The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Are The Liberals Out of Gas?

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

After hinting the Liberal's solution for inflation would be in a speech by the finance minister yesterday, observers were left disappointed. Are the Liberals out of ideas and adrift?  Chantal Hebert and Rob Russo (filling in this week for Bruce Anderson) have their thoughts on that, plus some analysis on Pierre Poilievre and things Conservative.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. Welcome to June 17th, 2022. The significance of that date, of course, is 50 years ago today. 50 years ago, half a century ago today, was the Watergate break-in. Now look at what's changed since then. Pretty much everything's changed since that day. Things have changed in politics. Although if you look at the states right now, today and this week and the past week, you wonder, Jesus, looks awful like a lot like it did 50 years ago.

The media has changed the way it covers politics. The whole issue of investigative journalism changed on that night. Started slow, but it's moved to where we see things today and the state of journalism and the questions that are raised about that however that's not what we're here to talk about Jean Talley bears in Montreal Rob Russo joins us today from Ottawa filling in for Bruce who is is off on this day okay so here's how I'd like to start we We've had the big buildup for the last few days that the government was going to come in with the finance minister, deputy prime minister, Christia Freeland, have the big speech on inflation. Here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to fight it.

Put people's minds at ease because people's minds are not at ease with everything from gas prices to, you know, egg prices, you name it. Everything seems to have gone through the roof. Interest rates are up. You know, some of us are starting to paint a picture that's starting to look familiar to those of us who survived the inflation fights of 40 years ago. So the speech comes yesterday and, you know, I don't know maybe maybe i looked at it wrong but didn't seem like there was anything in there that i hadn't heard before and it's left people wondering do these guys get it and these guys are you know the liberals the government of the day do they get it do they understand what people are going through do they understand what people are

expecting that they want to hear from their government on any number of different things it's been a pretty peculiar last week or two for the liberals daily that seems there's been some you know mini scandal of sorts so do they get it chantal well probably uh not in the sense that the opposition parties rather unanimously would agree. And that's not just because the opposition party is meant to say that. You said you couldn't find anything that was very new. And we all share, I think, the same passion for budgets. We're not terribly keen on them and we probably don't reread them every night, but it was a rereading of excerpts from the budget. A lot of how Canadians feel

about rising prices is psychological and the need to have someone say, here's the old mantra, we have your back on this. Don't worry. We'll see you through this. I think that speech failed to meet that mark, and I'm not even sure that that was the mark that the speech was trying to hit in a number of ways. The first is context. If you're going to be doing that we have your backs thing, you probably would not choose to do so on Bay Street in Toronto to a business crowd. That's one. Two, the news release from the speech read like a condensate of some of the measures of

the budget. The speech itself, though, sounded like a political response to, one, Bill Morneau, former finance minister, and his criticism about the lack of a serious productivity agenda on the part of the government. Not that it provided a lot of solid issues to say, no, we are addressing it. But Chrystia Freeland went out of her way in a couple of paragraphs to say, no, no, no, no, we are on this. That's not something that is a response to the average Canadian really looking at his grocery bill as he's on the way out or she to feed a family or the families that are receiving these bigger mortgage payment bills that are coming in at this point. The section of the speech that dealt with that, and that is a serious issue for a lot of people who are struggling to juggle gas prices,

grocery prices, and mortgage, had more to do with a response to Pierre Poilier, the CPC leadership candidate who says he would fire the governor of the Bank of Canada. So a political speech with partisan undertones directed at the business audience to be told for the average Canadian, the takeaway is, the government has already done all that it needs to do. Now, don't worry, be happy. No, I don't think it hit the mark. Okay, Rob, your thoughts. And I should remind everybody, Rob is, of course,

the former bureau chief for the CBC on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. So whenever I was in Ottawa in my old job, Rob was my boss. But he was also Bureau Chief for Canadian Press in Ottawa. And before that, he worked for CP in Washington. So lots of experience here, too. A variety of different speeches by different people in different places. So, Rob, what was your take on yesterday? Well, look, they have an economic problem, and they also have a political problem.

There's not much, based on the speech, there was an admission that there's not much they can do about the economic problems, the problems facing the Liberal government on gasoline prices, on food prices, on recession or tumbling markets, on supply chain blockages, on the war abroad. These are all issues that are out of their control. So what can they do? They can, as Chantal said, canadians know that they they are aware of the fact that every time they go in to buy a pound of bacon or or uh some chicken legs they're they're looking at 20 increases in the cost of their food bill um but they they you know their dilemma is they can't do much about it so as a communication exercise exercise, was it a success? I'm not sure that it is. I'm not sure Christy Freeland is the best person who can convey this sense that we feel

the pinch. She is very learned. She's very academic. But there are not a lot of people who can take complex economic policy and boil it down to its essence and make it connect with voters. I'm not sure that she's there yet. I don't think she succeeded yesterday. Well, what can they do? What can governments do in a situation like this? Well, they can stay with the bank and raise interest rates. They're doing that. But every time they do that, they risk throwing people out of jobs. And if you don't have a job, you can't even afford to pay the increased rates. And the other problem they have, it's a political problem, is some of the things that they can do, like cut the GST or reduce gasoline taxes.

While there are rivals across the aisle, the conservatives, have already come up with those policies. So, you know, you talk to liberals around town and they're loathe to do that kind of thing because it would, in a sense, give the conservatives, Pierre Poindez, whoever might lead the conservatives, a political victory. So policy-wise, they're stuck. Communications-wise, I don't know that they have reached the apogee of their effort in terms of trying to make Canadians understand that they also feel their pain. But that's what the attempt was. It was an attempt before everybody goes away from the summer and starts to buy a steak, if they can afford a steak or a hamburger,

and start grilling it, that they know that they're going to have, you know, their eyes popped every time they go into that meat aisle in the grocery store. Oh, you kind of hyped the speech so that the headlines are nothing new under the sun. That's great. Yeah, but as economic policy, I think it could have been worse. When you look at what Legault and what Ford have done in terms of providing checks directly to voters ahead of election, that doesn't exactly help the inflationary cycle.

It actually makes it worse. They didn't do that. So sometimes doing nothing isn't necessarily a bad thing. But you've got to be able to communicate that you're feeling people's pain in a way that doing nothing is effective. And I'm not sure that they got that. I think both Paul Martin and Jim Flaherty, to talk about previous finance ministers, would have been better suited to the times. Not because they were better finance ministers. That's not what I'm saying, but they have that connection that went beyond

a speech on Bay Street or to a business audience or to an academic audience to say, let me run you through my course for today because you are not that good a pupil. And that comes across a bit like that when you're listening to it. Inflation, recession, all those terms are meaningless to someone who is facing those bills and those three combined hits, mortgage, housing, gas, groceries, and you're saying, well, this is great because they're doing nothing, so it is probably the best course. Maybe you want to do nothing quietly in that case. As for the cut in the GST and not giving any credit to the conservatives, where did we lose this great liberal habit of stealing their rivals' better ideas? Is that reflex suddenly dead, or are they so in a partisan bubble

that they think the world is keeping score on who said what first when actually the only people keeping score on that are a tiny section of the world that has to do with either because rob and i are paid to do so or because they sit in and around the house of commons yeah i i agree with chantal on that i you know governments are elected to govern and if they believe in something as a good policy, who cares where it came from? And the liberals certainly have a history of stealing, if you wish, from others. Stole a lot from the NDP over the years.

They stole from the conservatives. They took wage and price controls in 75 away from, you know, Stanfield had campaigned on that in 74. Now they paid the price for doing that in 79, but it was only a nine month uh penalty that they uh they took in the penalty box but you know as far as i'm see i i don't understand the argument against if you believe that it actually would make a difference to have a kind of tax holiday one or two points off the gst for a year

or two years same with gasoline taxes then do it you know add it to you know something else that you you you have of your own and just just do it like who cares the election's not for three years yeah you're gonna have to worry about where it came from if if it works. So I've never quite understood that argument. Rob, you want to say something? But keep in mind, they're getting wealthier on it. They have more money to spend. Inflation is actually increasing government revenues, giving them more leeway to spend on their programs

or improving the bottom line that they will show to voters in three years. Voters who by then might be so angry that they're still going to be taking it out on the liberals. Yeah. You can't have it both ways. You're right about that. Rob? Well, I was just going to say that a lot of economists will argue it needs to cut in GSTs because it actually helps richer people, right? Who can afford to buy bigger stuff rather than poor people can't afford to buy. You know, the difference on the GST between a Mercedes to a Toyota is significant.

So it's another reason why they say it's not a great idea to cut consumption taxes, although the liberals don't want to cut consumption taxes on things like fuel because they're in a box on the environment as well, right? They have to make certain commitments on the environment as well right they they have to have to make certain uh commitments on the environment which they haven't made and that's one of the things i think that we should get into when we talk about the the fortunes of the liberals i am stuck we

talked about 74 75 on on how trudeau the younger and trudeau the elder are are beset by the same circumstances and maybe making the same mistakes are beset by the same circumstances and may be making the same mistakes with with getting into structural deficits after promising smaller deficits uh and and with getting into some uh into an inflationary cycle that they have little to do with uh some of that being the result of oil shocks you know there was an oil shock in 73 because of war in the middle east and it's it's amazing to see how uh the the younger is is in many ways befalling the same fate as as the elder trudeau and it's a you know no matter how you may feel about the trudeaus um if there was one thing that does seem to be common between the two of them is their misunderstanding, misreading, and mishandling of the economy. Even Trudeau the elder admitted that by the end of his time, that the one thing he never really kind of understood was the economy well enough to manage it. And here we're now witnessing Trudeau the Younger being, you know,

hit hard by the economy with no indication that things are about to get any better. Chantal, you wanted to? Two points. One of the things that you'll hear, fairly or unfairly, but the perception is out there, is that Chrystia Freeland is a part-time finance minister, that she is so taken up with her duties as deputy prime minister and with the foreign affairs file in Ukraine

that she's actually not full-time on finance. I was struck last week, we did on a French Pazou Canada show, we did the look back at the session and one of my colleagues referred to the foreign affairs team on Trion Verrett, on Justin Trudeau's team, and he named Christia Freeland, Mélanie Jolie, and Anita Annan. I thought, when was it that I ever heard of the Minister of Finance being part of the

leading team on foreign affairs? And I'm not saying he was wrong. He was right. But this is not a great time for a deputy prime minister to be in on everything. The other point I wanted to make is the reason why this government has a long timeline and time enough to shape up over the summer and possibly get out of these end of spring doldrums that they are in, and they extend beyond Christian Freeland and inflation, is because they have a deal with the NDP will bail out of that agreement because they will not be able to afford to continue to be associated

with a government that is perceived like that by voters that they need to survive in the next election. Okay, I want to talk more about this. But before we do that, I got to take our about this. But before we do that, I've got to take our first break. Here it is. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal.

Rob Russo filling in for Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa today. You're listening on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. All right. If the Liberals win the next election, three years down the road, perhaps, unless the deal with the NDP falls apart. If they win that election, it will be quite an achievement. It hasn't been done in, what, 120 years or so?

Four mandates in a row for the Liberals, that would be, okay, I'm getting the finger of fate. Four mandates in a row, yes. Paul Martin came out with three to ten mandates. Four mandates in a row, yes, Paul Martin came out with three to ten mandates. Four mandates in a row for the same prime minister. Right. It's not being done. I was just kind of letting that out. Before people start writing to you.

I was just letting that out to see whether you would go for the bait and correct me, as you so often do. But you did. So, yes, it would be, if they win and if Trudeau is still a leader, it would be the first time in 120 years or so since there was a fourth mandate for the same prime minister. Now, and that was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. And the thing about Laurier that I find fascinating is he won four in a row,

no doubt about it, regarded as one of the great prime ministers of Canada. His first election as leader of the Liberal Party, he lost. He lost to Sir John A. And I like that because those clearly weren't the days where it was one and done if you were a leader. You got to go again. And he proved that it was worth waiting for, getting the four mandates, which has not been the case for,

and here I run the risk of being corrected again by Chantal, but both the conservatives and the liberals, leaders previous to Trudeau were one and done right stephan dion did he not only get one run as leader and then ignatiev one run as leader sheer one run as leader and um oh 201 run as leader so they should play that laurier playbook there they should have and said, look, he lost. And then he came back and won four in a row. However, moving on with this discussion.

And, you know, I'm intrigued to get your take on why things are going seemingly so wrong for the Liberals. And it's not just the economy which they may or may not have um some ability to deal with but it's it's seemingly a lot of other in some cases little things but they're they're coming by on almost a daily certainly a weekly basis of late which isn't helping i mean what's the last last thing that happened that was good for the Liberals? You know, you could perhaps argue the deal with the NDP was good for the Liberals because it gives them time. But, man, they've got problems, whether it's Mendocino, whether it's Jolie,

whether it's Van Couverden, the backbench MP who seemed to take it out on one of his Twitter followers. What is this like normal? Is this a springtime thing? Is this three mandates in and everything seems to be loosey goosey and not sure what's going on with the leader? What's happening? Who wants to take a run at this first, Rob?

Well, let's let's let's go back to laurier for just one second uh just to show how extraordinary his his uh mandates were um like there were majority mandates too and he um he had to he was and he was a beloved figure people loved him whether they voted for him or not laurier was a beloved figure across the country no matter where he went. People were wrapped by him. But at the same time, he got his last majority in large part because he brought in two new provinces. And those two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, voted massively for the Liberals.

Justin Trudeau doesn't have that lever to pull. And he doesn't have the personal appeal across party lines, even conservatives like Loria. They acknowledge that he was a beloved figure. Justin Trudeau is not beloved. During the last couple of elections, at best, he can seem to appeal to a third of the people who turn out to vote. Those aren't great launch pads from which to blast off into higher political orbit to begin with.

And they are tired. And they, you know, you mentioned the good thing that happened to them was the NDP, the pact with the NDP. You know, I talked to some people around this town, and they said maybe that wasn't so good because they're really not on their game. The Conservatives not being on their game because they have their attention divided away from the House of Commons to a leadership also might not be keeping them sharp. So the NDP is a safety net. Yeah, but it's also kind of like making them

some nambulant as well. So the opposition to the Liberals seems to be coming from outside of Ottawa, primarily in places like Quebec City. That's where you see the bristling antennae of federal Liberals in Ottawa. They're really very much attuned to what's going to happen there in the fall and burning for a battle over immigration. But has the NDP deal helped them? Yes, it's kept them in power, but it certainly hasn't kept them in sharp fighting form. And they're not they really are limping towards the summer break. They acknowledge that they're tired. They acknowledge that they're beaten up a little bit and that they have made mistakes and that they're kind of old

and long in the policy group as well. If I can also go back to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, if you want to encourage parties to hang on to their defeated leaders, you need not go back a century and some years. You could look at Stephen Harper lost. Or if you want to look at provinces, François Legault, who is now hailed as a great political success, did not start off by winning an election. It was the opposite. He looked like someone who was going to quit and go back to go in business because his party was said to be going nowhere a year before he won his first majority

government. And look where he is now. So there is something to be said about leaders being given a chance to build a comfort zone with voters. As for prime ministers who are not beloved, the prime ministers you've covered and I've covered, none of them were beloved at the end or by their third term. Pierre Trudeau, you couldn't hear a good word about him. I was covering Ontario at that point, the same Ontario that now has some kind of a Trudeau cult. But back then, David Peterson, leader of the Liberal Party at Queen's Park, said one night famously after a by-election, I'll never win a by-election in

this province as long as I have that albatross called Trudeau around my neck. Not a small statement. Brian Mulroney, two back-to-back majorities. And then look where he was by the time he left to leave someone else to pick up whatever was left. Jean Chrétien, what was it Jeffrey Simpson called him? The sunny dictatorship? Friendly dictator. Friendly. So the word dictatorship kind of made it in the mainstream parlance about Ottawa.

And let's not talk about Stephen Harper, that monster that was going to destroy the country if he was allowed a fourth term. So Justin Trudeau is not going to escape that. He's in that cycle. It's not coming back. This isn't a fairy tale. And Peter Pan suddenly recovers his magic powers.

That is the way that it goes. As for the government, I agree with Rob and those who are signing the agreement with the NDP could have given the government a wind. Instead, they look like they're running on empty. They look like they got an excuse to sit back and let the chips fall where they may, and at some point we'll pick them up. Even if it looks like we're contradicting ourselves, think of the COVID measures. Two weeks ago, the Liberals spent an entire sitting day chiding the Conservatives for daring to suggest that we should get rid of vaccine mandates, which the science suddenly has discovered that we can. Two weeks. I know science evolves fast.

Look how quickly we got vaccines, but there are limits to how much you can stretch credibility. Look at the convoy. It was the big event of the parliamentary winter and spring. The use of the Emergencies Act is an unprecedented gesture. You would think someone in the government would be saying, by law, we need to provide a transparent and comprehensive narrative of how we got there, because we are responsible for how other governments will feel justified to use it in other circumstances. Instead, what you hear and what you see is evasions, ministers who show up who seem to be thinking that they're keeping goal on a hockey rink. This is a law. It requires justification.

Whether people are happy with it or not, the government is failing a basic legal requirement of transparency on the use of this act, and it doesn't seem to get its act together. Today, we read in the Globe and Mail that the people around Mélanie Jolie were too busy to read emails from their own departments about some official attending a Russian embassy party. First question, read your emails. Four of them, three or four of them received the email. That's a lot of people who don't read emails, for one. And second, the persons who sent the email, didn't the message of the government and parliament not get through to their offices? Are they so far from Parliament Hill, about a kilometer and a half, that they didn't get the message that we don't go to parties at the Russian embassy, because that kind of contradicts everything that is being said by parliament on

the issue. So it's like everyone is kind of sleeping at the switch. Once in a while, they get an electroshock, and then they think, oh, we should do something. And so they act for 24 hours, and they go back to that napping place where apparently the NDP deal has pushed them into well it's easy to fall asleep at the switch if uh if nobody is watching you and pushing you in other words leadership you know and you know whether Justin Trudeau has been asleep at the switch as well in terms of governing his cabinet. Earlier you mentioned something intriguing.

You mentioned the talk in some circles, and Chantal, this was you, about Freeland perhaps moving out of finance and focusing on her deputy prime minister role, which will be the first time somebody actually did something as a deputy prime minister in a serious fashion. Harper didn't even have one, did he? Didn't he make sure that he didn't have one? Never.

I don't think she would want to move out of finance. I think the suggestion was that maybe she should focus on it. Right. It's a full-time job. But there may be others who think she should be moving out i mean at a time like this for any government and we've witnessed enough of them over the time over our years in both both political stripes when things are going as poorly as this on so many fronts you need new energy and you either create that by taking the summer off and doing something that would create new energy.

I'm not sure what that might be with this crowd. Or you bring something new in. You bring new energy in. You know, we know who's sitting on the sidelines, whether he's doing that deliberately or whether he's just not interested in politics or not, I don't know. But that obviously would be somebody who could go in we're talking about uh you know whom mark again mark carney comes to haunt this conversation do you seriously think justin

trudeau would demote the number two in the government from finance for a white banker yeah i i i'm not saying that i'm what i'm saying is if you're looking for new energy is that one of the ways not necessarily him could be anybody um is that one of the ways of trying to put some spark into this government and some direction and some empathy which you both hit on is an issue a big issue when we're hitting these kind of turbulent economic times. Rob? Yeah, I mean, it's been tried in the past, and to a certain extent it worked.

Pearson brought in the three wise men from Quebec, Trudeau the elder being among them. But look, you're judged on your competence. I think Chantal earlier was talking, refuting my point about being beloved, and she's right. You don't necessarily have to be beloved to be elected in the country.

Stephen Harper was not a beloved figure, and yet he still won three elections. But the problem with the current crop of liberals right now is that they are beginning to exude the air of incompetence. And that is lethal to any government. That makes other governments look competent or other potential parties look competent. When you say one thing about vaccine mandates and then you come back to where you were saying you were never going to go, it makes people who you were labeling extreme, i.e. Pierre Poilier, look moderate all of a sudden.

When you say something on the Emergencies Act and all of a sudden your opponents are branding you as being secretive, and all of a sudden your opponents are branding you as being secretive, and all of a sudden you start acting secretive, it makes your opponents look more moderate than they might have been when they opposed the Emergency Act. And on the Emergency Act, I'm struck again by another parallel between Trudeau the Elder and Trudeau the Younger,

in that they're both being bedeviled by bringing in these kinds of legislations to deal with emergencies. In Trudeau the Elder's case, it was the More Emergencies Act. It turns out it was pretty much unwarranted. People were arrested, rounded up for no reason, thrown in jail. And of course, we all know that many of them became Patsy Quebecois cabinet ministers. But if there's a compelling reason for bringing in the emergencies act we haven't heard it and it could be a very simple reason all they need to say is we were in a situation where we did not have sovereignty over the parliamentary hill precinct the area in front of the supreme court of canada border crossings that were costing us hundreds

of thousands of potential job losses were being shut down. And we needed to deal with that. That's all they would need to say. But from the beginning, they've been hinting at darker measures and darker forces and not being able to point to any of them. And that, again, makes them look incompetent. So I think that's the biggest issue that they need to deal with. I'm not sure that they can import confidence from outside of the party in a rapid way. You know, in a lot of instances like this, they would prorogue, but they're coming to the end anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if prorogation is something that they're thinking about.

It might not be a bad idea for them to say, when we come back, we're going to have a new speech from the throne, we're going to have some new ideas and new policies and try to go in that way. And maybe some new people. Chantal? Well, bringing in, for instance, and I'm not saying that that's an idea that is even around, but bringing in a minister of finance from the outside who has never sat in the House of Commons for one day. The last time that was tried was Bill Morneau for one. So and the learning curve took a lot of his momentum away because it is. I mean, sometimes you wonder if being a cabinet minister or politician is the only job where you do not need to learn anything before you step into some of the biggest roles in the country. And that's actually not true. You do need to learn how the place works to not fall into every trap.

Empathy. This is not a government that has a lot of ministers that I would qualify as terribly strong on empathy. In part, probably because they are so weathered to the lines that they are told to repeat that at some point they come across as soulless, which is never good. They don't, you know, there is no spontaneity to most of their performance. I'll make an exception for Mélanie Joly, who actually manages to translate one and the other, but she's not in that kind of role anymore, and that's not going to help him. Final point, a lot of liberals still think that Pierre Poiliev will win and not be a threat to them, that he will be a winning condition for a fourth term. I'm not going to go into Pierre Poiliev's qualities or faults. I'll just note that Stephen Harper's people were convinced Justin Trudeau would never beat him.

And I could go down that list. So maybe it would be a good idea to reconsider this complacent certainty that some of them hold. And some of those are not very far from the top of the liberal pyramid yeah and stephen harper was supposed to be unelectable as well i remember the people around paul marg thought this guy is way too conservative to ever be elected prime minister and so he's saying this like in quebec and he's got that face i think you go down the list that no one became prime minister who wasn't in his grave according to his main or her main opponent. And nobody left the prime

minister's job without being basically tarred and feathered and booted out when their time was up. So it's an interesting way of looking at prime ministerships. Okay. We've just spent 36 minutes on the Liberals.

We're going to take a run at the Conservatives right after this. And we're back here on Good Talk with our final segment. We got a chance to update the situation somewhat on the conservative leadership campaign, which has had another interesting week. You know, if there was one thing in Chrystia Freeland's speech yesterday that received a fair amount of attention. Something new is she took a shot without naming him at Pierre Pelliev, basically calling him an economic illiterate for some of his comments

about getting rid of the Bank of Canada governor, his thoughts on cryptocurrency. You know, somebody, I saw something on a tweet today that somebody should put, run it as a kind of daily factoid. You know, where Bitcoin was on the day that Polyev made his first kind of endorsement of cryptocurrency and track it down to where it is now, which is considerably lower. What it was under 20 bucks yesterday. And it had been as high as like 65.

Anyway, the, the shots at Pierre Polyev are coming from all sides, which is nice to be. If you're the front runner, you want to be the focus of attention. But is any of this taking hold is there any evidence that it's taking hold um against him and uh and to uh cost him in the long run um rob we don't know i mean the here's something that you don't hear

often on these shows is there there's a lot that we don't know uh and and in this instance we don't know. I mean, here's something that you don't hear often on these shows is there's a lot that we don't know. And in this instance, we don't know. We thought we knew a week or so ago that Poiliev's campaign was going to steamroller over all the other campaigns and memberships because they had signed up over 300,000 new members, according to what they claimed. And now there are many, many questions about some of those. And the other camps are suggesting that some people paid more than once for a membership and became members twice. So between now and early September, when we actually find out the results, there is so much we don't know. We do know that Patrick Brown had a very bad week.

His co-chair, Michelle Rempel, is left. That in itself is not fatal. In a lot of these instances, brand name, high name co-chairs don't do a lot of the mechanical work, the plumbing, the wiring, the electrical to build a campaign. They're there to help twist some arms. But it's significant in the wake of this notion that he is swamping the others in membership sold. That, plus some problems that Patrick Brown is having in Brampton

with council, who were accusing him of some undemocratic practices, made it a bad week for Patrick Brown. I think what made it also an interesting, or again, not telling us stuff we don't already know, but there was a poll by Leger yesterday or the day before, which showed that most Canadians would prefer somebody other than Pierre Poiliev to be the conservative leadership, if you poll right across the spectrum. Now, if you ask conservatives, 44% of them want Poignet.

But if you're going to attract people to a party that also has barely been able to crack the one-third support level, you're going to have to attract people from outside of your core supporters. And it appears that Mr. Charest, in particular, is somebody who would would attract the liberals and new Democrats should he become leader. But unless he sells memberships, unless he can deliver his vote, none of that will matter. Chantal? Like Rob, I won't pretend that I know exactly what's happening under the tree line, because a lot of things are in motion at the same time. And that's totally normal. We've talked at Land High, I think no one is contesting the fact that Pierre Poilievre has been selling memberships to people who are not politically

engaged, usually, mostly or not exclusively because they like him so much, but because they liked some of the stance he took on Bitcoins, on the Bank of Canada or on the vaccine mandates. A lot of those members are not people who have participated heavily in the political process. So he needs to work really hard at making sure that they do vote. And the perception that he's so far ahead is probably a hindrance and not an advantage at this point, because it doesn't send the message that we need all of you to step up and vote. That's one. But increasingly, you hear about another group that is not normally engaged in conservative policies, and that is people who sympathize maybe with the NDP or the liberals or used to be with the progressive conservatives in

another era, but who have signed up and become members to vote against Pierre Poiliev as conservative leader. Now, how many of those there are and where they are is a major question mark. So whether that's just a small phenomenon or something that could alter the course of the first ballot results, we will only see later. But I would point out that those people are more politically engaged, those new members than the recruits that were recruited on the basis of Bitcoin and vaccine mandates. So they are likely to cast that vote. Patrick Brown has been a star in the bad way of this week. Michelle Rempel is leaving, just to be clear, because she is saying she is leaving to ponder a run at the leader at the succession of Jason Kenney in Alberta,

which is interesting because you do not need to leave Patrick Brown's campaign to just think about running somewhere else. You actually usually would do that when you're running for something else, as opposed to, and it looks like an easy way out for her. It protects her from having to make a choice and refuse to back Poiliev till the very end or not want to go to Jean Chagas. She has taken herself out of this for the duration. I know that the unrest on Brampton Municipal Council, and I'm going somewhere with this,

seems to have increased since Patrick Brown started hinting that he might look at running again for mayor as a fallback for not becoming conservative leader. And I'm thinking that some of the unrest and the controversies at the municipal council have to do with people suddenly saying, we may have to beat this guy or we may be stuck with this guy, whatever they think about him. Again, because by August 19, he may enter his name to run for mayor of Brampton again. So they may be trying not to harm his leadership campaign as much as his possible mayoral campaign, which begs an interesting question. There are people around Patrick Brown and elsewhere

who are suggesting that he could enter his name to be mayor again, even as he continues to be a conservative leadership candidate. That's, you know, there's always something new under the sun, but it is dangerous to run after two horses when you only have two legs. I'm saying from Jean Chagas perspective, I'm guessing he would want Patrick Brown to go to the ballot because you can say to your supporters, vote for this guy instead of me, but they will not necessarily follow your lead if they can't get to cast a ballot for you, their first choice,

and then put someone else as a second choice. So if Cheyenne needs, and he does, Patrick Brown's second ballot or third ballot support to go on, he would want Brown to stay on the ballot until September 10th. Can I just back up to the Rempel thing again? How much of a, if she decides to go provincial,

which seems to be what she's, you know, certainly considering, as Chantal says, if she does do that, how much of a loss is that for the federal conservative caucus? I mean, she was clearly no fan of Polyev and was kind of on a different part of the spectrum within the conservative caucus than Polyev. So how much of a loss is that if she leaves?

Rob? Well, you know, she has a following. She has a following among young women in particular. She is effective at getting under the skin of people across the aisle, in the Liberal caucus and on the Liberal front bench. She has the support of Stephen Harper and others who recruited her into the party. And that support has remained very, very solid. She has an excellent relationship still with the Harpers.

And that's political capital in this city and in the Conservative Party. It's not a mortal blow or a fatal blow, but let's see if she does it first. Um, Michelle Rempel-Garner has a history of considering, uh, leadership runs as well. She's considered a couple at the federal level and decided that French wasn't good enough to go for it. Um, uh, but she's, she's considered these things in the past and, and, and withdrawn. Let, let's see if she does that. Um does that. I'm not sure that she will. I'd like to go back to Poiliev, who, you know, Bitcoin is having a bad week, but in other ways, he had a decent week. Okay. In that, when the government decides to end vaccine mandates,

that's something that he's been calling for for a long, long time and something that everybody's been sort of painting him with a certain extremist brush. And it follows up with somebody like Tiff Macklem admitting that the bank might have acted too late, the Bank of Canada might have acted too late on interest rates. And he's not offering to resign. So he's not sort of making Poiliev's call for him to step down or to be fired look good. But Macklem admitting that he may have mistimed the increase of interest rates makes somebody like Poiliev look less extreme to some voters. So I would say look away from that Bitcoin thing for a little bit, but it wasn't necessarily a bad week for Kwon Ye. I buy your argument on the bank situation, clearly with the governor basically agreeing that they'd missed it on that one. I'm not so sure on

the vaccine mandates. I mean, I know it looks good when you kind of see it on the face of it but let's face it vaccine mandates were going to end at some point so a good position to take six months ago was in them now um they're eventually going to end and you'll be able to say when they do i told you to do this six months ago and you know now i'm proving right anyway we could argue about that all day let me i've only got all day. All you got to know about that is that the liberals were reluctant to do it earlier because they were afraid that it would make Poitiers look right. And they were also afraid that the COVID wasn't gone and it's not gone. You know, but anyway, we've only got a couple of minutes left. I do want to say, point out that a bit more than a year ago, it was Justin Trudeau who signed vaccine mandates for two visits to be effective for the social cost. So if we're going to revisit who said what when, let's agree that Peter Dono, former liberal advisor column in

the Globe and Mail saying if the liberals go for this, they'll win a majority was followed up within 48 hours by this sudden decision that we need vaccine mandates to get rid of COVID-19. So yeah, let's not go there. I want to say something about Michel Rempel. Because one, everyone should mourn the loss of an effective parliamentarian. But in this case, it would be a loss to the larger debate over fake news versus reality, in that she is one of the lone, credible, conservative voices coming from that side of the spectrum who is arguing with facts that the World Economic Forum conspiracy theory is bonkers. And if you are going to advance the argument of facts, you do need those voices. And her departure would not be just a loss for the conservative caucus on that story.

It would be a loss to the conversation and the political conversation in this country. Okay. I have two minutes left, less than two minutes. If I can do a takeaway from both these conversations that we've had, it would seem to me that in both cases, whether it's the conservative leadership race or the liberal situation, in both cases,

it looks like we could all use a break, like summer can't come fast enough to hit the pause button on things and re-energize, take in some fresh air, come up with some new thinking and some new direction. Would that be a fair assessment in kind of 30 seconds each? Rob, you first. I don't think so. And I think in a moment like this, you know, when you talk to people, I listen to people around my mother, senior citizens are very, very worried. I think people are looking for leadership.

People are looking to be reassured. People are looking to know that their government is actually doing something to try to cushion the blow. And they know that a worse blow might be coming in a recession. I think people are worried there are R.S.P.s are worth less now. It's stock markets cratering houses. And a lot of people were counting on as piggy banks are suddenly worth less as well.

So I think people are concerned and they might be looking and might appreciate some some forthright leadership. Chantal? I think if there ever was a time when it would be reckless on the part of governments to leave an empty frame to go to the beach, it's probably now for all the reasons Rob has just listed. The public mood is not conducive to let's not have any politicians in the picture. They're conducive to let's see if someone is still in charge somewhere. And let's see that leadership.

I guess that's what I'm saying is if you're going to, you should take a break if it really looks like you're going to come back with leadership at whatever time. Could be in two weeks, could be in a month. But do something because governments are elected to lead. And that seems to be a bit of a vacuum at the moment on a number of things. All right, Rob, great of you to fill in for Bruce on this week. It's been wonderful talking to you.

Chantelle, as usual. Next week, Good Talk is the final one before we go on our summer hiatus. We will be back a couple of times during the summer, but we're going to hit the pause button after next week. I'm Peter Mansbridge for Chantelle Hebert and Rob Russo. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening.

Talk to you on Monday.