don't know, and the last thing, I guess, in terms of the things that were starting to be in place, it seemed to me as not permanent fixtures, because I don't think anything's permanent,

but fixtures that sort of underpin this election campaign is, does Conservative as a brand at the national level have the potential to appeal to as many or attract as many voters as it did in the past? And most of our data was saying no, that they had lost what we call accessible voter. Their accessible voter pool used to be about the same as the Liberals. Under Harper and indeed even under Scheer at the beginning of his campaign in 2019. But by the end of Scheer's campaign, it was smaller. And now we see the Federal Conservative Party having a 10 to 14 point smaller accessible voter pool. And some of it is people haven't reacted very well to Aaron O'Toole so far,

but more of it is the idea that conservative has become a word that doesn't, that doesn't feel very appealing to a larger number of voters than used to be the case. And I think that's a problem that I don't know if Aaron O'Toole has the time or the inclination to solve for because he's fighting at least two fronts, one within his party and one with the kind of mainstream voter who doesn't know that they want his party. That's interesting because if the conservative brand was the Tory brand of the Mulroney years, for instance,

you would think that a Coalition Avenir Québec voter in Quebec would normally feel that this is a federal home. But you get no sense that a CAQ voter supporting a semi-conservative government provincially, feels that there is any logic to turn to the federal conservatives. There is absolutely, in their minds, no connections to go back to Nova Scotia. That same phenomenon has been in play over the provincial election with the leader getting endorsements. Can you imagine Erin O'Toole being proud and getting an endorsement from a former NDP MP in this campaign? That happened provincially in Nova Scotia.

But the Conservative Party federally, as it is crafted, is not in a position to attract or to build the kind of friendships that we have talked about over the past few weeks over the passing of former Premier William Davis between Bob Ray and William Davis, or before that between Stephen Lewis and William Davis, or Brian Mulroney appointing Stephen Lewis to the UN, those kinds of associations that kind of made the Conservative Party open to more than its base have faded away over the past two decades. I don't think that they are in the process of being reconstructed. On the contrary, people who identified as red Tories are increasingly having a hard time identifying as more than non-liberals, which is a completely different proposition. Right.

I think that's right. It goes back to our point about progressive conservatives versus conservatives, right? When you certainly raised those examples of the 80s and the Mulroney years. Let me... Well, Peter, just before you move on, if you're going to go to a different subject, there's one other thing that I've been noticing. I was actually going to take a...

I was going to pick up on a point you'd mentioned earlier, which was this whole issue around how they play the Trudeau position within the party in terms of the campaign to try and attract that other 20%. I'm in Ottawa today for this. And last night before I sat down to watch the Nova Scotia election, I crossed the river over into Gatau and i was uh driving around there and i saw there were a fair number of lawn signs up already and the liberal signs have this banner along the sign along the side which said um team trudeau and i thought that's interesting because

they're trying to play it both ways right they're They're trying to play the Trudeau name, and yet they're talking about the team at the same time to try and, you know, I assume, I don't want to read too much into my knowledge of how these things work, but they're trying to show that it's not all about just him, that it is about the team around him, and yet they still have to, you know, play the name. So they are are in a sense

having it both ways maybe it'll work maybe it won't we'll see in terms of that 20 percent uh segment you're talking about anyway go ahead with the point you were going to make and then i will move it on because i have i have an idea well on the signs look i think those signs you know, campaigns mostly pick the signs up at the end of the election, put them in a storage unit, and then bring them out. And I think they did say Team Trudeau in 15 and in 19. And I'm sure that if there's another Trudeau run, those signs will be trotted out and they'll say Team Trudeau again. Well, that's interesting, except you're talking about their dilemma, in a way, right now, which is expressed in these numbers about the feelings about Trudeau himself. I think really I'm not talking about trying to walk that far away

from the identification with Trudeau. It's more whether or not so much of the communication is oriented towards him speaking to voters. with Trudeau, it's more whether or not so much of the communication is oriented towards him speaking to voters. Because I think that the reality is that that 20% that I'm talking about, the soft dislike group, it's not that they dislike the policies, it's sometimes they just don't react that well to how he describes them. It's a little bit of a communications friction point. And so I don't think it has that same problem if we're talking about name on a lawn sign or even rapper on a bus. I think it's really just about whether the level of volume associated with him speaking

the party's message is a little bit different from what it would have been. And I don't want to overstate it because I do think that he remains a net positive for his party, which isn't always the same for leaders. And it isn't actually the same for Aaron O'Toole right now. It's definitely the case for Jagmeet Singh. But the only other point I was going to make apropos what Chantal was talking about is we may talk about in the weeks ahead what's happening with the NDP numbers in Alberta, because it really speaks to the question of whether even in Alberta, where it's still called a progressive conservative party, but I think most people who would sort of say, well, what's the difference between a progressive conservative party as we

used to know it and the conservative party today would say the federal conservative party is more of an Alberta-influenced conservative party. And so Jason Kenney, you know, as the premier of Alberta, underwater in the polls, uh, provincially. And now we're seeing, uh, numbers routinely for the federal conservatives that start with a four instead of the 69%, I think that they got last time. Now polls underestimated the amount of federal conservative support in the last federal election in Alberta. And so that might happen again, but what is different, um, inarguably, is that the premier and the conservative government in Alberta is unpopular. And that is having some effect on attitudes towards the federal conservative vote. I think there's no question so far anyway. Jason Kenney's negative influence on the conservative vote at the end of the day will matter more to conservatives who are running outside of Alberta than conservatives who are running in Alberta. Moving from 60 to 40 for the conservatives federally in Alberta is probably a sign of democratic health rather than trouble for a given federal party. But if you think that

Aaron O'Toole and Jason Kenney are kind of CME twins, they're joined at the hip, and you don't live in Alberta, and all that you've heard over the course of this pandemic is how Albertans are unhappy with Jason Kenney's management of the pandemic. Chances are that will reflect poorly on Erin O'Toole in other areas. I've got to take another quick break, but I want to talk about TV ads because we're about to be, and have already started in some cases, bombarded with them as we head towards a September 20th election. Back in a moment. It's time to get back to the bridge with Peter Mansbridge.

Okay, back with Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson's in Nova Scotia. You're listening either on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or you are listening on your favorite podcast platform. Wherever you're listening from, we welcome you to our little discussion. And we're going to talk for a moment here about TV ads, because we've started to see them pop up. And they're not just on, you know, I call them TV ads. They're not just TV ads. They're political ads which appear in places that you can see them,

so obviously on television but a lot on social media as well. And I don't know who's seen what so far, but of what you have seen and what you know is coming down the pipe, what do you make of it? Bruce, why don't you start on this? Yeah, Peter, I mean, the first thing I would say is I'm glad you said TV ads and then you sort of stopped yourself a little bit and said, well, they're not exactly TV ads, because I do think that if I said to the two of you, when we're finished this, what network are we going to turn on on our TV? I don't have a TV.

Right? It wouldn't seem like a very logical question. So the chances that we're actually going to see ads in a classic sense on a TV channel, really small. And it's probably also true that there will be some very effective advertising that the three of us hardly ever see, and maybe will not see, because it traffics in a much more targeted way, principally using Facebook, but not only Facebook. And it does that because it's built on intelligence gathered through algorithms and programming solutions that weren't available before. So I think that we're in a bit of a Wild West scenario in terms of the role of advertising in political persuasion. I don't like that feeling.

I don't think it's necessarily good. We used to have regulations that existed around the nature of advertising and over-regulation of that is a bad idea, but no regulation of it has also got some real serious risks associated with it, as we saw in terms of how the United States elections happen. But to go, I guess, more directly to your question, Peter, what have we seen so far? I think we've seen pretty competent articulation by the liberals of what it is that they're going to run on. Competent by that, I mean the pictures were appealing and the music was good and the prime minister's posture and presentation was effective. And the message of forward together for everybody is,

is, you know, obviously a message that they feel comfortable with and they they've tested and they think is going to be effective. I think we've seen kind of an uncertain start by the, the conservatives. I think the, the thing that everybody sort of looked at as an ad, this kind of Willy Wonka takeoff on social media, probably wasn't built with the idea that it would be a TV ad, probably wasn't built with a great deal of thought behind it. I think that, you know, the way these things work is you either make something and people look at it and go, it's brilliant, or they look at it and go, it's boneheaded. And this was clearly in the boneheaded category. Does it really matter? I don't think it matters in terms of the impact on the general public. I think that's kind of a very quick, ephemeral thing. I think where it might matter and why I think the Conservatives need to take it very seriously is the internal dynamics in their party are always fragile.

And if they're polling and the first number is a two instead of a three, there's real tension in that party about whether or not there are going to be seats at risk, whether the leader's team is doing the right things. And I think we saw three, maybe four conservatives, including really prominent people like Brad Wall, take a baseball bat to that ad or that piece of video by Aaron O'Toole. And obviously that wasn't how they wanted to start this campaign. So not really that much to kind of work with in terms of analyzing yet, but I do think it's a good conversation for us to continue going forward. You know, when I saw the Willy

Wonka thing, you know what i was thinking i was thinking they're trying to appeal to that first 20 you mentioned yeah they're worried they already have them they've got them yeah i i know but they they have them to a point chantelle they could lose some of them or they could not vote and the point i'm trying to make is they wanted to you know you could make the argument they were trying to throw some red meat to their core, to their base. Yes, but they need to attract some vegetarians if they're going to win an election. Exactly.

And that's why there were two ads this week on their part. One was that one. And the other was one I saw tonight or last night, just before the election came on um which was much more along the style that bruce was talking about in terms of uh you know the liberal lads you know it was clean it was uh focused it looked prime ministerial all of that um so they kind of had it both ways. I'm always cautious about jumping into the boneheaded area on some of these things in terms of ads that are directed to the public

because I remember Harper's first ads in his first campaign, and everybody laughed at them and said, well, they're just awful, they're poorly shot, and they don't look very good. And the people in them are, you know, and there was the thing about the hair, all of that stuff in the, you know, in later campaigns. And yet, as it turned out, it appears they were working to a degree, those ads. So would the Willy Wonka ad win an election campaign for them i don't think

so but it might get those who were being tempted to say i've had it with these guys i'm going to bernier's party the people's party um it might keep them back in the tent because it was a real you know uh you know clobbering trudeau uh ad anyway that that's my point chantelle you wanted to make a point on i tend to think that if something looks like a quacks like a duck and looks like a duck it's a duck and in this case that ant looked like a dead duck um but that's just me at some point me too i kind of came to the conclusion that if it looks like something stupid is happening maybe you should spend less time looking for the brilliant strategy that you are not smart enough to figure out and come to the conclusion that someone has been really stupid. But I think the best way to keep the people who might be tempted by Maxime Bernier's party for the Conservatives is to get better polling numbers, because that 20%

will go somewhere else if it feels it doesn't have a shot at beating Trudeau. And most voters are smart enough to know that if you're at 29%, maybe you won't. But if you can only raise yourself to 35%, then they will come and vote for you because they will get a chance to take a hit at Justin Trudeau. That will be their main goal. Now, something I'm going to be watching for from the liberals is in the Trudeau era, the liberals have not been big on negative ads. But should they turn to them, I will conclude that they are in serious trouble.

That's usually the case, right? When you go fully negative. The conservatives do negative even when they're winning. That's been their style since Stephen Harper was leader. Remember that bird that was pooing on the shoulder of liberal leader Stéphane Zion in 2008? They don't go for elegance or positivity a lot. But the last time the liberals ran really negative as remember Paul Martin and the army coming into the cities, it's usually a sign that the liberals are in trouble. And so I will be

watching to see if there is such a shift at some point over the course of the campaign. I think that's an interesting point, Chantal. And Peter, I've been thinking about that too, in the sense of if you're the liberals, in what context could you conceive of using negative advertising? And I think the only context historically would have been you need to rally progressive voters by describing what happens if conservatives win. And of course, Chantal's right. If it doesn't look to most voters like conservatives are going to win, is that going to stick?

Is it going to be credible? And I think that, you know, if the numbers today were to hold, and that's a giant caveat, we don't really know whether or not that's going to be the case. But if they were, then the thing that you would use

negative advertising for if you were the liberals would still be to describe the problems of a conservative led world. Because that is better than trying to criticize the NDP if you want to win those progressive voters who are thinking about voting NDP. You can't really win progressive voters if you're the Liberals by criticizing the NDP. It just doesn't work that way. People go, well, why don't you just say that you're for the same goals, but you would achieve them differently, or you're already working on them and you've accomplished some of them and that sort of thing. And I think that's a more viable strategy for the Liberals than ever to contemplate taking out negative advertising

against the NDP. But I do think that some of those soft NDP voters aren't really that motivated to take the stick out on Trudeau or reward the NDP. And sometimes just hearing that thing that progressive voters all fear in common, which is, you know, severe cutbacks in programs, a less progressive orientation towards health care, or whatever it might be. Sometimes, you know, raising the concerns about what conservative means, even if people aren't looking at the math the same way as they would have been in elections where the Conservative Party looked more competitive um that might that might work and it might be a reason to do it all right we're gonna wrap it up um it's been good talk it's been good talk for an hour and uh we've covered a lot of territory can you hear by the way can you hear the bullfrog in the background here? I hope you can't.

But anyway, it's there. When you don't talk. You can hear with maybe shots or firecrackers in downtown Montreal. I'm opting for firecrackers. Good. That's good. Listen, I'm not sure where we're going to be next week. I know where I'm going to be for the next five or six days,

but it's dicey because I'm going to be up in the Arctic and things don't always fly on schedule there. But the plan is I'm heading up to Pondland Inlet by tomorrow's podcast. I'm looking forward to that. Next day I'll be on board one of the Navy's new Arctic patrol vessels going through the Northwest Passage for a couple of days. I'm also going to Greece Fjord and Arctic Bay. So I got a bit of touring and talking about whether it's climate change

or Arctic sovereignty. It won't be about the election over these next couple of days. But I'll be back with you guys and everybody else who's part of our election team this year and, and having enjoyable discussions like this one. So Chantel, Bruce, thank you both so much.

And we'll talk to you again soon in a few days. Great to talk with you guys. Take it easy. Yep. Safe travel.