The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk --- Another Great One!

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Bruce and Chantal are back with a full agenda.  Canada's position on Ukraine, Justin Trudeau revoking the Emergencies Act and the latest on the Conservative leadership race.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, another Good Talk Friday. Chantal Hebert is in Montreal, Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto today. Segment one on this episode of Good Talk is Ukraine. You know, there's been a lot of talk in the last, I don't know, few days because of the Putin dictatorship and the way he's moved into Ukraine in the last 48 hours that we are kind of living through our own 1930s moment. And, you know, I think there's lots of different ways to

look at that the way i'm looking at it this morning or today tonight in ukraine is that it is a little like september of 39 you know we tend to look back at september 39 and say well you know the much-vaunted german army they swept into poland and it was all over in a matter of hours well it wasn't actually all over in a matter of hours. The much wanted and for good reason, German army did sweep into Poland, unprovoked, with false flags all over the place. And they were up against the Polish army, which was, you know, still on horses and bicycles in the battlefield.

And it didn't take hours. It didn't take days. It took weeks. I mean, they eventually fell, the Poles, as one assumed they were going to. But they put up a fight. They believed in their country, and that's what we're watching in Ukraine. But what Ukraine has begged for, well, they begged for troops from the West to help them.

That wasn't going to happen because of NATO, and they're not a member of NATO. has begged for, well, they begged for troops from the West to help them. That wasn't going to happen because of NATO, and they're not a member of NATO. But they were banking on sanctions with teeth. And I guess that's the question today is, is that what has been put up to try to stop Vladimir Putin? The Americans put their long list, and it was a long list, 160-something

different sanctions that they put into place yesterday. And then there are the other countries, which include Canada. The Brits are getting bashed around Boris Johnson today that his sanctions are toothless and are actually protective of the so-called oligarchs in Russia who are Putin's biggest backers. So it leaves open the question, what about Canada? Did we do enough in our list yesterday? Had a big news conference with the prime minister, the foreign minister, the finance minister, and the defense minister.

But is what we laid on the table, was it enough to say that we are all in on trying to stop Vladimir Putin for whatever difference Canada might make in a situation like this? It does beg the question. And so I start with you, Chantal. Well, this is a parade we are not going to be leading, and we absolutely have to take our cues from two places that can wield bigger sticks, but that are also on the front lines of this, and that starts with Europe. And Canada can not go faster in this than Europe or the United States. There were two moments in the press conference yesterday where some truths that were important, and I thought it was an effective news conference,

devoid of the usual talking points. I don't think I've heard Trudeau and his ministers speak more clearly and more directly than I had heard them over that news conference. But there are two facts that may not have been the lead, but that do matter. And the first one is the prime minister saying it is hard to hurt someone with whom you do not have that strong a trade relationship. That is certainly true with the Canada-Russia trade links are, at the best of times, not terribly strong. That's good and bad in the sense that, as opposed to some European countries, we're not terribly vulnerable, obviously, to the fact that their natural gas might or might not flow to us. The same is in part true about wheat.

So that's one of the reasons we don't have that much of a trade relationship is a lot of the things that they export are things that we export to. But the other interesting point, and again, I wasn't the lead, but I suspect it will become the lead, was the news that we are sending some thousands, and remember, this is the Canadian Armed Forces, troops to NATO, or we are offering troops to NATO. And I think two things happened yesterday. You can debate sanctions all you want, but this is not something that's going to get resolved between now and Sunday morning.

And sanctions contribute to undermining the position of Vladimir Putin in Russia, and with the oligarchs that you talk about, who do not want to lose money on this adventure that Putin has launched. But the other clear signal was that Ukraine is surrounded by countries that have been part of the USSR and are now part of NATO, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. And the message and the red line is really there. You compare it to 1939, I think a major difference is, suppose, as is totally possible, that Putin does conquer, invade Ukraine and takes over,

he will have to hold a hostile country surrounded by hostile countries that have the means to post serious military might all around Ukraine and stand to make this war, which is already unpopular in Russia, even more difficult to sustain for Vladimir Putin. So I know it tests the Canadian sense that we need to do something, we need to end this. But there is reality. And if you're going to end this, I don't think you want to throw everything except the kitchen sink at it on the first day. You need to increase pressure day after day after day after day.

And at the same time, we talked about this over the course of the pandemic, and the same is true this time. At the same time, keep public opinion in the countries that are doing the fighting back and that will be seeing the impact of all of this, energy prices are going to be rising. You're going to pay more to put gas in your tank. Keep those populations mobilized behind governments in this battle for longer than three or four days. Bruce? Well, I agree with a lot of what Chantal said. I think that if wouldn't be a very significant reaction, that there was going to be more political talk than there was going to be measures taken. And it looked almost as though the alternative was going to be relatively little and relatively

loosely coordinated action or a superpower war. And Biden made clear no superpower war. And I think we should all be thankful that we're not in a superpower war now. But everything in between is going to be the subject of maybe some trial and error. It's definitely going to be the subject of closely held intelligence and less transparency that some might want. And that's, I think, the way that it should be. I found myself watching politicians yesterday, and I agree with Chantal that what I was watching in that press conference of the Canadians was really not very much about performative politics.

It just looked like serious people dealing with a very serious situation, trying to do their jobs as best they can. And I understood the questions of, well, if the sanctions that we took two days ago didn't work, why would the sanctions you're announcing now work? Except that's not really how it's going to play out. I think that in two respects, one is asking those questions from a position of frustration that you're not getting the answers is going to get old pretty quick. It's not going to work that way. And we should stop pretending that that's the way that we should conduct ourselves as part of a conflict. we're going to need to delegate whatever trust we feel we can to our leadership to make choices that are based on intelligence with our allies or the best choices that they think are possible to make.

And we're just going to have to live with the amount of information that we have because we are in a conflict and because we are also making decisions, as Chantal said, to put our troops in harm's way in a situation which could escalate, which could grow worse, which could turn into a superpower war. And so we need to be really, really deadly serious about that. I do think that, and this is my last point, I do think that there is some, well, there are a few things different from 39, and I don't say that lightly. I think the comparison is relevant, but I think we ought to be careful with that. I think the idea that this is more the actions of one individual who has so much control and has built such a propaganda base for what he's doing. I think that's a very

powerful reminder of the potential for propaganda and disinformation and an autocratic police state to rain havoc in the world. But I do think that we know that there are economic relationships that Putin has with oligarchs that matter to him. And I don't know that there was an analog in 19 in the 1930s to that. And I think that the amount of wealth that can be impacted by these sanctions on the people who are in the circle of Vladimir Putin is a pretty interesting question in terms of to what Chantal was saying. It's already an unpopular war in Russia. How much of these sanctions will it take before it becomes unpopular in a different way for Vladimir Putin? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm glad we're taking all of the measures that we're taking.

And if we need to take more, I hope we do. Well, I don't want to get into a debate about the 1930s situation, because clearly there are lots of differences between what was happening in the 30s and what's happening now. However, you know, the rise of Nazism in Germany and Hitler in particular was aided strongly by some wealthy industrialists who basically funded the rise of that party and that government. But it was aided strongly by German nationalism. And if you fast forward to more recent events, remember the UK battle over the Falklands and the patriotism that resulted from it in the UK and how much

Margaret Thatcher, who was then the prime minister, benefited for George W. Bush in Iraq. Remember French fries being banned in some restaurants in the U.S. because the French wouldn't join, etc. What we saw yesterday was not an outpouring of patriotism in the streets of Russia. It was the opposite. If you're going to go to war and the streets of your main cities are full of people who will brave,

which is a lot harder than saying all the things that everybody has been saying from the outside, are going to brave serious consequences to protest a war. That does not really bode terribly well for how long you can sustain it from the inside or how much people are willing to put up with the consequences of your gesture. And I think that's a more significant difference from a lot of the conflicts that we've watched than any analogy to 1939. I also note that when you look at Europe, I've traveled in those parts, both the Baltic and some of the countries, Hungary and others, the expectation might have been that Poland and Hungary, whose governments are not necessarily in sync with most European governments these days, or certainly not with France or Germany,

would have been complicated to bring on board. That's not happening. They are right next door. They are not going back to the sphere of influence of Russia. And I think that also makes a huge difference to the politics of this. So, I'm guessing we'll see a word on the Canadian reaction. We've seen a lot of divisions in this country, but I thought by and large, the opposition's reaction over the past day has been mostly driven towards consensus. I know there are conservatives who are really tempted to turn this into a debate about pipelines and natural gas pipelines. But by and large, that is not being the leadership's reaction. And I think that's very healthy. Because to turn it into a,

you see, we should right away start building more natural gas outlets to ship natural gas to Europe. I believe that, A, that's not going to happen. B, by the time it would happen, we will be somewhere else. It takes a decade these days to do anything like that. But three, it's very self-centered in the wrong sense of the word. I was going to say, Peter, I hope you don't mind me adding a point to that. If we were looking for what was maybe the worst take yesterday in Canada, it was Jason Kenney going on about dictator oil. That point has been made.

It just seemed like such a painfully awkward note to strike on a day when people were being killed. It just it kind of boggled my mind. But I agree that the the sense of unity in Canada at the national level and I haven't done polling on it yet. We will be shortly, but I presume at the public opinion level as well, it's really quite remarkable and strong. And, you know, as I looked at the United States and I was anxious that what we were going to see was more Trumpist division, you know, more people saying Putin, he's a genius. He's a strong man. Isn't it amazing what a strong man can do? And to be sure there was some of that. But I guess it was maybe, I don't want to sound more hopeful

than the situation merits. But I felt for a minute like, okay, maybe America is not going to be as crazy a place as it has been around this kind of issue because the situation is so dire. But that, as I say, may be more hopeful than realistic. We'll have to watch. Okay. I want to make a couple of points before we move on based on some of the things you said. We've been warned in the last 24 hours by a number of correspondents who I've got a lot of time for who are based in Moscow

to be careful with this issue about the protests. That the numbers are significant, but be careful about just how large that sentiment is. Let's agree, though, that if the forces of democracy within Russia are brought out onto the front lines during this, then it will have been a huge accomplishment.

And it would mean the end of Putin if that happened. I don't think there's any question about that. But it's a big hill to climb. Second point on sanctions. Yeah, I agree with Bruce on that question that was asked yesterday. I mean, let's face it, sanctions have proven over time,

there's always a debate about whether sanctions have an impact at all. But if there's one thing that's clear is it takes months, sometimes years, for sanctions to take hold and have the desired impact and that's not what some people want right now including the president of ukraine who's desperate for help so desperate that today he's suggested that we'll declare neutrality we'll become a neutral nation like switzerland um because nobody's coming to help us in terms of on the ground fighting.

They're sending arms and machinery. There's no doubt about that. So is Canada. And they're surrounding our borders in some cases with help. Here's the last point I want to make on yesterday. And it's kind of off topic but i don't know to me it seemed like finally after all these years we saw just how much our political landscape has changed well when you watch that news conference you saw a prime minister and three of the most senior ministers in his government finance foreign

affairs defense especially the time when we're placing canadians in harm's way as bruce said in terms of our troops and those three ministers all women and the sense that all three of those women are potential candidates for leadership of trudeau leaves, or steps down. And I thought that was quite an image, quite apart from what was said and how different people delivered their positions on the story. I thought it was a significant moment in the continuing evolution of the Canadian political landscape. Can I add? Yeah. But Chrystia Freeland obviously has a special link to this story

by virtue of her roots, but to watch her go into not French or English and speak directly of this, I think it was one of her finest moments. It's impossible to look from the outside and not say, this is something we would not have seen. We have had Ukrainian ministers in the past and governor generals, but I'm not sure that 30 years ago, correct me if you think differently, Reynat Shin, who was the minister of justice and eventually the governor general, would necessarily have been in a position to make a statement as powerful in Ukrainian at a nationally broadcast news conference. But I thought that kind of spoke in a way to the commitment that the cabinet has to this file, because as you know,

when the finance minister really takes something to heart, it's not quite the same as the prime minister, but very close. And that is obvious that these forces are in play within the Trudeau cabinet. Yeah, I would just echo what you said, Peter, as well, that in 2015, I guess, by deciding he was going to have a gender balanced cabinet, the prime minister kind of heard some critics say this is just, you know, for show, it's not a meritocracy, it's the opposite of a meritocracy. And I think it's still a case in our polling that a lot of people don't know that roughly half the cabinet is,

I mean, almost exactly half the cabinet is female. But it shows to me that if you persevere with a disruption like that, if you basically say there has been effectively a systemic bias, even if people didn't kind of intend it or always plan it out that way, that there unquestionably was a systemic bias against women in politics, that if you push that bias away, it enriches the talent pool that comes into politics. And that looked every bit like a meritocracy to me yesterday. And it did make me feel good about the idea that women have opportunities to participate just as men do in Canadian politics. It's not quite equal yet, but it's certainly a long way from where it would have been 10, 20 or 30 years ago. All right. The gender imbalance was fixed in 2015. But I think what has happened in the last cabinet shuffle was the influence deficit was fixed. And that is what we saw yesterday.

And I, for one, have always thought the influence deficit mattered more than the gender deficit. All right. Time to move on. As if there could be anything bigger in our world right now than the situation in Ukraine, we are going to take time to discuss a couple of other topics but first of all this quick pause and we're back with good talk peter mansbridge in toronto shantelli bear in montreal and bruce anderson uh in ottawa you're listening on Sirius XM Canada, channel 167,

or on your favorite podcast platform. You know, 48 hours ago or 72 hours ago, the biggest story in Canada was the invoking and devoking or whatever the right term is of the Emergencies Act that dealt with the convoy and the associated problems that it produced for governments, local, provincial, and federal. In fact, when I look out my window here in Toronto, they're still circled around Queen's Park.

You can't drive around the provincial legislature. So the emergency is still on in Ontario, full on. I mean, it's like there's blinking lights and police cars all over the place. And have been, you know, for two weeks now. Anyway, it seems like yesterday's news in light of what's happening in Ukraine. However, it's still an important moment in the Canadian political life and Canadian life in general. And there are going to be now a couple of different committees investigating why the Emergencies Act was put into place, whether it was needed, did it stay too long, how it was taken out, which leaves us a moment to give some thought to that, to give some of our own feelings about what happened in those couple of days

and what's going to happen as a result of them. Bruce? I was really happy with the way that the police effort occurred over the weekend. I thought it was forceful. I thought it was effective. I thought it was restrained. I thought it struck the right tone in terms of how police should engage with people who don't want to leave, but which the law requires to leave. I thought the invocation of the Emergencies Act was, you know, a big instrument to have to use. But I also felt like because of the failure of the policing at the front end of the situation in Ottawa anyway, that there really was a reasonable argument for the government to say, we're going to take some new powers. And I think they did that fully cognizant of the fact that some people were going to say this was an overreach and that there needs to be an inquiry afterwards and that they'll be held to account for what information they used

to make the decision. And did they make the right decision? That's all a legitimate debate. And I think that they knew that was coming when they decided to do it. And I still think on balance, it was the right call. I also think it was the right call to pull the plug on it when they did. And I know people were wondering, well, why did that happen so quickly? But in fact, they had access to the powers for a number of days at that point. And I think by Monday, they took a look at the situation and determined that the risks that still existed were controllable with the powers and the policing that they had. And so they pulled the plug.

And I think that was the right thing to do. You know, I do hope that as we explore the reasons in these inquiries for the decision that was being made, I hope that it's a kind of a careful exploration of the information that was used, and also respectful of the fact that people in positions of responsibility were facing a lot of pressure to deal with this situation that had gone for some weeks. And they were taking advice from the sources that they felt they could trust and using the information that was available in the moment doesn't mean they're infallible doesn't mean that you couldn't look back on it and say, well, if they had disregarded that piece of information or looked at another piece of information, they could have done something differently. But in the end, you know, I think that we took a number of important lessons away from this as a country. The most important for me is the role of disinformation. This is not really for me a question about vaccine mandates. This is really about organized efforts, well-funded efforts to destabilize our democracy and whether

we have a bigger problem than we thought we had. And looking at events around the world, it's hard not to think that we well might and that we need to do more about that. Chantal. Okay. A couple of points going back to how this starts. I believe that if the Ottawa police had not misread the situation, we would probably not have needed the Emergencies Act. And that regular police powers could have dealt with it if the convoy had not been allowed to set up camp in downtown Ottawa with some cooperation from the police. I'm not saying this in any nefarious way, just a total misreading of the situation. What's happening around Queen's Park that you allude to has, at this point, nothing to do with emergency powers. It's just the police doing what they do to deal with an emergency, which is a completely

different proposition. And it demonstrates that regular police powers, if they are in anticipation mode, rather than sitting back and ignoring the evidence in front of their eye, that the convoy with clear objectives is making its way to your city. And this is what they plan to do, can deal with. I also believe that the decision acted as a circuit breaker of sorts. It's like when the teacher blows the whistle to say it, it recesses over. And if you don't come back to class now, you will face consequences. So I think it served that purpose. A lot of people have questioned the notion that the government was willing to make Monday's vote on using the Emergencies Act a competence matter,

and then 48 hours later got rid of it. I happen to believe that that vote was essential for the legitimacy of having used the act. It was used for a week by then. Yeah, I agree with that. This is a minority government. Suppose that on Monday morning, alternate scenario, Prime Minister Trudeau calls a news conference and says, guys, it's all good, so we're going to withdraw the motion

and we're not going to ask Parliament to vote because we're going to lift the Emergencies Act. Immediately, the same people who are saying there was never an emergency because they lifted it 48 hours later would have said this was so illegitimate that Trudeau would not be accountable as a minority prime minister to the House of Commons for having done that. So to secure that vote as a minority government, I believe, was essential. As for lifting it on the Wednesday, I also think that was appropriate. It also gave police forces across the country a couple of days to really get the message that you are not going to be hanging on to whatever special powers you have in your back store. So plan accordingly and deal with this with your powers because we're going to be lifting

this. So overall, I think it was as good a sequence from a terrible situation as they could get. I don't really think the prime minister is going to be basking in the glory of having done all this over the past week. I think no party of the two main parties is coming out of this with flying colors and both will have repairs to undertake in the wake of this. But I think we also learned a lesson in practice that for 30 years we were happy to get to ignore, and it is that the War Measures Act and this Emergencies Act are not one the product of the other, but one the product of the abuses of the other.

And I find that reassuring that there were so many safeguards, so many ways that Parliament could actually pull the plug on this, that there is a lot less grounds for abuse and civil liberties abuse than there ever was with the War Measures Act. All of that being said, of course, this applies to a minority government. I'm not sure how or whether the safeguards are robust enough in the case of a majority government that can impose its will either in the House of Commons or the Senate or both.

It's just one thing I wanted to raise. I think Bruce is the best one to try to answer this. There was something Trudeau said in his speech on Wednesday when they were ending the Emergencies Act that has struck me and has kind of reverberated to me a lot over the last couple of days. It was just a phrase. I mean, most democracies, good democracies, relish divisions and debate

and discussion over big issues. He had a line in that speech saying, we can't let anger divide us. Now, I don't know what governments can do about anger that's there, and we all agree it's there. But what is the challenge to society in that phrase, we can't let anger divide us? I think you touched on a little bit with your comments about social media, Bruce, but is there something deeper in that phrase, or am I just getting carried away by a couple of words that were probably thrown in there because they sounded good? No, I actually think that alongside disinformation, it's kind of sibling or child is heightened level of anger. And it's probably the thing alongside climate change that I spend the most time being angsty about. I feel like politicians and many journalists also have a kind of a front row seat to what it looks like and how it invades their lives and their ability to do their job and keep their kind of mental is safe. And I say that with a lot of empathy for people in politics, because I

know a lot of them, as you both do, and we both know many of them who've had some pretty bad experiences dealing with the anger that comes at them. And the same thing is true for a lot of people in journalism who experienced a lot of it in a more aggressive and personal way during the last several weeks. And when I talk to people who are working on kind of what are the policy solutions around anger, I try to be careful to say there isn't a piece of regulation or legislation that's going to make this go away. You can't regulate hate away. You can't regulate hate away. You can't regulate racism away. But we have to have the conversation that's real and honest that says that there's a lot of it and it's being cultivated, nurtured, fertilized, whatever you want to use as an

expression by the kind of the instant aspect of social media and also the kind of the instant aspect of social media, and also the kind of the sense of, if I really want to make a point, I have to make it in the most aggressive way possible in order for it to be noticed and to feel that there's some reverb. Now, on the prime minister, I was intrigued that you asked that question, because I've been thinking about that and listening to Chantal on this. And I remember a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about, does the prime minister want to have a just watch me moment? And for me, it seemed like a reasonable question at the time. And a lot of people were wondering, is this going to be him replaying the way that his father kind of established himself as

a kind of a really strong leader? And he didn't do that. He didn't talk about bleeding hearts and that he, you know, he didn't sort of approach it as though he was going to be aggressive. Some people are very upset about the fact that he used some language to describe protesters early on or some subset of protesters early on in ways that they didn't like. But that, to me, wasn't really the same as saying, I love this fight. I'm in this fight.

I'm going to take this fight and kind of run with it. And I want to make you want to watch me have this fight. And when he said the other day that we can't let anger divide us, I think he was probably reflecting on the fact that in his time in office, he has seen a lot of evidence that anger and division is mounting. And people can debate whether or not he's somewhat responsible for it, more than somewhat responsible for it, or it's been happening around the world and he's experiencing it and everybody has trouble figuring out exactly how to do their jobs

in the context of that. But I'm glad you raised that. I think it's a really important issue. It's not going away anytime soon, unfortunately. A quick point on this, Chantal. Well, you know, for Justin Trudeau to call people bleeding hearts, what's your expression? Is that the butt calling the kettle black? Seriously, he wouldn't wear it really well. Kind of off-brand, I guess that's right. have been happening and on both the media, not that they doesn't exist,

but politicians both have a responsibility. One of those is fundraising. And it is a by-product of the fact that we don't allow corporate and big union donations to fund political parties in this country. So they finance themselves off individuals. It's been shown time and again that emotion and anger will drive you to give. Joy and satisfaction will rarely achieve it. And that has led the political discourse. I'm not pointing the finger at any party because

they have all been guilty of it in some way, shape, or form. To distort facts to their supporters, try to make them angrier than they should be, so as to raise money. So, one problem which politicians need to look at. I think if politicians do not want to die by the sword that they've been using, they need to try to be as factual as possible. And there is success in politics to be had by being factual rather than someone who fearmongers or distorts facts and makes the people who support them believe that the others are really bad. I used to have a rule when I wrote earlier on in The Star, and it was a tense moment in Canadian unity.

I would criticize sovereignists in French and federalists in English if I could, because I would have, if I'd done the opposite, I would have had a cheerleading crowd on both sides because I would have been playing to the prejudices of one to the other. I didn't think it would help. So I figured if I have a lot of bad things to say to the sovereignty movement, I can use my French outlets to do that. And I'll have less friends. I get less Christmas cards on that basis. The other one, the media thing, is clickbaiting. You saw it with the New York Times last weekend, people being driven away at gunpoint by police officers. That is clickbaiting of the worst kind. You want people to click, so you make the headline as aggressive as possible. It doesn't really matter what's beyond it.

At some point, in some instances, we have stretched the rule that says the headline should go to the very limit of what the story is into some other kind of land where if it clicks, it's good, as opposed to is also dangerous uh because it makes people kind of used to looking at the media not just the social media and and seeing this picture very aggressive black and white picture of everything uh which which does make them feel angry in general or disquieted and in the end we end we end up with a confidence crisis that reflects on the entire political class. You know, that's why I love this panel so much. Listening to you two on something like this is great, especially, well, both of you and what you had to say, but on the Chantal description of her challenge during those days writing on the Constitution or whatever unity issue was at play.

You know, Canadians like to think, Canadians who care about their journalism like to think that journalists actually spend some time thinking about what they're writing. And it's examples like that that give us a pause and reason to be proud of what, you know, certain Canadian journalists do. Bruce pointed out the other day the Andrew Coyne's piece column this week on misinformation. Excellent piece.

Another excellent piece where real thought was put into what he has written, and, you know, good for him. And good for us as a profession. I don't defend all journalists nor do any of us. If we're going to plug something other than our books, can I just… Oh, did I tell you about my book? Can I just recommend that people find their way to a text that Michelle Rample Garner wrote that was published, I think, yesterday. It's on various feeds.

It's a rather extraordinary piece about disinformation and its impact and why it needs to stop. And I think it was a great piece. It also kind of made me wonder, because it does have a few paragraphs in there that talk about her accomplishments, which are totally real, made me wonder whether she was thinking about running for the leadership. Well, it may explain why she wasn't in the shadow cabinet, I think, as well. But I, you know, I think, Peter, this is a really important point that we've seen at least a couple of examples of people who would normally kind of be a little bit quiet about this because the implication of kind of going at it as directly as both of them have is that, you know, people who see them as their kind of objective allies

might be upset with them. And so, good for them both to speak a truth that they observe as an important thing. And hopefully, more do as well. Because if journalists don't defend journalism against the encroachment of the clickbait phenomena and also disinformation, and if small C conservative politicians don't defend conservative politics from extremism and that fantasy world that we see, then who will? So, you know, there were a raise of reasons for optimism, for sure. And those were two. And there were others as well. Yeah. I've got to take my last break.

We'll come back and say one more thing on the conservative leadership race, because you gave us an entry point into that with Michelle Rempel-Garner's piece, which you can find, Chantal mentioned it, you can find it in a number of different places. I think the main place was theline.ca. I think so. You know, Jen Gerson's online kind of periodical that is available to you, theline.ca. Anyway, it's a really interesting piece, as Chantal mentioned.

Okay, quick pause and then a quick update on the conservative leadership race. All right, Peter Mansbridge in Toronto, Chantel Hebert in Montreal, and Bruce Anderson in Ottawa, back with some quick final thoughts on this episode of Good Talk. And it has been a great talk. Maybe we'll rename it for a week. Great talk. Okay.

Nobody's biting on that. Let me start. And we've only got a couple of minutes for this because we're not into the real edgy stuff of the leadership race yet. But Bruce had a shot at this the other day, and it's once again the Jean Charest thing, especially with Stephen Harper seemingly entering the fray with the suggestions that Jean Charest is not the person for the Conservatives right now. What do you know about all this, Chantal, and what impact is it having? I know the same thing as you guys know in the sense that we can all reap tea leaves,

and if you do not want to run for the leadership of something, the past week and a half would have been a good time to bury the story in the graveyard of the convoy in Ottawa and now the war on Ukraine and nothing has happened. So from everything I hear, Jean Chaguet at this point is just about in. That being said, I have covered people who were just about in and who went to sleep the night before they announced. I'm going to name Bernard Lourdes, former premier of New Brunswick, who was so sure to run that some of my colleagues

went with the story the night before. And then he woke up on the wrong side of the bed and pulled the plug on the decision. Chagrié himself had taped his I'm going in speech video the last time, and that did not. So I don't consider someone to be in unless that person is in, but I do expect that once the date is known, we will see one after the other, not only Jean Chaguet,

but Patrick Brown, Tasha Carradine, maybe Michelle Rempel, declare one way or the other. And we will have a sense of the lay of the land. And no, I don't believe that it is impossible to beat Pierre Poilievre if there is an early convention, as in June, as opposed to next fall. But I do note that in the middle of an Ontario election campaign, it's going to be a bit hard to organize in Ontario, a crucial place between now and June. So if that's the date, some Conservatives are going to take themselves out of the game, because they're going to be working with premier ford on this reelection bruce um i i think that uh chantal's right that people are you know properly not

jumping in because it is a very difficult decision to make um the the kind of the sense of the ability to accomplish something isn't everything that it once was. The psychic rewards are very limited. The psychic stress of being in public life is worse than it has been. And I can understand why a lot of people now would get close to deciding to get in and then decide not to uh that said i do think that jean-chere is has by his slight comments and lack of putting this story down has made it clear that he's interested in it and um and he's a very experienced person. So I think him having decided to let that happen was if you're him and you feel like the way that you would have to conduct yourself, the positions that you would have to embrace, the parts of the party that you would have to cultivate support from would require you to say

things that you don't really believe or behave in ways that you don't feel comfortable doing. That's the reason why somebody might back away at the last minute. On the other hand, if you're looking at it and saying, if somebody doesn't try to pull the party back towards the center and be willing to leave the fringes to some other candidate, then what is the future of a Conservative Party in Canada? What will it look like? What kinds of things will it campaign on? And there are some other names who could be trying to do the same thing. But Jean Charest is probably one of those who has enough profile and enough support expressed already from Quebec, that he would be a pretty good standard bearer for that. So I hope that's what he's thinking

about. Because I think that's the fight that the conservative party needs to have and how it decides is up to it. But, um, I'd like to have a strong standard bearer or several who, who say, let's leave the kind of the fringes to Max Bernier and, uh, and let's, uh, pull votes from the liberals on the center of the spectrum. Um, would, how strange would it be if there is an actual race you know with candidates in it who were regarded as serious candidates how strange would it be if there are none from the west it's been a lot of conservative candidates from the west so well they have not i'm not a leader since harper well yeah yes they did

let's agree on that uh for one two uh they were both ontario harper was an ontario guy who ran in alberta and capo my understanding is as an alberta guy who gets elected Alberta and Pierre Poiliev, my understanding is, is an Alberta guy who gets elected in Ottawa. So, I'm looking, you know, candidates from the West, sure, but possible candidates. We talked about Michelle Rempel. I'm not sure that she speaks French in a way that would make her someone who could go on a leaders' debate in an election. That is a major consideration.

And if Chagat does go in, by the way, it's going to be very hard for anyone else to get Quebec points in a leadership vote. Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to that really getting going. As Chantal said, either it's going to be, you know, there are probably people I'm sure would love it to be early, like in June. Others would like a little more time to get organized on this front

and have a real discussion and debate within the party. So we'll find out how that all plays out, one assumes, in the next weeks or early months. All right. Great discussion on some really key and important issues. Thank you both, Chantelle in Montreal and Bruce in Ottawa.

Next week, back to a normal week with lots to say. Well, I'm kind of feeling strange about the Mondays on the pandemic and on COVID and whether we keep doing that every Monday with an epidemiologist or somebody specializing in the medical field. I know Bruce wants us to leave it alone.

He doesn't want to talk about it anymore. Anyway, we'll make that decision next week. And then Smoke Mirrors and the Truth on Wednesday. Good talk next Friday. Thank you both. Have a great weekend. Thanks. Take care, you guys.

Good to talk to you again. Thanks for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk to you again on Monday. Thank you.