The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- After A Week of Votes and Motions in Parliament, Is Anything Different?

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

The topics were hot, from the Middle East to carbon pricing, but after all the positioning did anything really change? Chantal and Bruce are here and they have their thoughts on these and other issues including the latest mumbles about whether or not the NDP and the Liberals should get even closer. And some closing thoughts on Brian Mulroney.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Ransbridge here with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. It's time for Good Talk this Friday. Last week we did suggest that, or we did say, we did promise that this week's Good Talk would come out of Ottawa at a town hall we did at the Shadow Laurier with students and graduate students from the Masters of Political Management program at Carleton University. We did that program on Tuesday. We pre-taped it, but we've decided to hold it for an extra week and run it over next weekend's uh easter weekend and so it'll be on next friday's good talk and so it's a fun hour we certainly

enjoyed the opportunity to speak uh with those in ottawa and it was a wonderful setting and the shadow laurier and it was all very nice and so we looked for it and we realized that in terms of good talk itself that was the first time in almost three years that we've all been in the same room at the same time which is quite something Chantel of course in Montreal right now Bruce is in Ottawa and I'm in Toronto today all right let's get started because there are a number of things that happened this week that are certainly worth talking about. I want to start with the Middle East situation and Canada's position because after another week of debate and discussion and clearly differences within especially the Liberal caucus about the moves forward. I, for one, am a little puzzled as to what is our,

and the hour I'm talking about is Canada's, position on the Israel-Hamas-Gaza-Mideast story. Where do we sit after another week of discussions and votes and positioning? Chantal, why don't you start? Thank God you're asking Chantal to go first on this. First, a recap of what happened, because what happened matters to where we ended up. The NDP presented a lengthy opposition motion

that called for a number of things, including the recognition of the state of Palestine. That might sound really technical, but the fact is that Canada, along with most of its allies, has not formally recognized a state of Palestine. More than 100 countries at the United Nations have done so. We have never crossed that bridge. Why? Because we have always supported a two-state solution based on the agreement of Israel and Palestine. So the resolution, the largest or the major change that this resolution called for would have been to urge Canada to recognize unilaterally, without Israel's consent, the state of Palestine. When the government looked at its numbers, and I'm assuming in part,

but I do have confirmation for that, as to how the vote on that NDP motion as it stood would turn out, it realized that a significant number of its MPs wanted to vote for the resolution. Significant enough that in some scenarios, with the Bloc Québécois voting for the motion, the NDP, the Green Party, there was a possibility that the motion would pass or would only narrowly be defeated,

but it would split the Liberal caucus in a very significant way. What does it matter in the real world? It doesn't matter in the sense that those motions do not bind the government, but you can't deny their existence. And on the international scene, it would still send a message about Canada's stance on this issue, which is a live issue. So negotiations ensued between the government and the NDP. And I don't know, Peter, you've been around longer than I have. Bruce has watched Parliament. I do not remember a time when a government has taken an opposition motion and brought 14 amendments to it.

And Clear has rewritten the motion. Not only did the government rewrite the NDP motion, but it did that 20 minutes before the scheduled time of the vote. So to be clear on that day, MPs from all parties debated a motion that in the end they did not vote on because it was completely rewritten 20 minutes before the vote. Why was it rewritten? Could it be rewritten only with the consent of the NDP? So not only did the government bring 14 amendments and completely rewrote the motion, but the authors of the original motion, said yes to this rewriting. And in the end, that allowed the vast majority of liberals, except for three, whose community is home to a solid Jewish community, all liberals voted for the motion, along with the NDP and the Bloc and the Green Party.

And the motion passed. Where does that motion leave Canada? Well, obviously in the rewriting, the recognition of the state of Palestine unilaterally without Israel's consent was withdrawn. A lot of language was added, but I would say that we basically are, when it comes to line by line items, we are very close to where we were a week ago before this entire episode.

And the motion mostly, including its gray areas, reflects various statements that the government of Canada has made along the way. Now, that's on the specifics. There were additions to also talk about Israel's right to defend itself, to talk about the hostages. It really is closer to the government's language than to the NDP language. In the real world, though, I think if you look at from October 8th, the day after the events in Israel to today, you will be able to find an ongoing shift that is increasingly less close to Israel's current government. That shift is not unique to Canada, although what happened this week has a lot to do with internal political dynamics. That has been happening, including with the White House and the proposition, for instance, this week that the U.S. is bringing for the first time a resolution to the U.N.

to say we want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, something that the U.S. vetoed since October 7th. So there is that. Last question, why would the NDP accept this when they had a chance to divide greatly the government caucus and stand alone on a position that was distinct from the liberals? Interestingly enough, because one of the largest Muslim lobby organizations in this country,

pressured the NDP into accepting, based on the argument that they would be happier with a resolution that passed with government approval than with one that was defeated and embarrassed the government. So an interesting episode about what happens in the House of Commons, rather unique, I would say. Me, I think Parliament was shortchanged. I don't have a huge quarrel with the ultimate result and the resolution, but I think that it doesn't do anything for Parliament when MPs spend an entire day debating something that is dramatically transformed 20 minutes before they vote on it. Debate, for sure, is being shortchanged. All right, Bruce, does that explanation help you at all understand where we are as a country's position? Because clearly you were suggesting you had no idea where we are. Well, I don't mean to be glib about it, but I kind of feel as though the challenge that

the prime minister has been facing on this is not an easy one. So I don't mean to suggest that it's easy. But I think all the way through this incredible and awful series of events, he has tended to want to satisfy everybody in the Canadian political landscape. And in so attempting, I think he has left a lot of people feeling as though he's not doing enough of what they want to do. Now, that's not unique. It's part of the job, I suppose. But Chantal spoke about a shift that's discernible over time. And I think that is true. I guess the question of whether it's discernible enough is an issue that's quite concerning for those Canadians whose main preoccupation today, which is not to say it's their only preoccupation, but their main preoccupation today is the suffering of civilians in Gaza. They, I think, can reasonably look at the prime minister and say, why can't he be more aggressive in his criticism of Netanyahu?

Why isn't he more aggressive about that? Why does this seem hard to do, especially since people like Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden seem to be able to move to that position? I think at the same time, the Jewish community in Canada has reason to wonder why every mention of concern about rising anti-Semitism seems to be paired with concern about rising Islamophobia. We've talked about rising Islamophobia in this podcast before. I don't by any stretch suggest that it's not an issue. It is an issue, and it has been an issue for a number of years. But I don't think it's the issue that is causing great concern right now relative to the concern of Jewish people about the anti-Semitism that they see in their government, which seemed to them, the ones that I've spoken with as well, at least, to be too quick to talk about Islamophobia at the same time as anti-Semitism and too quick perhaps to get into a discussion about a ceasefire

without perhaps putting enough emphasis on the release of hostages in the first instance. Now, that can all be debated. But my main point is, I think the prime minister is for the right things in the sense of he's against anti-Semitism, he's against rising Islamophobia, he doesn't believe that Netanyahu is doing the right thing or is in good faith pursuit of a two-state solution. And he thinks that's the right endgame. But I don't know that in trying to say something that is empathizing with every part of the Canadian political spectrum that he's doing himself or the Canadian government any favors at this point?

That Canadian political spectrum is, you know, I mean, let's face the facts. There are far more Canadian Muslims voting than there are Canadian Jews voting, the numbers that are available to vote. And so there's, one assumes that means there's a certain power block within the Muslim community that just carries much more weight than the Jewish voting block in terms of numbers, strictly on the numbers side. So there's that. The other thing that seems, there's two other things that seem in play to me in this,

and I'd like your thoughts on it. I cannot figure out whether there is an agreement in the way they're going about this issue between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, Melanie Jolie. We've spent the last couple of weeks, it seemed, all over the Middle East meeting some of the players. But what their desire is at this point for Canada's position to be,

I can't tell whether they're in agreement or not. Well, but you can't tell that they're in disagreement. So that basically leaves it there. I mean, the proof that they're not in agreement would be some evidence of disagreement. This is all based on impressions. I have not heard. There are disagreements between the foreign affairs minister and some of her colleagues at the cabinet table. For sure, that's normal. Cabinet is not unanimous on those issues. There are members of the Trudeau team in the larger sense who feel that she is too pro-Palestine, while others feel that those who feel like that are too pro-Israel at all costs. But unless someone brings some tangible evidence that Melanie Jolie has been saying or doing things that are out of sync with what Justin Trudeau has been saying,

it's really hard to have a conversation about disagreement between the two of them. If you've seen evidence of light between their position, I'm happy to hear it, but I have not seen it. So as for the politics of it, I think both Justin Trudeau and Mélanie Jolie somehow feel that on the domestic front, it is enough politically for the liberals to be very different from the conservatives on this issue to satisfy their political need. And I will note that Mr. Poiliev is hyperactive on social media,

as everyone knows. But if you look at his social media feed this week, you're not going to find a lot of evidence of Pierre Poiliev saying, isn't it terrible that Justin Trudeau is letting down the Jewish community? There is almost no reference to what happened with this motion, despite the fact that the conservatives voted against it. And on a more general note, I'm uncomfortable with the notion when we have discussions like that, the presumption that the voters of Jewish faith or Muslim voters vote on a single issue rather than on a whole range of issue. And I say this thinking about Anthony Housefather, the Montreal MP, who is publicly saying that he's thinking about

his political future and who seems to believe that this choice is boiled down to staying within the government caucus or joining the Conservatives. I was listening to the other debates of the week, including the carbon tax debate, thinking how could Anthony Housefather be comfortable in a party that stands in denial of everything he campaigned on and voted for over his years in Parliament? And I'm

convinced that it is part and parcel of what he is meditating about. And that goes back to my initial argument of it is very simplistic on the part of political strategists to say, to think that Muslim voters have no other interest than a single interest in this debate, or that Jewish voters are only thinking that they want the next government for four years to be one that has shown the Israel flag in the House of Commons. And there is a temptation to go there because you're right on the numbers. It's not just Muslim voters who are appalled by the fact that tens of thousands of people who were civilians have died since this latest offensive

has taken place. There are lots of progressive voters who are saying it makes no sense. You can understand the need for the hostages to be home. You can be appalled at what happened last fall. But you cannot equate that with it's okay for 30,000 civilians to have been killed in the process. And I think everyone is struggling with that. It's not just those two communities. Although if I were part of one or the other community,

my feelings would be probably even stronger than they are as someone who is a bit of a bystander. Okay. I want Bruce to come jump back in on this too, but I would just say, I absolutely agree with you that neither side are single-issue voters. However, I would say that if this is still going on,

God forbid, at the time of an election, they will be closer to single-issue voters than they've ever been before. You can feel it, you know, like you can feel it no matter which side of this issue you find yourself in the midst of. And if that's the case, it will be a problem for the conservatives more than for the liberals, for the basic numbers that you put forward earlier undoubtedly okay uh bruce you want to pick up on all this well just on this question of um single issue voting uh i think i have a slightly different take on the on how this on how the jewish community in can Canada relates to this. And it's anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth,

but the conversations that I have don't seem to be about wanting the Israeli flag to be represented or the Israeli government to be defended in the House of Commons. It is more about anxiety about rising anti-Semitism. And I do feel that people in that community have a long history of legitimate fears about anti-Semitism. And they see evidence even before October 7th of growing threats to their community, some in Canada, some in the United States, very prominently, I would say, in the United States in the last several years, including on the far right of the conservative movement. And so for me, the potential that those voters do

look at this as an absolute determining factor of their vote. Are you committed enough to helping defend us against anti-Semitism? I think that's real. And I don't know that the evolution of the circumstances in the Middle East is going to change that. And we saw how sensitive, legitimately sensitive that issue is with the publication of a cartoon in La Presse this week. You know, and I think that people who are in the Jewish community who were kind of wondering if there was enough visceral negative reaction to it, found more

reason in some of the comments of some of the people at the federal level to wonder about that. They heard denunciations of it. They saw that eventually the cartoon was taken down. But if you're one of those voters and you're thinking that the story that you see since October 7th has been an insufficient anxiety, uh, about antisemitism, um, this week was another week where, um, you were left wondering whether or not, um, the government was as concerned about this as you want them to be. I don't know whether you saw it or not, but Andrew McDougall,

Stephen Harper's former director of communications, wrote a piece, I think it was in the National Post, I'm not sure. But it was very much calling upon Canadians who have taken an active role in the protests on this to stop attacking Canadian Jewish leaders, Jewish business leaders, Jewish individuals. Be against Israel if you want in terms of the way they've conducted this war, but stop with the attacks, and they're not just verbal. It's actually a very strongly worded piece,

and I'd recommend having a look at it. Can I just close out on this by the Anthony House father situation? He was a pretty respected Liberal MP from, is it Westmount? No, Pierre Trudeau's former riding of Mount Royal. Mount Royal, which is like, you know, fortress Liberal, right? But he's suggesting he might cross the floor, as you suggested, Chantal, that he is thinking about it. That writing has been in the sights of the conservatives since Stephen Harper days. And why? Because it has a strong Jewish community. And it's probably the only writing on the island

of Montreal that Stephen Harper once believed that he had a shot at winning. That being said, I look at the mood here in the Montreal numbers. Good luck with or without Anthony Housefather. The only way I can see that the Conservatives might have a shot at that riding, it would probably be if Housefather ran as an independent and then divided the non-conservative vote in a significant way. It's a bit different from the possibilities for the conservatives in similar writings. Marco Mendocino's writing in Toronto would be different.

Why? Because it has been conservative and the conservatives have had seats within the 416 area code area over the course of their existence. But for a conservative to win Mount Royal would be quite a precedent. It would also be the first seat on the island of Montreal since Brian Mulroney for that party.

How should this be looked at, what he's saying? I understand on the individual riding level, but in terms of the party itself, how much of a warning shot is this? You know, with the damage control exercises, you go for the least damage. The least damage is three MPs voting against you versus 20, 25, 30, 35. So that's basically the core reasoning behind the exercise. But I think what made things worse is this was done so at the last minute and in a way that that's why I say I'm parliamentarian, that these MPs were taken by surprise.

They did not see that coming. Basically, the Liberal House leaders stood up and said, I have amendments. You know, we're into the evening. The only reason I saw it was I was checking to see when they would finally vote. And I happened to hit play just as this was happening. So I saw, you know, Mr. Housefather and others' reaction. And the reactions were negative on other sides of the House. Le Québec was saying, we don't even have a French version of this, and why are we doing this? The Conservatives objected, but the fact that it comes like this makes it look like your government went behind your back.

Now, the other two MPs who voted against the motion, Ben Carr in Manitoba and Mr. Mendocino, have both said that they are not questioning their belonging to the liberal caucus. So I don't know where Anthony Housefather will land on this, but for sure his constituency in Mount Royal shares all of the concerns that Bruce has talked about may be a bit less so than in Toronto, because there have been a lot less of those targeted demonstrations in Montreal than there have been in Toronto over the past few months. But still, there is no doubt that the concern and disquiet is a recurring theme among the Jewish constituencies of Montreal. All right. We're going to take a break, but Bruce, do you have a closing thought on this?

You're okay on where we've landed and moved on? Okay. Then let's take our first break. We'll be right back with yet another motion and vote that took place in the house this week, and it was an interesting one as well. Back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Friday episode of The Bridge.

It is Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. All right. Pierre Palliev and the Conservatives decided this week that they were going to call for a confidence vote on the, well, basically on the carbon tax.

And if the Liberals lost it, we'd be heading into an election. It would be a carbon tax election. Well, there was much of a flurry around that and lots of discussion and eventually a vote. One in which Polyev, who'd orchestrated all this, didn't turn up to do the voting in person. I think he voted virtually from a fundraiser in Toronto. But what do we make of that? Was that all about optics? Was that just like a little show on the hill?

Or was there more to it than that? Bruce? Well, I think that Pierre Polyev has felt that he's on a kind of winning theme by talking about the upcoming increase in the price of carbon. And I think the evidence on the surface of it is that he has been. I don't know that when he says that there will be an election on carbon pricing, I don't think that's a foregone conclusion at all. I think if the election was right now, carbon pricing would be a prominent part of the conversation, but the election isn't going to be right now. And who's to say what the election will be about if it's a year or more away? In fact, I think it's less likely that it'll be about carbon pricing, and more likely it'll be about these two incumbents, Pierre Poliev and Justin Trudeau, if those are the two leaders, or something else if Justin Trudeau is not the leader. But I don't think it's going to be about carbon pricing. I do think that one of the reasons why

Polyev is making some progress with his fight against the carbon price is not just the cost of living issue. It's the fact that for many people, their anxiety about climate change has been joined by anxieties about a lot of other things. And so if people were at kind of nine in their level of concern about climate change before the pandemic, maybe they're at seven now. It doesn't mean they don't want action, but it means that their preoccupations are with the price of groceries, the price of fuel, the state of geopolitics in the world. And those things are kind of crowding out that sense of insistence that we've got a plan on climate, we need the plan that we've got, nothing else could be done to improve upon it. And that's where I think the ultimate risk for Mr. Polyev is, is that at some point, if he's betting that people will not want climate action, I don't think that bet will be a good bet in the long term. It might be in the short term that people are more interested in hearing about houses and prices than they are about climate and carbon pricing. But most Canadians still, according to our research, they want action on climate.

But an increasing number are saying, especially since the Liberals made the change in their carbon pricing policy last fall, an increasing number are drawn to the argument that maybe there's another way to do this. I don't think Mr. Poliev has felt much pressure to show what that other way might be. Maybe that pressure will grow between now and the next election, but maybe it won't. But if it doesn't, I still don't think he's going to end up wanting necessarily to have a campaign that's about carbon pricing, because in that scenario, he might be pressured a little bit more to say, well, what would you do that might work as well as this or better?

Chantal? We don't know when the next election will be. And I think the three of us do not really believe it's not going to be until the set date of October 2025. So the most probable window for a federal election, taking into account that next fall we'll see BC, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan go to the polls, would be this time next year, next spring. If that's the case, it's going to be hard not to have the carbon tax in the mix of the election because the carbon tax, the way that it is set up is that it goes up every year on April 1st. So if the conservatives believe that they scored points this week, this would be a dress rehearsal for doing the same thing this

time next year before it goes up again on April 1st, 2025, which I would argue will be a much more sensitive time for the liberals. Now, in the House of Commons, the liberals did well this week in the sense that no one from their caucus voted with the conservatives despite increasing pressure on them to do so. And I don't mean on the no confidence vote, because a liberal that votes non-confidence in his own government is out of caucus this morning. But there was a previous vote that was only on a motion on the Wednesday, and there were no losses from the Liberal caucus to the Liberals in voting down that motion. Plus the NDP and the Bloc voted with the liberals all the way along. But if you look at the larger national picture, you have to say that slowly but surely, the carbon pricing scheme of

the federal government is losing allies or is failing to make allies. And I'm going to give you four examples. Of course, the liberal premier of Newfoundland, who has joined Conservative premiers and asking for the applause in the increase in the carbon tax on April 1st. All of Nova Scotia's elected officials in a unanimous vote this week. So that does include a number of liberals. The liberal leader in Ontario, Bonnie Crombie, who said that in the next campaign, she will not be championing a carbon tax. And some of the candidates, at least one, running to replace Rachel Notley at the head of the NDP in Alberta. Why does any of this matter? It matters because the only reason the federal carbon pricing scheme applies in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Alberta, and Ontario is because provincial governments in those

provinces have declined to put in place programs that meet the same objectives. Only two provinces have done so, Quebec and British Columbia, where there are no rebates, by the way, for those of us who pay for the increased cost of carbon pricing. So if you have opposition members, many of them liberals or New Democrats saying we're not doing this, It means that the federal government will continue to be the one who will have to be doing the federal taxing for carbon emissions going forward, because those provincial governments, even if they do Alberta, is going up, which is very strange because I've just spent the week being told that the fact that the federal carbon tax is going up is going to make everyone really, really poor provincial tax on the same gasoline, etc. So, yeah, I'm struggling here with the logic. Yeah, I would just add, Peter, that, you know, I think that the points that Chantal's making about people with liberal behind their name in politics saying we're not sure about this

is a natural consequence of the combination of the anxieties that I talked about, about cost of living, plus the measures that the liberals took last fall, which in effect confirmed that this was an optional policy. And I understand the reasons and the arguments that were made at the time. But if you open the door to the optionality of carbon pricing, you know, my honest opinion is that the major reason why there might not be an election about carbon pricing is that the liberals will have to come up with an alternative to carbon pricing, because the breakdown in the consensus around this policy, undeserved on the merits of the policy, but it's real politically. And it will have to be grappled with because Chantal's right. If the election

is next spring and Justin Trudeau is campaigning on the basis of the next hike in this, he's already vulnerable enough. His chances of winning that election are already very slim. They'll be slimmer if that's the framework. But I think the part of me that thinks that politics adapts to such strong and evident signals makes me think that that's not where we'll be. All right. I'll just say one thing on this, and it's purely unscientific, but it's just based solely on the feed of letters, emails that I get coming into the bridge.

And what I've noticed in this last month as kind of the carbon policy, carbon pricing issue has surfaced again. The number of letters I get from people who say, this is all, climate change is all a hoax, has bubbled up again. It had basically disappeared for the last year at least. It's bubbled up again in this last little while, which, you know, I don't want to overstate it.

We're only talking about a relatively few number of letters, but there were none. And now they're back again. I see about 25% in our poll now who say, I'd rather drop the carbon tax and have nothing. I think that's a little higher than it would have been two years ago, maybe more like 17, 18% then. And I think it's part of what makes the Conservatives hopeful, that they can succeed simply by criticizing the carbon price and without necessarily putting a credible policy alternative on the table. Quick point here. All right, let me take our final break and then I'll bring it back.

We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. That was our final break for this week's Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here. Chantelle, I want to ask you this. After a week of, you know, such, you know, major debates and discussions and motions and votes, et cetera, in the House of Commons,

watching this alliance between the Liberals and the NDP, this kind of mini coalition, although that's the wrong word to use, I don't know what the right word. Agreement. Operating agreement between the two parties. Is there anything going on there between the two, or is it just playing out this agreement and it'll end next year and that's that? There are people on both sides, but interestingly enough, some of the people on the liberal side, I'm told Jean Chrétien, for instance, feels that they should come together in a more formal way before the next election. And some members of getting things done together.

Or a sense that they would do this to do something other than because they don't want the brand of conservatism of Pierre Poilievre, so they would feel that it is necessary to do something about this. I, for one, do not believe that Jagmeet Singh has the moral authority on his party to bring it on side to a closer relationship with the liberals. I think it would take a leader who is a lot more gravitas within party ranks to be able to do that. And the last NDP convention kind of demonstrated the opposite, that those conditions put on Mr. Singh to continue to pursue the agreement if he got the pharmacare, etc. And I am convinced that there is a solid section, what we call blue liberals, who think that this would only precipitate the liberals in a. Polyev's rhetoric would push them to the conservatives because they would feel that the greater monster would be that two-headed NDP liberal monster. So for all the talk about this, I don't believe that this can happen, this kind of rejoining of progressive forces in this country, unless you have two leaders who are ascending rather than in decline. And at this point, we have our leaders in decline.

Peter, we're publishing some polling this morning on sparkadvocacy.ca website, and it'll be on National News Watch as well. I asked a few questions. I asked people what kind of government they wanted for Canada. Do you want left of center? Do you want left of center? Do you want right of center? Do you want center but leaning right on fiscal and economic issues or center but leaning left on social and environmental issues? And the results are really interesting because 65% of Canadians pick one of those two center

options. They either want a little bit of a tilt to the left on social and environmental or a little bit of tilt to the right on fiscal and economic. But only 52% think Justin Trudeau is giving government that is in the center in one of those two categories. He loads up on the left. 14% want a left-wing government. 33% think Justin Trudeau is a left-wing prime minister. It's a sizable gap there. But just as interesting is what people think about the kind of government that Pierre Polyev would give. Only 51% think he would govern on the center.

His problem is people think that he would be too far to the right. 20% want a right-of-center government, 39% think that's what he would give. So far, there's really not much focus on him. And that's normal. That's the way politics is. But at some point, people start looking at the question of how well positioned is he relative to the value set and the policy instincts of Canadians, there's as big a gap for him as there is for Justin Trudeau right now. So to the point of liberals and NDP, I can think of nothing that would be more harmful to the near-term electoral prospects for the Liberal Party than to spend more time talking about how much they have in common with the NDP. The biggest gap for Justin Trudeau is 37% of Canadians want centrist government that leans conservative on economic and fiscal issues. Only 24% think that's what Justin Trudeau is interested in giving. So for Chrystia Freeland

and the PMO, as they think about this budget, it's pretty clear what people are looking for. They're looking for centrist policy and they're probably looking for a little bit more evidence of fiscal management and slightly more conservative economic policy from the government rather than more left of center, left-leaning social and environmental focus.

You know, the numbers are interesting. There's a lot there to digest and obviously it'd take a while to go through all of that stuff and look forward to reading it when you put it online. But the core numbers about the number of Canadians who want something in the center, maybe a little left, maybe a little right, that's kind of Canada, right? I mean, that really hasn't changed through all the turmoil of these last few years. Forty years in the business. It's been pretty much the same number.

So it really comes down to it's not an ideological shift that's taking place. It's a kind of, you know, get the bums out. We hear more noise because of the way social media and polarization and coverage of things that are evidence of friction. We hear more noise from the left and the right than perhaps we used to. But I don't think that the balance of opinion has really changed all that much. And we have got a couple of minutes left. Tomorrow, some of us will be in Montreal for the state funeral of Brian Mulrooney. We've said, and many people have said a lot about the former prime minister,

Canada's 18th prime minister over the last few weeks since his passing. Do you want to kind of tie a knot to those thoughts with, I don't know, what you've learned over the last few weeks about how Canada's felt about him, how others have felt about him, what's been said about him? I've started to be interested. I don't believe that what has been happening over the past week will have no impact

on the political dynamics federally going forward. And I've started trying to think forward as to what consequences this outpouring of, not only of affection, I mean, when people die, critics tend to mute out of decency. But there has been a lot of talk about policies and policymaking and where those policies stand today, decades on. And I think that if Justin Trudeau was looking for a rationale to say, I will stick around, and even if I'm a huge loser as a result of sticking around, history will validate me. When politics turns to history, I stand to do well.

Mulroney was vilified for policies in a way that Justin Trudeau has not been. Two parties were born out of some of his policies, the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party, and it transformed the conservative landscape in ways that has not always been helpful to the conservative movement in this country. And still, here we are with some of the numbers that Abacus put forward on some of those policies. I think looking at it, for instance, from a Quebec point of view, the notion that three quarters of Canadians believe that Mulroney did well to pursue the Constitution boggles the mind in a way, in the sense that it was a double failure that did divide the country.

And still, looking back, people are inclined to give him a lot of credit for trying. I figure if I were sitting in government, provincially but also federally, the lesson I'd take from that is to be more aggressive in defending policies that maybe are unpopular today, but might be regarded, even if they fail, as a valiant effort in a couple of decades. Okay, Bruce, you got two or three minutes, so I'll go for it. Yeah, look, I think that it has prompted a bit more reflection on what is the, in retrospect, what do we like to be able to think that are the people who held the position of prime minister in our country were trying to accomplish? Were

they well-motivated and did they accomplish important things? And I think there, you know, Chantal made the point about our polls showing on Meach and Charlottetown that most people thought that the effort to bridge the divide was a positive part of Mulroney's record. That doesn't mean that they want to go back and embrace those accords. It means that they judged that what he was trying to do was well-intentioned and therefore a worthwhile thing for a prime minister to try to do. His policies at the time, controversial GST and free trade, in retrospect, I think people felt that the GST wasn't as bad as they had imagined that it could be and that free trade was better than they imagined that it could be. So fast forward to Justin Trudeau, because I think this

is a really interesting question. And I know John Iveson wrote about this yesterday, I think as well. For me, Justin Trudeau has introduced some important consumer benefits, the child benefit and child care, I think are important. But I don't know whether or not those will be seen as in the future, really transformative. I think that the more potentially transformative policies that he's brought into play are around reconciliation with indigenous people and the fact that he put in place an ambitious climate change policy mix. Will people come to value those things in the future? I actually think that they will.

But I think the other aspect of Mr. Trudeau's record that's difficult for people to credit, but if we think about it, really important in terms of what he did is he managed this pandemic crisis in a way that I think on the balance of things was really quite good for the country. And maybe in the future, people will just forget about the pandemic and not give him any credit for it, or they will look at it and say it was a difficult thing and he did a pretty good job of it. And the other one was the election of Donald Trump and the kind of the chaos that ensued in the U.S. The importance of that relationship has always been a sine qua non of successful prime ministers in terms of how it's managed. And I think that it has to be said

that he's managed it quite well. So for me, he does have accomplishments, significant accomplishments, some that required him to be agile and to respond to threats that you couldn't see coming. Some were policies of his own design. And it remains to be seen whether down the road people come to that same conclusion that he did some important things and he handled his responsibilities well, but I rather think they will come to that conclusion. Well, back to Brian Mulroney for my closing thought. The thing that, especially this past week, that really impressed me, I guess not surprisingly, so we probably should have known this from their own history,

but was watching the Mulroney family and the way they were so upfront and in place for the whole lying in state, whether it was Mila Mulroney or Caroline Mulroney or Ben Mulroney, Mark Mulroney, Nicholas Mulroney. They were united as a family and they were united for Canada standing next to the casket of their father and welcoming each person who came along the line. It was quite something to watch, especially those days we were all in Ottawa earlier this week.

So we'll leave it at that. And, you know, people will have different feelings about Brian Mulroney, as is their right. And I think he respected that too throughout his years, especially in his later years. So we'll be watching the state funeral tomorrow and some of us will be at it. So we'll talk again next week in our recorded

program that we did up in Ottawa earlier this week. That'll be next week over the Easter weekend. Thank you to Chantel. Thank you to Bruce. Have a good weekend. And we'll talk again in seven days. The Bridge will be back on Monday. Look forward to that. The Mondays, as usual, with Dr. Janice Stein and her take on Israel-Hamas, Ukraine-Russia,

and the story she thinks we're all missing. We'll have that on Monday. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again, as we said, on Monday.