The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- A New Orange Cloud Descends on the Canada/US Relationship

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

It's our first Summer of '26 special Good Talk and there's lots to talk about. This week it's wildfires and the smoke they cause, upsetting the Canada/U.S. relationship. Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson take a break from their summers to discuss. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansperch here, along with Chantelle A Bear and Bruce Anderson. It is your special, first of the summer. Good talk. Chantel and Bruce are taking a break from their summer holidays. And I'm going to talk to you about quite a few things because there's a lot on the agenda today. And it starts off this way. You know, Toronto, you know, Toronto, you know,

You know, Toronto wants to always be considered number one in something. And they can never get there. They can never get to number one. Although they did this week, they got to number one as the worst city in the world, major city in terms of air quality. I'm sure you've seen the pictures. Forest fires in northwestern Ontario and in western Canada. And in the United States have brought a degree of smoke

Damaging the air quality in southern Ontario. It's been, is really bad in where I am. Not so bad where Chantelle and Bruce are, but it's really been bad in the kind of Toronto, Stratford Corridor, if you wish. Orange skies, terrible, smoky air quality. I was out this morning at 6 a.m. It was awful.

He could barely breathe. So what do we make of all this? Because it's now sort of, it's, it's not normalized, but we have witnessed this over the last couple of years. But now this week, it's also entered into this kind of Canada-U-S story as well. To a degree, some Republican lawmakers in Washington have been making a fuss about it and going after Canada, saying if you want sovereignty, you've got to act like you have sovereignty and deal with the smoke. What do we make of all this?

Chantelle. Well, someone forgot to tell the climate gods that we were busy dealing with other stuff, and so the climate crisis should be put on hold. That is the reality that while priorities have shifted for short-term political reasons, the climate issue, and I don't just mean Canada here, I mean globally, the climate issue is still there, and it's not going to wait for us. to get our attention back on it and to reduce emissions. And with the United States literally bailing out actively, proactively,

demolishing efforts to reduce emissions, with the economic consequences that we've seen and the follow-up on it by other countries, what you are getting to is slowly but surely a point where we are, into trying to live with climate change. And it's going to get worse, by the way. I don't need to be some profit of doom to know that. Anybody who's seen the science actually knows that. As for the U.S. reaction, it's interesting because it wasn't it California that was burning not so long ago,

and if it's an expression of sovereignty that you can't control fires in California, which are more manageable in theory than anything. that happens in Northern Canada. Then what does it say about your exercise of sovereignty? It's going to continue. And this week it's Toronto. Last year, it was Vancouver and BC. The year before, it was Montreal.

And points, I remember driving to Cape God after the pandemic. And it was just yellow almost all the way down to destination. But that is reality. The one reality that no election can change, no midterm, no we're going to diversify the world, not just Canada, has decided to tool down on much of its efforts to try to contain climate change. And that will come with a huge bill. And with every one of those crises, because I can hear people saying, yes, but the economy. I'm not sure that people fully matter the costs to governments and to citizens of this change in climate.

But those costs are not only real, they are calculated in billions of dollars, and they're going to keep rising. You know, just looking at the images this week, you know, it's clear that Canada is at the forefront of this issue, but we're not alone. And the Americans can say whatever they want, but they're. They've got more than 500 fires, wildfires going in the states right now. A good chunk of them in the, in the Minnesota area, which is contributing to the air quality in Canada. So this is not just a Canada thing, but the Canada stuff is bad, and those pictures are awful. Those, you know, it looked like a major motion picture, that train engine, you know, caught in the midst of flames. And I think it was in northern Ontario.

Anyway, Bruce, your thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, these images are awful. The experiences are awful. They've been getting more awful, almost consistently more awful for decades now. And I think that Chantelle's kind of put her finger on it. What's happened is that other things have also become more awful to see and to experience and to worry about. And worrying about something else more doesn't mean you really don't worry about the other thing. It just means that your society has actually got another layer of stress and anxiety that is competing for attention, competing for political action, competing for policy solutions.

And that competition is what we've been kind of experiencing in Canada and in other parts of the world as well. in time will tell how well or poorly the world has come to react to these competing urgencies. I mean, the fact that there is a great economic urgency in Canada to diversify our economy and be less reliant on the United States is a fact. The climate crisis is also a fact. Over time, the government of Canada, like other governments, is going to be held, maybe not the U.S. government, is going to be held accountable for how it,

how it manages those variety of priorities. And I don't think it's an easy set of choices, but I do think that it is this week and earlier this summer has been an important reminder for Canadians and for the Canadian government that the climate crisis doesn't go away because we've got to worry about the economic urgency of our situation. Other thing that does occur to me, and maybe it's a little bit,

because of all of the exposure about Donald Trump's major speech last night. I don't know if we're going to get into that player, but the U.S. Do you really want to get into a 17-minute speech of lies? I mean, you know, I think the overall kind of the challenge that the U.S. represents sits atop so much of what we deal with in the world right now. And the U.S. used to be a place where you could look for important leadership on a variety of issues, including climate change. And I don't want to overstate it. I don't want to kind of paint a glowing picture of how the U.S. was. But if you were going to have collective action around the world to reduce emissions, and there wasn't an involvement or engagement or a participation by the United States, it wasn't going to work as well as if there was.

and we've had U.S. presidents that were committed to that, and that created policy dynamics in the United States that were helpful to the evolution of the economy towards a cleaner economy, one that runs less on fossil fuels and more on renewable forms of energy. But you can't look at the U.S. right now for that kind of leadership or for even trace elements of it.

It is now the place where if you look to the U.S. you see the most bizarre and wrongheaded analysis of global peace and security issues, climate change, the latest examples being almost comical, this notion that I think it was four U.S. elected representatives said, well, we should send U.S. agencies up to Canada to deal with the problem of climate change that they won't be aware. They would call it wildfires that Canada won't deal with. that stuff is bizarre and it looks like it's going to be with us for a period of time now last point for me is there was an interesting piece in the new york times last Friday i think it was and it was a podcast with bill mckybin and because edra climbed and bill mckybin and bill mckyvin has

been a leading advocate on climate action for a long long time and he says he's feeling both more optimistic, I'm paraphrasing now, and it's a little bit dangerous, he's more optimistic about, in some respects, and more pessimistic in some, more pessimistic because there is more and more compelling evidence of the damage that's being done to the planet over time, as more science reveals more of that damage to us. Where he was optimistic is that the pace with which technology has allowed for a change in the way economies work, a change for the better in terms of emissions has been faster than anybody was able to predict not very long ago. And the metaphor that he used that really stuck with me is he said the idea

of using more clean energy has gone from being kind of a whole foods idea to being a Costco idea. And what he meant by that was clean energy was seen as a kind of a virtuous thing to do that might cost you more money. And now it's seen as

the thing you do if you want to be careful with your money, if you want to be cognizant of the economic choices that you're making and make smarter economic choices. And I thought that was really interesting because I do think below the layer of how bad is the climate getting and what is the trajectory going forward. There actually has been an enormous amount of change in the way that technology is changing energy markets and whether it'll be enough, fast enough, I think is really the question. that we're dealing with. Chantelle.

Yeah, well, I think there are days when we need to get our heads out of the North America bubble and look what's really happening in the world. There are, you know, the prime minister keeps talking about diversifying our alliances. And I'm not quarreling with that. But that is also too on climate. If you are looking for a superpower that is doing something about climate,

you're going to have to look to China because that is where the action is at this point. It's not happening in the U.S. if you're going to look for action on climate, real action, as in practical things, you're going to look to the EU

because a lot more is happening in the EU and there are a lot more models. My fear is that in our prescribed obsession with the Canada-U.S. file, And I say prescribed because I don't believe we have a choice of just looking away and saying, okay, fine, we're going to deal with everybody else, that we will wake up post-Trump,

well behind in a competitive way, the rest of our allies or even countries like China, that the U.S. and the current administration are keeping us behind in all kinds of ways, including, for instance, the auto industry, where the changes that we should be making now to be competitive with European and Chinese autos are not happening because of policies driven by the US administration. There's not an easy cure for that. But what is not a cure is to just look away and say,

well, you know, we're busy selling oil and gas and we don't need to kind of try to think, of where the world will be economically and on the carbon front in five or ten years. And I'm not sure we're doing that. And I'm not sure having what I consider as one of the weakest environmental leadership federally. And I'm talking not just of the minister, but in particular of the minister, since Jean-Critzain was in government, because Jean-Critzain was actually nowhere on climate and the environment for almost as long as he was. was prime minister is a great asset or something to rejoice over over the long term.

Can I just on that, Peter? Go ahead. I think that the government, the Carney government has done a good job of talking about their energy approach, especially the conventional energy approach. And it's very high profile because it goes right to the heart of politics and political tensions in the country. Canada, you know, the federal government and the West and pipeline policy and fossil fuel use, those are going to be very high-profile and controversial choices.

I don't know that the government has done as good a job talking about what it's been doing on clean energy, but it has been doing things. And I do think that the government needs to spend more time talking about the clean energy side of the ledger and the approaches that they're taking. I think the... Why do you think it is that they've been weak on this? This is a very weak flank for them. And, you know, given the fact they were so strong on that flank a few years ago,

now they seem very weak. Why would they be weak on this flank? I appreciate what you're saying about their progress on the energy front, but why this weakness? Well, I think because in part, the was a complicated question, I think. One of the elements,

one of the more important elements of what the government is planning on doing is it involves nuclear power. Nuclear power has quietly gone from the thing that Canadians were pretty sure they didn't want more of to the thing where most people are saying, yeah, build more nuclear reactors, including the small modulator and the full-scale nuclear reactors.

And almost without noticing and discussing it in the media, and I'm not blaming the media for this, I'm just saying it's a fact. There hasn't really been any discussion of the fact that the government has made an announcement that we're going to have 10 more nuclear reactors in this country, where the three of us all know that if any government, including going back to the time of Jean-Cretchen were before, had said, we're going to do this,

it would have been the biggest political issue that anybody had discussed. So it's not because the government didn't say it. Maybe they didn't talk about it enough, maybe talk about it more, but there hasn't been the same electricity around that conversation. The same thing about doubling the electricity grid, which sounds like a kind of a boring idea relative to lots of other topics in politics. But it's crucially important to figuring out how we're going to not just make more electricity, but use more electricity because the more electricity that we use,

especially that which is being produced by clean energy sources, the cleaner our economy will be. So I actually think there's a better story than Chantal is suggesting there on the subsets, I'm not quarreling with whether or not there's a, that there's a communications gap there. Communications gap. You've got an environment minister that's literally missing in action. Can I tell you how many times,

how many shows I'm on, I've asked her to come on, she does speak French, and she's like a ghost. Communications. Well, sure. let's double our electricity production output. Can we start by getting a deal between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador on how they're going to go about that? Because there are tests of reality that this government is not meeting.

Can we get a clear and honest assessment of where we are on emissions targets and not just a word salad about how blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There are no markers for action. It's one thing. I was in Ontario when the nuclear energy side of things was being developed. And I remember the gap between announcing something and getting it actually done. I think the reason why the government is not insisting on those 10 nuclear reactors is that everyone is going to ask in those backyard they're going to be and how we're going to deal with the fall off from nuclear waste, which is an ongoing issue already and can only get,

course. But me, I tend to judge by results. So if this federal government cannot help Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec get to an agreement on something as basic and as low hanging of fruit as Churchill Falls and Gull Island, then I don't see how they're going to go and live up to their less double or electricity production. It's a lot harder to achieve than to just announce. But yes, the word climate has basically disappeared from the prime minister's talking points except when he's asked and when he says well you know I'm not the one who created the current context the Trudeau government which sounds like a lame way to address climate issue for someone who is seen as a climate champion you know I let me

raise a related thing because it's just it's become more clear in the last few weeks that there is a real protest movement, if you wish, against the data centers that are going to be needed in the country to supply energy, supply electricity, for the AI manufacturing that's going on at an increasingly rapid pace in Canada. But you see it across the country, protest movement starting. You saw the Manitoba government deciding against going ahead with one data center. as a result of a petition that circulated in the province,

13,000 signatures. In a small province, that's a lot of signatures. So this is a new issue for the AI minister, Evan Solomon, and the prime minister. Does this all fit into the same overall picture that we're talking about here in terms of issues surrounding development that's going to be needed if you're going to go ahead with some of these major projects. Well, it fits in with climate change.

I'll give you one example. Hydro-Keebeks is avatres are at very low levels. If there is a war because of drought, not enough snow, et cetera. If there is a war, they're at record low levels. That basically means you have less electricity that you can produce, which means you have less to actually sell, to fulfill your obligations to markets that you've sold electricity to, but more importantly, that you have less to provide electricity to ongoing needs at a time when you're going to need more and more electricity for those data centers. Let me give you another example in Montreal, and that's one's related to infrastructures and climate change and heavy rains.

Montreal's water system is in desiry to the point where there are talks now and it's not just Montreal. Other areas of Canada are undergoing the same thing that is true in British Columbia and Vancouver asking people to preserve water because either the infrastructure or the water levels are low.

You're talking to the data center? They're going to need not just power. They're going to need a lot of water and most of it, the water that we drink and not unfiltered water. So to think that you can divorce one from the other, say, let's do a lot of data centers and let's convince Canadians that AI is great. When you know that climate is creating conditions that is making it harder to fulfill basic needs or existing needs, it's quite a challenge.

And you cannot just say the AI minister, because it goes, way back to natural resources, to environment. Again, the prime minister's office go down the line. So everything is in everything is an expression in French. And in this case, it totally applies to this. Okay. We're going to need to take a break, but I know Bruce wants to get in a final thought on this. AI and data centers are connected, but they're not the same issue exactly.

And they are connected to environmental concerns, but it's not only environmental concerns that, that are at the heart of this. So AI, basically you've got 20% of the publicly say, let's have it. Let's go as fast as we can, as far as we can in this area, at 20% of the public we say, let's not have any of it. It's terrible for society and for the environment. And you've got 60% who are kind of in between saying we need it,

but we need to be careful about how we do it. And the it and being careful is really at the heart of this. What people want to be careful about on the AI side is, what is it going to do to society? What is it going to do to civilization? How dangerous could it become? That's not an environmental issue. It's a sociocultural anxiety that's very profound among some people.

And it's moderately profound among others. But it's there for a lot of people. I think about 34% who say that they use AI now, but they feel a little guilty about it. Now, some of that, that guilt is about what, What am I helping fuel in terms of the potential of this tool to do damage to society over the long term? Some of it is, what am I causing in terms of harm to the environment?

And this is where I think Chantal has put her finger on some of the issues. The big ones for the data centers, which AI needs the data centers. That's how that chain works. The biggest one is energy use and water use. And energy use is compounded by the fact that, Where will the energy come from? Who will pay for it? What will it do to my electricity prices?

The water use one is the one that is top of mind for a lot of people, but looks like there might be more technological solutions happening more quickly. Microsoft is a good case in point where their technology, they say, can achieve a kind of a closed loop water use so a data center can use as much water as the metaphor that they use or the measurement tool that they use. is as a restaurant. Well, if that's the case, then they're going to be able to solve on scale some of the water use considerations.

Not all of them and not all of the companies are going to be able to provide these solutions. But there is a bit of a technology arms race within the hyperscalor marketplace to solve for these issues because they see what we see and what we're talking about, which is community after community saying we hit the pause button until we have better answers to these questions. I think that's a healthy thing. I think the companies need to come together around some set of standards and codes and technological solutions.

Otherwise, the hundreds of billions of dollars that are being raised to spend on these things are going to sit parked. And that money doesn't like to be parked. You know, there's a degree of irony in this for Canada because here we are the country abundant in so many resources and so much potential on the energy front. and so much clean water more than anywhere in the world, right? And so you have these things sort of on your side as this debate clearly begins, and yet we're kind of at a, as you say, the potential of is for things to remain stagnant and not progress. So it'll be interesting to see how this unfolds over the next little while

because it is the next little while that's going to be critical on the development of some of this stuff. Okay, we've got to take a break, and I also want to, you know, I want to get to one of the constant issues that's been throughout this summer. And that's the status of Pierre Polia of the conservative leader. So we'll deal with that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the first of our two summer specials of Good Talk. The second one will be right near the end of August. August, I think it's 27th.

And we look forward to giving that to you as well. But today, Bruce Anderson, Chantelli Bear, both here for our first of our summer specials with Good Talk. You can reach us on Series XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform, or you can watch us on our YouTube channel. And I know many of you seem to enjoy that latter way of monitoring good talk as well. All right. Topic number, it's kind of number three, but whatever. It's Pierre Pollyev.

And the question being, can his leadership survive the summer? Summer lasts until what, end of September or near the end of September? So he's got a couple of months to go here. but things have been chaotic. They were chaotic and have been for the last year, and he's been up and down in terms of what his position seems to be and trying to determine what his future is going to be, how he's going to react to different things that are occurring on the political agenda.

You know, the interview I did with him in February was a very different Pierre-Polyev than there had been, but within a couple of weeks, he was back to the old Pierre Polyeuf. That's caused consternation within his caucus, on both sides of his caucus, about just what he stands for, and what the party should be standing for at this time. And the last week or two has been kind of open warfare

among some members of his party, both elected members and members, party members who are involved in strategy, etc. And we've witnessed the whole Corey Tanike, Pierre-Pauliav battle, which we've witnessed really for the last few years,

but it's been really open in the last little while. What should we make of this? Not just the battle it's going on, but whether or not he can survive. Because everything is now on the table, including how much money, the house costs that Canadians provide for the leader of the opposition, which I believe I read somewhere this week,

that we're the only Western democracy that actually provides that for any leader of the opposition. But a lot of things are on the table and they're not ones that make him look good. Where's your head on this, Bruce? Will you start us on this one? Yeah, I think his leadership will survive this summer. I think it'll survive at least another year, maybe two years. Is this because you want it to or because? Well, look, I think it's, no, actually,

I think that politics is always better when there's a good competition. And right now, he's not providing good competition. And he's making a series of bad choices and now, I think, increasingly worse choices. from a number of standpoints. I mean, it's widely discussed around this town anyway that he tried this reset of, you know, becoming a kind of a more thoughtful, easier to like individual.

And he tried it for 10 minutes and he didn't like it and he said, I'm going to do that anymore. And so he's not just back to being the kind of person that a lot of, of people have trouble warming too. He's making arguments that are some of the weakest arguments that he could possibly make. He does not sound like he's reflecting the concerns of the voters that he might want to win in the next election.

He sounds like he's reflecting the views of the corner of his caucus that is most loyal to him and that kind of reflects his kind of worldview. And it really starts and finishes with I've got a trash Mark Carney. for things that other people don't think are true. That's a very poor choice for an opposition leader to make, to say that he doesn't understand the economy, that he's kind of foolish in his relationships with the rest of the world, that he's gallivanting around the world.

This is the latest one I saw yesterday, and I know from my research that most Canadians are able to look at the U.S. relationship and say, it's not easy to figure out what to do. day in, day out with somebody as temperamental, petulant, vengeful as the U.S. president is, but you've got to do your best, and you can't always talk about what you're doing about it in public because things could go worse if you do that.

Same time, Canadians are absolutely convinced that we've got to spend more time building more relationships and seeing where we can get them in terms of building up more reliance. I don't think people are naive about that. I don't think they think that the economy's going to change. overnight, but they also think that there's no better time to get serious about it than right now. And they think generally that among the 22 items that I measure about how people feel the government's doing, diversification of the economy, building relationships around the world,

that's at the very top of the list of things that people think that the government is doing well. So Polyev is making all these bad choices, arguments that most people don't sound realistic or reasonable that don't increase his appeal but have the opposite effect of making people think why is he there he doesn't have a compelling argument to make to me either about what's lacking in the government or what he would do that's better and then to have a fight with somebody as well equipped to fight as kori to nike uh that's another terrible choice like if you're the leader of the opposition you say i'm going to start this knife fight with this guy knowing that the other guy can kind of keep it going.

Like there's no reason why Corey Tonight can't do this every day, multiple times a day. But there's a reason why that the leader of the opposition can't do this every day. So what did he think was really going to come from that? The last point for me is that Matt Fawcett, who's writing I really like, writes a lot in The National Observer. He wrote a piece a little while ago, and he was talking about how the Internet was poisoning the conservative party.

Or maybe he said the conservative movement. And I read it and I thought, well, yes, I see that. And by that he meant all of the stuff that we see online. I get a bunch of it now because I foolishly say things online that just attract that kind of reaction. But I had this thought that, you know what? Yes, the Internet is poisoning conservative parties maybe, but conservative thinking is poisoning the internet too.

And I would love to see a conservative leader. I'd love it to be Pierre Polly up, but I don't think it will be, who would sort of move the conservative party away from that, move it in a different direction, say we don't need to be prosecuting our arguments this way. But I'm optimistic but not hopeful if that makes sense. I don't think that it's going to happen, but I think it should happen. but I think it should happen. Okay.

I want to hear from Chantel, but I got to say, for somebody who started off saying, you think he'll survive, you then gave a good four or five minutes of reasons why he shouldn't survive. I think if they had a vote in the party, and this is to Max Fawcett's point, that party would probably go 95%.

They don't, they like that version of Pierre Paulyev. It doesn't make sense. Neither does MAGA support. Donald Trump. I don't think that the people who voted that convention are just reflective of the conservative movement in its entirety. So that 95% sounds to me like a number, a poster, good nonsense thing.

And then when you've shown up with numbers that actually show very different numbers. It's a guess. Yeah, yeah, no, it's kind of a, yeah, over-hyped guess. If I were Mark Carney, I would want to keep Pierre Puea for one or two years for sure. I, for one, do not think that it's, that, you know, conservatives who will have heard Bruce make that prediction will probably, for the most part, they've cringed rather than taking hope that they're still life and their leader. They will have said, we can't live with this for another one or two years. I think things at some point will come to a head.

Yes, those members voted last January, but the caucus still has it in its capacity to show Mr. Pali of the door or he can show himself the door. But increasingly what you're hearing from conservatives in public, not in private, is that they believe he will never be prime minister. And for sure, what you see on the ground anecdotally is that Canadians have tuned them off. They've turned off the radio. And when you turn off the radio on the leader of a federal party,

you are doing it to the entire party. It doesn't matter that Michael Chong is possibly a good finance critic who deserves notice or that some of the people who were shuffled in key positions in caucus have more interesting or intelligent things to say than their predecessors because the leader is where the dizzery starts from. and this leader has demonstrated again this summer that he has the potential to throw grenades in his own trenches, which is exactly what happened at the stampede

with those comments about liberal organizers being defeated in the BC Conservative campaign. That BC leadership candidate, by the way, came out very strongly to say, I supported you from start to finish, And this is how you rejoice over my demise and dance over my grave as if I were sold to the liberals. I was reminded when I watched all that that one of the first things that Brian Muler only did when he became leader of the Conservative Party was go and make peace and make friends with Bill Davis, the Premier of Ontario. Something is for the successor, Joe Clark, had not really done over.

is rather unhappy time in office. And why do you do that? Because if you're the conservative leader in opposition in Ottawa, and the conservatives are in government at Queen Spark, you actually need them to win elections. Coritanaik is tied to guess who, Premier Ford. And of all of the things Ontario premiers have learned over the years, especially conservative ones,

is that it works better for them. to be friendly with a liberal prime minister than to be friendly with a conservative opposition leader. So Pierre-Po-Diev, and this would be demanding or would be the supplicant, Doug Ford has no need to play nice with Pierre-Po-Diev and clearly is not going to as things have evolved. But how, I mean, how long this can go on,

and that's why I cannot see that, except for the liberals. There are now more liberals who want to keep up a political leader, I believe, than there are serious conservative strategist. And I understand why. This is not a good place to be. If you talk to people,

they will tell you that they have this squam or this worry about Mark Carney. But they will also say, but the alternative is worse. And the only alternative to Mark Carney is not A.V. Louis or E. Francois Blanchet. it remains Pierre Puelev

and when you look at those polls over the summer, what you see is not the normal thing. Normally if people are unhappy with the liberal prime minister or a conservative one and they don't like the alternative, they're going to go to the third parties

and the orange wave with Jack Layton when Quebecers were sick of Stephen Harper. That's not happening. The Black Quebecois and the NBP are not going up in the polls. They're not getting a big shot in the arm. Why? Because voters are still focused on what matters most of them at this point, which is who the person who is going to be prime minister will be, if not Mark Carney. And for as long as Pierre Puellev is the conservative leader, he will not only not grow his party's support to where he needs to be, but the NDP and the Black will suffer from that.

because the voters who do not like Pierre Pueleev, and the numbers show there are many of them, do not want him as prime minister. They're not going to take a chance on a third-party vote if it means that Pierre Puev could find his way to government. So me, I agree with the conservative strategist who are saying Pierre Puev is not going to be prime minister in this country, and the conservative movement really needs to move on before it

it becomes even more fragmented between factions. Does he survive the summer? Chantelle. I'm not sure he survives the year. I haven't been sure for months. I don't know about the summer. I think there are other MPs. Me, I would see a serious move to get rid of him

if he's not going to want to leave by caucus, by seeing members do what they did to Stockwell Day, I, not leave to the liberals, not leave for the Senate, not leave to go home, but leave to set as independent MPs. And that is what triggered a vote on Stockwell-Days leadership. I'm not seeing that for now, but at some point, the excuse, we don't know if there's anyone to take over, give me a break, if the conservative movement is able to produce premiers and has been able to produce a solid cabinet under Stephen Harper.

surely there are people who can lead that movement in a more compelling way than Piappari of churnity. I don't believe that there's no wedding standing in the wings ready to go. I think there are people ready to go. Bruce, you wanted to make a lot of support. Yeah, yeah, I did. I want to pick up a couple of threads if I can. One is that I do think that the, you know, one essential ingredient for that change and leadership to happen is people with competing ambition. and it's theoretically possible that there are people in that conservative caucus who have that ambition

at some point we'll feel the time is right to help organize a push of their leadership. One of the challenges I think there right now is that if you were going to try to fashion a more competitive conservative party, you'd want it to be a more progressive conservative party than the one that is on offer today. And yet, the most high-profile, progressive, conservative voices, and some of them will hate me using this terminology to describe them. But people like James Moore and Jason Kenney, they're not particularly critical, let's put it that way, of the Kearney government. They're not saying we need to rally conservatives against,

and I'm not suggesting that those would be the kinds of people who might run. but it would be people who would want to position the Conservative Party closer to the center of the political spectrum, if I can put it that way. And the Aaron O'Toole's and the James Moors and the Jason Kenney's and probably in some ways by his silence, the Stephen Harper's, are essentially saying we don't feel like we have a big problem with this government. If you compare the stampedes of Carney and Pauliev, it's a pretty strong. stark comparison. You know, it's not only interesting that the, that a liberal prime minister went twice to the stampede and that no food was thrown at him,

that, you know, the polling in Alberta shows that these two parties are actually competitive, one with the other right now. It's also interesting that Pierre Pauliev went there, and the reactions to his speech were not particularly charitable or good, right? and I think he has trouble finding a place for himself, making an energy argument against a prime minister who, if anything, is being a little bit criticized for being too enthusiastic about the energy side of things. But Pierre Palliav has nothing to say about climate change or about social issues

or about any of the things that those kind of more progressive conservative voters would want. And I don't see anybody in that current conservative caucus who looks like they have that profile or that energy. People said that about Michael Chong years ago, but he stopped looking like that person years ago to me, and I don't see anybody else competing for that idea. So that's why I think that inertia will probably last beyond the end of this year. That would be Mike.

Interesting that Jason Kenney has now been called progressive, I'm sure. I take it back. Jason, I take it back. I agree with that. with bruce that a lot of conservatives are actually comfortable with Mark Carney and more comfortable with Mark Carney than they would be with the Pierre Puev government. But the other issue, and I'm saying that, if I'm sitting where Stephen Harper is, for instance, he surely knows that it's easier for a liberal prime minister to advance the pipeline ambitions

of Alberta than it would be for any conservative prime minister. And that also matters in the larger scheme of politics. and things. Yeah, you know, you've both mentioned names other than Pierre Poliav as people who could possibly position themselves to run for leadership. They're not in caucus. We haven't mentioned anybody else in caucus who might have that kind of weight,

but there are people outside of caucus outside of the elected. You know, don't... Are you right? Don't ignore the Mulrooney name. I was going to say. The Mark Mulroney name is, it floats around Toronto, has for a number of years. Yes. Back before the last leadership campaign.

But where it floats around Toronto is in a place where they don't tend to have a good eye for seasoned leaders, I'm just saying. That's possible. But nevertheless, there's a... But it could be an interesting fight. But remember that Mark Mulroney, as I recall, Shantel's, I was... got a better memory for this stuff than me, so correct me if I'm wrong. But he wanted to be, he wanted to attend the last conservative convention as a delegate from the writing that he lives in.

And the writing association declined to have him do that. And it goes to the, what does the party look like and feel like? And what does it really want? Does it want, you know, Mark or Carolyn Mulroney, another name that, you know, you could see. Yeah, that's right. But if the Mulroney clan wanted the leadership to be vacant, they, of all, people, could find a lucrative offer for Pierre Puellev to consider in the private sector. Because that is another part of the puzzle.

How did Quebec liberals get rid of leaders when they needed leaders to so-called Safe Canada? I'm thinking that Daniel Johnson and Jean Charray. Power Corp made it. easy for leaders to leave by offering them. Who's to know whether they haven't tried that? And he just... From all that I hear, that has not happened. Okay, we'll leave it at that.

Listen, there is so much more I wanted to get into in this special. Maybe get it into the next one. But I do have one more question, but we'll take our final break before we do that. And we'll get to that. Do you tell us the question before the break? No, I'm not going to give you that warning. So I will as soon as we come back from this. And welcome back, final segment of their summer special good talk for this week,

with Sean Tilly Bear, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here to talk. You know, we kept dropping the Corey Tonight name through that last segment, as if everybody knows who Corey is. Well, we certainly do. We've all dealt with Corey Tonight over the years when he was working for the Harper government as a senior communications person in the last 10 years working for Doug Ford and being a part of the team that brought Doug Ford three majority governments. He was very much active during the last campaign in criticizing the federal leader, Pierre

Poliev, and clearly he still is now. Here's my question. Fairly or unfairly, rightly or wrongly, Corey to Nike, aside from the leader, Polyev, has become the most influential voice in conservative politics in Canada. Is that a statement or a question? It's a question. Well, first, I'm going to say that you had me sit next to Corey for an entire election news special over your last incarnations. So that's how I know, Corey.

We got a long fine. But it was an interesting match to spend those evenings are very long. Yes, they are. But second, no, I would quarrel with your affirmation. I would say that Jason Kenney is one of the more influential voices in the conservative movement that does point along with Corey, and there are others. But the attention has been on Corey because Poitiev felt it is obsessed with him. I'm told one caucus meeting on Parliament Hill some weeks ago was mostly spent on taking shots at Corey Tenne,

which tells you all about the obsessive nature of Puev's specific dislike of the character. Does that make him the most influential? I don't think so. Certainly one of the more polarizing figures, though. Okay. Bruce? Yeah, I think, look, Corey has had. a long and storied track record.

He's a smart person. He's articulate. He had jumped into the internecine warfare that occupies the Conservative Party a lot of the time. It's there in the Liberal Party too from time to time, but not as a kind of a more persistent cough, which is kind of in the Conservative Party. And part of what we see playing out this summer between Tonightke and Polyev

is Chapter 182. of a fight that's been going on within the conservative party for some time. He's good at it. He has a media platform. You don't need multiple media platforms these days. You just need clips that then can be trafficked around the Internet and everybody can see them. And he's very good at developing very punchy, concise, and perspective and perceptive. quotes, which he has done.

And I think what we saw in the three rounds, as I count of this Polyev tonight fight, is that round one was tonight kind of mild. Then it was Poliiev, you know, taking it up. And then it was like tonight, so saying I'm going to win round three and I'm going to win it decisively, maybe with a knockout. And if I were Polyev, I would back away from,

it. And I agree with Chantelle that tonight is one voice within the conservative movement, polarizing for sure, but he reflects a concern that a lot of conservatives do have, even if they don't know what to do with that, that the leader is not up to the job and probably won't be prime minister. All right. We're going to leave it at that for this summer special. Didn't get to the Gordy Howe Bridge and who really won that renegotiated deal. Didn't get to the pipeline, some significant movement on pipelines in the last. month. But these are all things that we can get to in our final summer special in August.

All right. Thanks to Bruce. Thanks to Shantel. Have a great summer, everyone. We'll talk to you all again in a few weeks' time. Peter Mansbridge signing off for next. Thank you, guys. Bye.

See you.