The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Are Leaders Losing Their Power?

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

The Conservative Caucus moves to be the deciders on whether their leader stays or goes.  Can that be contagious for other parties?  Chantal and Bruce have their thoughts on that.  Plus why has politics become so unattractive for potential candidates? Or has it?

Are you ready for good talk? Acana Pet Food, where every ingredient matters. Some companies like to brag about their first ingredient, but the Acana Pet Food team is proud of their entire bag. That's because every recipe has been thoughtfully sourced and carefully crafted with the highest quality ingredients, starting with quality animal ingredients, balanced with whole fruits and vegetables.

Acana Pet Foods are rich in the protein and nutrients your dog or cat needs to feel and look their best. Available in grain-free, healthy grains, and singles for sensitive dogs. Akana, go beyond the first ingredient. Roll Up to Win is back at Tim Hortons with more prizes than ever. This time you might roll a Tim card, a Samsung Galaxy smartwatch, a Hilton Getaway, or even the all-new 2022 Volkswagen Taos. You're allowed to push your luck a little because every roll wins. Just scan the Tim's app when making a purchase on select products and win

every time rules apply open to registered Tim's reward members in Canada. Only no purchase necessary. Full context details on the Tim Hortons app. Copyright Tim Hortons 2021. 2021 oh yeah good talk fridays chantelle's in montreal bruce is in ottawa um here's how i want to get started this week uh with a reminder of how margaret thatcher left her job as leader of the British Conservative Party. She didn't just suddenly decide, oh, you know, my time's up, I'm going to resign. She wasn't the loser at a convention,

a leadership convention. No, she was booted out by her own caucus while she was leader. They had decided they'd had enough of Margaret Thatcher. And they have the power to do that. Just her caucus, just her fellow MPs. Now, that's not been the case in Canada. And there's always been this debate about, does the leader of any particular party have just too much power, especially when they take office in terms of the government of Canada, that the PMO, the Prime Minister's office, has all the clout, makes all the decisions,

makes various MPs toe the line, not necessarily the party line, but the Prime Minister's line. Well, this week may well have been a significant moment in the history of that practice. Because the Conservative Party, post-election, at a time when many people were talking about can Aaron O'Toole survive, decided in their caucus meeting this week that they're going to give the caucus the power to determine, basically, the future of the leader. So the question here this morning on Good Talk is, how significant a moment was that in the history of Canadian politics? Because some could see this as a start, that it could become contagious, that other parties may move in the same direction. And if they did, and if in the case of the Conservatives they have,

is that a good thing for parliamentary democracy? What do we think of that? Bruce, why don't you start us this week? Well, I'm glad you started with an easy one peter because i like a lot of people probably i don't know for sure but a lot of people probably did this i stayed up really late last night i was reading this new book uh that's uh that's why he got to go first no uh i'm not gonna doubt the book that you wrote about yourself again this morning. You're in it.

You're both in it, as a matter of fact. I know, but it's just a picture of me in bad clothing and not really a story about me. So I'm OK with that. I'm just going to move on and shrug that often. I love that question because I do think that there has always been this kind of tension between do we give leaders and parties too much power? Should we relieve them of some of that power? Will it be a better functioning democracy if we do? And I don't think the answer is yes. I think the answer is we give them too much power, but I don't think that the solution that the conservatives have adopted right now is necessarily a solution that would make sense for

other parties to adopt or that will accomplish what they might hope that it accomplishes. And here's why. I think the conservative party right now is at least three parties underneath the hood. I think it's a kind of a Western, energy-oriented, really unhappy with anybody by the name of Trudeau party. And that kind of Western resentment of federal leadership, liberal or conservative for that matter, has been in place for a long time. And it's been a lot of the fuel of the modern Conservative Party and the Reform Party before that. I think the second element of the Conservative Party is the religious right. And those people are not as interested in those Western resentment issues or the energy issues or carbon pricing. They really have a singular focus on questions of social conservatism, including abortion. And then there are people in the center and in eastern parts of Canada

and other places as well who are fiscal conservatives, small government conservatives, small business conservatives who really don't share those senses of antagonism around the religious and the Western alienation issues. And they're just looking to help put together a conservative coalition that can form government. So if you said, well, the caucus can decide who should be the leader effectively for those three different factions, that caucus does not have what I would call proportional representation of those three groups within the party. The risk is that the caucus will keep on choosing leaders that underrepresent that kind of more centrist conservative, more fiscal and

small business conservative idea. So the Conservative Party will keep on finding itself in a situation where the leaders that it chooses are not quite tuned for the country as a whole, and maybe don't have the strength, because they haven't been elected by the membership at large, to stand up to a caucus that has strong opinions and strong personalities and that sort of thing. So it's a very interesting thing to watch. I don't think other parties should adopt it. I don't think they will. And I'm not sure it's the way that the Conservatives will solve this dilemma.

Okay. That's an interesting take. Chantal, what's yours? My understanding of the power that the Conservative caucus gave itself is that they have the power to remove the leader and appoint an interim leader, but it remains up to the leadership to pick a permanent leader, that whoever is selected to take over, say, from Erin O'Toole would have to either be someone who wants to run or someone who actually does not want to run and will take over caretaker duties while someone else is chosen. I've been looking back while we were getting ready at, you know, all the opposition leaders, for the most part, who have been shown the door by their parties. And, you know, that song, 60 ways to leave your lover, there are 60 ways to get rid of a leader. And now there is a 61st way to get rid of a leader,

which involves a vote in caucus. Before I move to the other parties, I'll just say about Aaron O'Toole and the fact that he is on the record as having voted for this power to be given to caucus. And it has been described as, you know, something now hanging over his head. But it's a two-edged sword. Leaders of the opposition, think Stockwell Day, John Turner, Joe Clark, have died from the death of a thousand cuts coming from their own caucuses. Anonymous voices, usually you've already seen them at work in the case of Aaron O'Toole, sources that will say whatever they want under the protection of anonymity. This allows a leader to do a put up or shut up move.

And in the case of Aaron O'Toole, at this juncture, at least, I suspect that if he put it to his caucus or his caucus supporters that he wants this vote to happen, he would win that vote. And silence his caucus critics by doing so. You need, for people who aren't aware of the mechanics, you need 20% of caucus to sign a letter to say we want to hold a leadership review vote. That process, if it is going to happen, will be known, but the vote will be a secret ballot. So if you're a leader that feels that there are a couple of mavericks who are having a really good day with the media by being anonymous, but you think you can silence them and tell the membership, I have the support of caucus.

You can also use this to your advantage. Will other parties take note and do so? Well, the NDP has already declined. The Bloc Québécois culture has been top down from the beginning. And you knew Lucien Bouchard, as I did. So no surprise that the culture of the Bloc is leader driven. They're not about to do this. They have housed the leader just before Mr. Blanchet,

Martin Ouellette, was housed by the membership. It goes back to the 60 ways to dispose of a leader. I don't think the liberals will go for it. I don't think Justin Trudeau should want them to go for it because I suspect that if that power had been given to the Liberal caucus when Jean Chrétien was on his third mandate and having a war with Paul Martin, caucus might have voted out a three-majority winner on a vote, and I'm not sure what that would have done to party unity. Yeah, there's a lot of ways to leave your lover exactly um i'm i'm wondering where where are we on this the central question forget about aaron o'toole forget about the current situation but where are we on this the central question of leader drivendriven politics. Is that, you know, I mean, leadership's got to mean something.

And one of the things it means is you lead the party. But leader-driven politics inside Canada's parliament, is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't think so. In fact, I think it's necessary. I hear the arguments of people who say, well, the role of the backbencher is too limited and their voices are not heard. And I get that. But I also think that if you want a recipe for chaos, you just allow a situation to develop where leaders can say whatever they want and then MPs will say whatever they want. And then we don't really know what a party stands for any longer. Now, I'm taking it to an extreme, but there is a reason, I guess, why leaders get to choose what policies will be in the platform.

Leaders get to, have to, green light candidates. I saw our friend Andrew Coyne was opining the other day about this whole question of should leaders have the final say in the selection of candidates. And I can understand, and I'm not picking on his argument particularly. A lot of people have made this point over time that shouldn't the constituency associations get to choose the candidate? Why does the leader have a veto? Well, we all kind of like that position until a bad candidate gets chosen and then it's all on the leader.

And so the leader has to be the person who's accountable for the platform that the party represents, the candidates that run under the banner of the party, and the conduct of the party in the House of Commons on major pieces of legislation. Now, that still leaves room for individuals to stand it and often do in caucus meetings as a way of bending the curve of the decisions that their caucus are making, influencing their peers in caucus, trying to start a different discussion in their party about the direction that they should go in. if that isn't happening within the Liberal Party, starting now with more vigor as we probably head into some sort of a leadership race a couple of years down the road. Maybe not one year, Peter. Excuse me, how many years down the road? A couple, maybe. I don't think one. I heard you say one. So are you suggesting then that it would be after another election or before? No, before. I think before. I don't see another election for three years, to be honest. And I think that...

You are now on the record that there will be some kind of a leadership issue facing the Liberal Party before the next election. On the record, again. On the record record again. On record again. I'm mostly interested in the fact that he is on the record. There's no election for three years. That's duly noted. There is always.

Soon he'll be on the record in many ways. I was listening to Bruce describe a party where everyone has their say. And it's hard to know what the stance is and who the leader speaks for. And I thought he was describing the Green Party under its outgoing leader. Exactly. That is exactly what we have seen. There is only so much collegiality that a party can entertain before voters start asking, well, who are these people and what does this party actually stand for? Aaron O'Toole had that problem in a different way and to a degree because he had campaigned,

saying one thing to the party and campaigned to voters cast as some other character. And the questions started to be asked from inside and outside. The last party with serious representation in the House of Commons to attempt some kind of collegiality along those lines would have been the Reform Party under Preston Manning. Remember, Mr. Manning would not sit in the front row at first to ask his questions, and his MPs were given a lot of leeway. Meanwhile, the Bloc Québécois was operating, also a new party under very strict top-down discipline. Guess who ran into trouble with Yahoo stories and who did not? And I've always assumed that Stephen Harper, who was part of that first group of reform MPs, looked at the Lucien Bouchard's management of his caucus, which went far beyond anything we'd been used to,

before the Bc came in strength to the hill. Journalists could interview MPs, as you well know, just meeting them in an all-way. When Lucien Bouchard arrived, he made it a rule that you needed to get permission from the leader's office to talk to any journalist. And when people say, you know, Stephen Harper was a dictator, he was very top-down, I think he got that from Lucien Bouchard in watching how he handled a rookie party to make sure that the crazies did not surface. Thomas Mulcair also kept his large Quebec caucus

mostly in rain in the same way, paid a price for that, you'd say. So, leader-driven, name me some Bloc MPs beyond Yves-François Blanchet. The party's been relatively successful. Can you remember a Coalition Avenir Québec convention? That would be Premier Legault's political vehicle. I have not noticed that he's sharing that driver's seat with this party. So, one, voters reward discipline from parties. And two, they are not terribly preoccupied with the leader-centric culture.

Can I just pick up a thread on that too, Peter? Sure. I really believe that caucus management is an important skill. And this is where I think Chantal was going, right? Or that's the point she made, really, which is that just because we might say that you need to have a leader who gets to make these decisions doesn't mean that the leader is well advised to ignore the people in his caucus. And I do think one of the things that's

a trouble sign for Aaron O'Toole right now is that a number of his caucus members felt like the platform came from somewhere that they didn't understand, didn't feel consulted on. And when you have a caucus of people who've been in office for a while and who have relationships with their constituency associations and they're gearing up for an election, if you drop on them a platform that they don't intuitively love and then they have to go out and run on it, it's going to cause some friction. And if you also don't give profile to your local candidates when you're campaigning with them, to your front benchers, who you need to be seen as people who can be individuals of stature in a government if you win the election, then you're courting trouble. It isn't as though

they can take you out immediately for that. But the saying that I remember learning first in politics was what goes around comes around. And if you treat people a certain way in a situation where you have all of the power and none of the risk, don't be surprised if people return the favor at some point. So that's a just a it's not just about Aaron O'Toole. It's a general kind of rule of the road for leaders not to overuse their authority and to inculcate a sense of dialogue and friendship and camaraderie and teamwork. And for my money, Brian Mulrooney was the best at that, that I've ever seen, just in terms of being able to get into trouble politically and have policies that people thought were pretty controversial and be polling at 12 or 14%. And still his caucus every day would say, we'll go into battle with you, no matter what, because you are our boss and we trust you and you care about us.

And that's a really interesting dynamic. And he spent a lot of time massaging that caucus and ensuring that everybody in that caucus felt they were wanted and needed by him. Which was no easy trick, right? The Conservative Party has long had that kind of rambunctiousness that can drive leaders crazy. He did it very well. of Brian Mulroney standing by the piano and singing for his caucus. Yeah. I'm not sure Aaron O'Toole should take singing lessons, but for sure, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chaguet, who learned that trick from Brian Mulroney because that is where he did his political classes,

also was served well by his caucus management at a time when things were really going downhill for him in Quebec. I think Chagé, up to a point, was almost better than his master at that because he inherited a party that did not know him, that was not his party, that Quebec Liberal Party was not his family. He had that training season with Elsie Wayne in Ottawa. Remember that? Yes, probably one entire Quebec Liberal caucus was easier to manage than one Elsie Wayne.

I totally agree with that. Let me just make one last comment on this topic before we move on. And, you know, Chantal mentioned, I think Bruce mentioned as well, that, you know, it's not surprising when you see a party leader say one thing in a campaign and do another when they're in office. Same with one thing when they're running for the leadership, another thing when they actually attain the leadership.

I can remember sitting with Justin Trudeau across the river from Parliament Hill in the 2015 campaign, right at the beginning. We were doing leader interviews with all the major leaders. And it was doing, Justin Trudeau was the leader of the third party at that point. And I talked to him about this whole issue of, you know, leader-driven politics and had it gone too far and should there be more power and respect for those who weren't in the leader's office. And, of course, he did the whole absolutely, absolutely, we've got to do that.

And I said, well, when did this start to really happen? When did the PMO take over control of everything? He said, well, it was my father. And he sort of called out Pierre Trudeau, saying that that's when it really started in terms of a prime minister's office running a show and not allowing any kind of independent thought from MPs within the party, and that he wouldn't let that happen. Well, I don't know.

I'm not sure anything's changed for any of the parties, that they all have seen that. In fact, for all the things they used to say about Trudeau, many of the leaders since, if not all the leaders, prime ministers, have kind of run things exactly the same way. I found just on this point, if you go back, Brian Malroney gave his ministers a lot more leeway than ministers, because it's not just caucus, seems to have diminished with every prime minister, less independent thinking out loud and more party lines. And that's been a trend that has not been reversed under Justin Trudeau. On the contrary, sometimes you think that he has become himself a captive of the spin machine of the PMO.

You know, Peter, one of the things that is the most useful, if not always easy to spot, tools that leaders use to manage this dynamic is the fact that almost everybody who runs for office and is elected has a degree of ambition that's higher than the average person, not to put too fine a point on it. And they want recognition and they have aspirations for, you know, more authority, more influence, maybe a cabinet role. And so those are often seen as kind of perks that leaders can bestow on people who are loyal and take away from people or deny to people who aren't. And I think that it does work that once you get elected for the first time, the idea of being able to move up the ladder and have more influence becomes all the more important. And anytime your caucus gets to be too large, every leader who's had a large caucus has experienced that this gets harder because more people in your caucus wake up every day knowing that they're never going to be in

cabinet, that they've had one turn as a parliamentary secretary and probably won't get a second. And so there's really, other than the odd committee role, there's not that many other opportunities for them to have an impact if they are looking for visibility and a kind of a broader sense of who they are and what they've done. So that's an interesting dynamic. And I think Aaron O'Toole has a challenge on his hands in that respect as well. And as he thinks about his shadow cabinet, the choices that he makes relative to this new caucus power are really going to be important choices to watch because he's probably in that mode where he has to build a kind of a guard that will defend him, but at the same time not ignore those people who might be looking to take his job. You know, it's taken almost three weeks, but it's good to hear Bruce making the argument that smaller party caucuses

or caucuses are better than larger ones, and therefore, obviously, the natural extension of that argument would be minority governments have the smallest caucuses, caucuses. So, therefore, obviously, the minority government was the right way to go. All right. It is easier to run your caucus up to a point in a government caucus if you have a minority government. Bill Davis did that for a long time in Ontario in the late 70s. Because you can tell the more extreme elements of your caucus, and I suspect Stephen Harper is also done that, that what is staring them in the face if they insist on pushing

in that direction is an election where they may or may not get re-elected on the government side of the House. Okay, we're going to move on. But before we move on, we take this quick break. Back with Chantelle Hebert in Montreal, Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. You're listening to Good Talk on the bridge right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, Bruce mentioned we're going to move on to a a related topic in a way uh i mentioned this on yesterday's uh episode of the bridge and it did provoke a number of uh emails coming in from viewers who were really injured listeners

really interested in finding out what you two thought of this in terms of why and what the implications are here's the story it's a quebec story hundreds of quebec mayors elected unopposed as nomination period ends in fact hundreds is right 572 mayoral candidates in que Quebec had been declared elected because they were unopposed. And that represents over half of those posts in Quebec. And not only that, in 11 cases, nobody ran for mayor. Nobody at all.

They couldn't interest anybody. Now, most of these are smaller communities. But nevertheless, that's a lot. And I'm wondering, I mean, there can be any number of reasons, as we suggested yesterday, as to why people go unopposed. But also, I guess the question is is has it become less and less attractive to run for um public service for run for in you know many mayors aren't aren't aren't political in the sense they don't declare for any particular party but um but has it become less interesting less attractive

for people to run for public office and if that's the case man we got a problem um bruce do you want to start again houston we do have a problem it's a real problem. It's become so much less appealing to run in the period of time since the first election that I worked in, which was 1978, 1979, I guess. And I think there are a number of reasons for it. Just to think back to what campaigns were like on a local level then, there were lots of volunteers. The normal course of campaigns included multiple all-candidates meetings that were attended by significant proportions of the riding. I don't want to overstate that, but right now, in a lot of writings, there are no all candidates meetings, or at least there are some, but not all candidates attend. And it kind of speaks to a kind of a weakening of attachment with the political process that results in a sense of

I'm running, but does anybody really even know that I'm running? Does anybody ever hear what it is that I have to say about myself if I'm a candidate and what I believe in and who I am as an individual? Or is it just a party vote? I think part of the problem that we've got into does have to do with our electoral system. And I'm not necessarily in favor of reform of it, but I do recognize that recruiting people to run for parties that don't look like they can win in a riding or nationally is harder to do. And I gathered in the run-up to this election that the NDP was really having trouble fielding a full slate of candidates. And I don't remember sensing that they had as big a problem at any election

before. I think the Conservatives and the Liberals also didn't have all of their candidates picked as early as I might have expected them to, despite the fact that it was a minority government. Now, maybe that's partly pandemic related, but I think the broader issue that we're running into is that it's something we've seen for a while. I just think that it's become exacerbated in the days of social media, which is that you move from becoming somebody who's, you know, got a career, maybe made a contribution in the community, it's sort of developed a network of people who like you and support you and think good things of you. And then you decide to run and all of a sudden, you're somebody who's an object of a little bit of suspicion and skepticism. And you're seen as somebody who's kind of looking to make more money than you deserve

and do things that have to do with your ego rather than the public interest. And that's kind of hard to spot for some people going in. But some people, I think, just look at politics from a distance and say, if I ever thought about doing that, it doesn't feel like a good choice for my life right now. And that's even before you get to the fact that it's quite disruptive for families. For some people, it's the best job and the best paying job they will ever have. And for other people, it's a very serious or significant economic sacrifice. I don't think we talk about those issues enough. I think we owe it to ourselves as a society to value candidates more. And if we don't start to reverse that process at some point, we're going to see

more problems of the kind that you identified in the Quebec data that you cited. Chantal? Just a point on the NDP having trouble running a full slate. How do you think Jack Layton ended up getting people elected who didn't know they would have to show up on Parliament Hill or were playing poker in Vegas during the campaign. So this is not a new NDP problem. It's a recurring problem. Maybe Thomas Mulcair had less of that problem because he ran the party when it was in official opposition. And because the orange wave would make you believe in miracle,

more people would say, well, I'm going to take a chance on this. Look at all those Quebec MPs who got themselves elected and never expected to have to put their university degree on hold to go sit and become an MP in the House of Commons at the ripe age of 19 years old. I remember my friend Jean Lapierre when he was the Quebec lieutenant to Paul Martin telling me one day that, you know, as the Quebec lieutenant, he would get to introduce star recruits in an election. I'm not sure if it was the 04 or 06, well, probably 2006, he had gone to Sherbrooke and they'd recruited a top candidate who was the dean or director at the University of Sherbrooke, someone who'd really made a name for himself. And he had told me, you know, I walked into the room with a respected academic and I walked out of the room, and this is against the background of the sponsorship scandal, with someone who was suddenly considered a thug and a thief because he was running in politics for the Liberal Party in that election.

Didn't win the riding, by the way. That being said, on the municipal front, there is also what is interesting and what is less rewarding. Quebec, like other provinces, has gone through a period of amalgamation where it has made some of its larger cities larger. battles for the job of mayor and for the municipal council ongoing at this point, where the acclamations have tended to happen has been in smaller places where you're almost a volunteer. You get literally no pay. And not only that, if you're going to be running against someone who is already in place and you live in a small community, there may be a social price to pay for that because it's a very divisive exercise to challenge an incumbent.

But what I found most troubling was that a number of incumbents municipally in this round announced that they were not running again because the environment created by the social media was so toxic that they had had enough and they did not want to re-offer. That is new as opposed to what has been going on in the past. Now, if you look at federal politics, the number of defeated incumbents who re-offer is really high. It's like junkies who really want to go back to that drug. Well, that decrease over time, well, more and more people defeated or retired

decide that they're happy to be out of that environment and it's too toxic. Big question mark. But that trend, I find more disquieting of people saying, I can't put up with this, often women, than the notion that people were acclaimed in a variety of smaller venues. And I add one thing on that, because Chantal raised this, and I think the three of us should talk about it for a minute because it's material in journalism as well as in politics. And it's very topical right now, but there's no reason why it should just be topical right now. We've seen it developing for some time, and that is the treatment of women in particular on social media platforms. And, you know, we've been more and more aware lately that

female journalists are experiencing an awful lot of abuse. And happily, that is being kind of surfaced more as an issue. And I think news organizations are trying to figure out what to do about it. But there's going to take it's going to take a bigger collective will more persistently applied. And I don't really know what those solutions are to solve some of this, because it's terrible right now. And, you know, when Chantal said, you know, maybe disproportionately women thinking about not resubmitting for life, it wasn't because they're kind of weaker stamina for this sort of thing. It's terrible what women go through, and men don't go through the same thing. There's no question that there are rotten things said about men in politics, but nowhere near, in my view, of the nature that women are exposed to.

So I hope that that becomes a bigger part of the discussion of how we kind of heal our politics so that people who get in there don't feel as though the only platforms really that they have, whereby they can communicate their point of view or the things that they believe in or the work that they're doing to constituents become completely polluted by in some cases bots but in some cases just people who um who think that it's uh it's a kind of a fun hobby almost to uh to hurl horrible horrible insults at at people in public life and part of the problem here is it's a general issue in some elements of social media, you know, not just for female politicians, but for females in general. Yeah. And I'm not sure what the answer is. I mean, we watched these hearings going on in the States this week on Facebook, and it's as if these congressmen and congresswomen, you know, have been on the moon for the last 10 years.

It's not like they suddenly discovered that awful things have been happening on social media and Facebook in particular in these last few years. But it's up front, and it's there now. And the question is, what are they going to do about it? And the same questions apply here. I mean, you talked about abuse for journalists. I mean, I do not recall the last election campaign in Canada, federal campaign anyway, where news organizations had to consider protection for their journalists at some rallies, the same way they have protection for their journalists on overseas conflicts.

I mean, that's crazy that we've wound up kind of heading in that direction. Back to what raised this topic in terms of candidates, male and female. I mean, I can recall, and it's not that long ago, I think it's only the last couple of campaigns that I haven't seen it, but the networks used to commission, and so did the papers, commission pieces on the star candidates running for whichever party. And there'd always be, you know, four to six star candidates, well-known people, you know, business leaders who, you know, left the vice presidency of a bank or the head of an insurance company or.

You mean Mark Carney. Or Mark Carney who punted, right? I mean, maybe he's just standing on the sidelines waiting for the right moment to be whistled into the into the game I don't know but I do mean that kind of person and it's not just business leaders it's athletes it's people from the arts and entertainment area and parties would showcase their star candidates and there were enough of them to do individual pieces. They're the liberal star candidates for this campaign or the conservatives or the NDP.

But I haven't seen one of those pieces in the last two election campaigns. You don't see that. I certainly don't see enough of those to create a whole item on it, which also gives you a sense of where we are in the times and how unattractive running for office may be. But the long-term implications of that are not good on any level. In the last 10 years, I sort of half expected that a lot of people who were my peers in terms of

age and worked in fields that I come in contact with, maybe clients, just my network of people that I've come to know over my professional life, I expected to see a number of them do the thing that people have always done in my lifetime, which is start to wonder if maybe the time was right for them to run for public office. And I've had conversations with many of them over the years, over the last decade. And almost without exception, they've expressed something that sounds like, I always thought I would be interested in it and maybe now would be the right time, but it doesn't feel like a healthy or positive thing to do in my life or for my family.

And I'm not sure that I could take the point that Chantal was making of moving from being somebody who's sort of built a life where your community respects you and turn into somebody who is seen as an object of derision or skepticism or abuse. And we all know the highest profile examples of people who suffered this. And we should recognize that when situations like developed with Catherine McKenna, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, and then infrastructure, that doesn't just affect one person, that affects a whole array of other people in the community who might be thinking about running. And it's to her credit that she says it shouldn't, that people should still run. But I think a lot of people will look at that kind of example and say, what are we going to do about this?

But I don't want to be the one who figures out what we're going to do about it and pays with my reputation and my mental health and my sense of a loss of privacy or whatever. So, you know, I think leaders have to take a position. I think the media have to play a firm role in this. I think the social media solutions that we find elusive right now, we need to find. Do you want a last word on this, Chantal? Well, name candidates, use that instead of star candidates, do have a pattern of surfacing mostly when there is a change election or changes in the air remember stephen harper recruited tony clement john barrett and and flaherty uh who had been you know who had a track record in ontario polarizing possibly but still made for a heavier team than they they that side of the spectrum and put forward uh over a number of years and got to power and justin trudeau came up with christian frean and Bill Morneau and Jody Wilson-Raybould.

And it was also at the time of a change election. I don't think this election was really a change election or that a lot of work was put into nurturing named candidates on the liberal side because they already have a full complement in cabinet and you can only recruit so many before you start having internal tensions around the table as to whose seat is this guy or this woman going to take from me. And in the case of the conservatives, you know, Aaron O'Toole this week made a point that we forget because it's been that kind of a time. But this was the first time that Erin O'Toole, since he became leader, physically met with this caucus. That is what the pandemic

has done to federal politics. So forget about going around convincing people to be your finance minister if you win. You don't even get to meet face-to-face with your caucus. It makes a difference to meet face-to-face versus meeting virtually in a place where you can mute and then go vent somewhere else instead of seeing that there are others who think like you and having a discussion. There's also an interesting pattern that I've seen here about a decade ago, a bit more than that, journalists would run, well-known journalists would run for office on both sides of the fence. I've had colleagues run for the Parti Québécois, the Liberal Party. Now, politicians are leaving politics to become television pundits. And there's a whole industry of it out there, not exclusively, but in particular on the French side of the media divide.

I find that movement fascinating because 20 years ago, that wasn't the case. But now there are probably more ex-politicians opining on politics on TV and radio in Quebec than journalists ever considering running for office. Follow the money. There was an for office. Follow the money. There was an old line. Follow the money. I think you remember this. A politician who went to a lobbyist's house years and years and years ago, and the house is fairly elegant, and the politician said,

it looks like it's better to know me than to be me. And I think the analog that Chantal is relating to is it's better to criticize a politician than to be me. And I think the analog that Chantal is relating to is it's better to criticize a politician than to be a politician. And maybe the politicians who bid in office know that more acutely than the journalist might suspect. That's a great story. I remember that story,

and I remember the two individuals in it but uh but we'll we'll keep their names anonymous for this moment being a bit of a tease here now you're gonna get mail for that yeah that's okay well one of them's deceased at the moment so we're not just at the moment they're deceased um nevertheless uh moving on i'm going to take my final break and then come back with a short thanksgiving type question for the two of you and that's right after this All right, back for final thoughts with Chantelle Ibera in Montreal, Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. This is Thanksgiving weekend. And while we are prone to spend a lot of time talking about the things

that we wish were different, and we've talked about some of them already here today. We can still find room in our space here for a little Thanksgiving of our own. I mean, what, you know, as we head into this weekend, what are we and what are you in particular grateful for? What will you be thanking for this weekend? Chantal, you got some thoughts on that? That it will not be the same Thanksgiving as last year,

that we will not spend it in boxes and look at each other on a screen eating whatever, turkey or whatever. And I think a lot of Canadians should be thankful that we did get through this. It's not over, but we're here, still here. That's progress. Yeah, it is progress. And grateful for those who have stood for us in terms of trying to protect us through this really difficult time.

And, you know, remembering the almost 30,000 Canadians who haven't made it through all this. But as you say, Chantal, it's not over yet. Bruce? Similar, but I think on a larger level for me, the reflection of how our democracy functions with all of its weaknesses and missteps and human foibles and everything else, we navigated this pandemic more successfully than might have been the case.

And certainly when I look at the way that the US allowed the pandemic to become a more polarizing and destructive force, and we didn't do that. We have had divisions about this, and we do still, but small divisions around vaccination. And we've got one or two jurisdictions, which are kind of outliers in terms of the outcomes because the policy choices were different, but the ship of Canadian opinion and Canadian politics is moving in a positive direction everywhere. And so there's a lot for us to,

to be thankful for if we look around the world and see the problems in the UK as a result of Brexit and the problems in the US because of polarization and everything else and to recognize that we avoid the worst of those kinds of things here. And it's because we have a vibrant democracy where people can express their point of view and and challenge ideas and and it's it's messy sometimes but it's it's productive too you know i i i always think back to my dad when we moved to uh to canada showing the the big map of canada and saying this is like this country is huge just look at how how far it extends from one ocean to another and up to the third ocean, being the Arctic.

And as big as it is and as much as you'd like to say, man, something that big can't be governable, in fact, it actually is governable. We may have our issues with the way it's government governed and i don't mean in partisan way but just simply you know the different structures of government um but it does kind of work and the people uh in it try to find ways even when we know there are issues that we have to confront and we've talked about them often um when crises hit it does actually kind of perform like a nation i mean a year ago when certain parts of the country were in

real difficulty because of of the pandemic albertans stepped up and helped by sending stuff to other parts of the country now alberta is going through its own hell and it's it's a bad one and and other parts of the country are moving to try and help as best they can and that's always nice to see and nice to witness and something to be grateful and uh and thankful for um so wherever you are on this uh thanksgiving weekend we hope you take time and pause to give thanks to whomever and whatever you wish to give thanks to. Bruce and Chantel, thank you, as always, for a good talk. I'll let you get back to your book, Bruce.

I know that you're plowing through it. I want a second reading of it now. I couldn't resist he's always gonna get the first answer now that's right okay you guys take care and uh we'll talk again in a week's time somehow i know bruce is going to be overseas i'll be overseas in a couple of weeks but we're still going to figure all this out because people love good talk. And we've got to keep giving it. Chantel, Bruce, thank you.

And to our listeners for good talk, thanks for listening. Talk to you again. Thank you, guys. Take care. Bye. Monday's off. It's a holiday. Back on Tuesday.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.