The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Are These The Final Days

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

The clock is ticking on Justin Trudeau as one issue after another is somehow connected to his leadership problems.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there. It's a Good Talk Friday. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge, all here. Ready to rock, as they say, on a Friday Good Talk. It's been quite the week in the nation's capital. There's no doubt about that. Lots of things going on. And for me, anyway, they all at least have a thread, maybe just a thread,

that pulls back towards the leadership situation for Justin Trudeau. And when I talk about the incredible week, leadership situation for Justin Trudeau. And when I talk about the incredible week, we're talking about the very serious nature of the foreign interference hearings that took place, including with the Prime Minister in attendance on one day. Then you have this continuing story of the caucus revolt. You have the RCMP talking about the India foreign interference situation. And you have talk of a cabinet shuffle.

Well, it's more than talk. There's a cabinet shuffle coming, and the question is, do we care? All of these things, though, to me, have some thread, as I said, back towards the Trudeau leadership situation. So I want to get at that, you know, which continues to be the big story, the overall story that's behind a lot of different things here right now. So let me get your opening thoughts on that. Chantal, why don't you start us? I have rarely seen a prime minister have so many challenges on his hands on the policy front. The matter with India is a very serious matter. It is compounded by an upcoming election in the United States that could result in a difficult or very challenging relationship to

manage. And it is compounded by our situation with China. So that's on the policy front, something that any prime minister would be struggling with, whether he was at the end of eight or nine years in office and very far behind in the polls. And then you have parliament. We haven't talked about that this week because parliament was off, but the House of Commons is bogged down in a privilege issue, which basically means that the prime minister at this point has very little control over the agenda. He needs to find an ally if he's going to

take back the initiative from the Conservatives who have been using up the time debating a privilege issue. And on that basis, meaning that the entire parliamentary agenda has been set aside for the better part of two weeks, and the situation sits unresolved as the House is expected to come back next week. So he finds no refuge in Parliament, very little refuge on the international scene. And then you compound that with two realities. There are MPs who have by now grown totally panicky over the prospect of going in an election with Justin Trudeau as leader. Many of them are from Atlantic Canada. Some of them are from New Brunswick, where there is an ongoing provincial campaign where the provincial liberals are getting a taste of what it means to wear a liberal label that is shared by Justin Trudeau at this juncture. And so they are mounting what I would call a last ditch effort that may or may not result

in much of anything, by the way, to get rid of Mr. Trudeau, which basically means he doesn't have much of a refuge outside the House of Commons and within his own caucus and party. And the fact that all of this came into being, was set in motion while he was away on the other side of the world in layoffs, kind of tells you something about how little control he now has over the affairs of his own caucus. And then add to that, because I do not tie in the news that four ministers are now confirmed to not be running. I don't tie that to the leadership crisis. I don't think that's part and parcel of it. I believe these ministers, by and large, did give a heads up to the PMO that they would not be re-offering. And that news is coming out now for two reasons.

One, possibly it may hold back some caucus members who may hope to get a promotion to cabinet. But second, it also means that a cabinet shuffle is imminent, I would think, probably just after the American election. So if you look at all that cabinet team to be reshuffled with all the uncertainty that comes from that, House of Commons paralyzed by the conservatives, and the file, the India file on top of that, and this caucus, I'll call it a revolt, ongoing. It's hard to think of a prime minister and the polls, of course, that are not going to be improved by much of that. Bruce.

I think that the prime minister's leadership is really at the peak point of testing right now. I think if he can get through the next four weeks, then he probably will end up being the leader of the Liberal Party in the next election. I don't know if he'll get through the next few weeks. I think the degree of fear within the caucus is very high. I think the amount of influence that a prime minister has over his own caucus is so directly related to the size of the gap behind the Conservatives that he's becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the normal aspect of leverage that you can have over what your caucus members say publicly or what rumors are allowed to circulate, that has really diminished. And at 15 to 20 points behind, it's going to stay weak.

And if the 20 names that are rumored turn into 30 or 40, then it's hard for me to see how he can withstand that. But let me take a step back and just say that I think that the challenge that he's got, Chantal put her finger on it. There are lots of policy challenges. There's a challenging economy for people. And if I think about what is bedeviling Mr. Trudeau's situation right now, I look at three things. One is the economy. And by the standards of the overall economic indicators, things should be going better for him right now than they were six months ago. Interest rates are coming down. Inflation has come down. Unemployment is not a huge problem in the country. But those improving economic indicators have really done nothing to improve his political fortunes. The second criteria that I look at is what about his policy leadership? And I think we saw another example today, this week rather, of when the prime minister is put in a situation, in a long-form

situation, where he gets to talk about the issues that he's dealing with and his understanding of them and his ideas around them. He's impressive. He is without question a very smart person, very well read on the issues that he has to handle. People will, obviously some will disagree with him, some will agree with him, but his competency on a wide range of issues is impressive. And a lot of the things that he has brought forward as policies in the life of his government are actually pretty well received. So the problem that he's got is not really one of his policy mix for the most part. Carbon pricing is probably a problem for him, and maybe that needs to be looked at. I think the government got out further on the spending side than a lot of mainstream Canadians

wanted. And I think that he has to own that. Those were his decisions. Yes, some of it was caused by the pandemic, but not all of it. And so I think that's a weight around them but I would say on the whole his the solution his problem isn't going to lie in improving economy it isn't going to lie in finding some sort of new silver bullet from a policy standpoint because the root of his problem is that people are just not as as that MP Sean Casey said tuning into him anymore so he can say smart things about important issues and people can understand that the issues are important. But if they don't want to hear him anymore, then that's what those caucus members seem to be reporting back.

And that's a very hard thing for a political party to overcome. Well, that's where I sort of pull in this week, because it seemed to me in a number of these issues that he was trying to fight back by going after the opposition as hard as he could, not only to satisfy his caucus, but to try to jog the numbers in some degree. I mean, I agree, you know, I watched a good chunk of that commission hearing the other day,

and it reminded me, at least for the first hour or two, reminded me a lot of when he was on the stand for the investigation into the use of the Emergencies Act. He was pretty good, and he showed that he understood the issues, and his memory on meetings and data that he was given and all that was all there. And then suddenly, boom, he went after Polyev. Now, it's been kind of out there for the last year or two that Polyev won't take the security briefings,

and people have their feelings about whether he should or shouldn't. But Justin Trudeau departed from the kind of, you know, leadership role he'd shown the first couple of hours and went directly head-on against Polyev, which prompted Polyev to come out and go head-on at him in a statement that was put out. I don't know what that achieves in the long run. Does that suddenly make the caucus revolters say,

oh my God, we missed that? He can take on Polyev. Go ahead. Okay, a few points here. I watched both his news conference on Monday, the one about the expulsion of India diplomats, which was quite extraordinary when it comes to foreign policy. And I watched the entirety, I think, of the testimony on Wednesday.

On Monday, I talked that he looked destabilized. This is someone that we've seen more of this prime minister as journalists than any other prime minister because of the pandemic. We know his body language better than most for that reason. And what I saw on Monday was someone who looked destabilized. It was almost plaintive and very defensive, although we were the aggrieved party in the India-Canada debate. And I felt, and this is pop psychology, so it's make of that what you want.

I felt that if he looked destabilized, it had more to do with what had been happening behind his back inside caucus than what he was talking about. Then I watched Wednesday. And I do believe, and I know that I'm going to be in a minority, but I do believe it is totally relevant to the work of the Hague not just the prime minister or liberals or new Democrats, should want every party leader to make sure that his or her house is in order. And that the way to do that is to find out what the lay of the land is. So yes, Mr. Trudeau was being partisan when he said, I know of conservatives past and present. I mean, the scope was so wide that it's just your guess, whether it's future candidates or people who used to be in the Senate or people who are in the House of Commons. But when Mr. Poiliev replies very defensively that the prime minister is lying, he is losing

that debate. Why? Because he doesn't have a clue if the prime minister is lying. How could he know he has refused to read those reports? And the prime minister is under oath. The parliamentarians' report on this issue last spring did stress that there were issues in more than one party. It didn't say the Liberal Party is rife with people who are the subject of foreign interference. But what I found really interesting is that, as you know, commissions like this do pre-interviews with witnesses before they go on the stand.

So the main lawyer for the commission knew exactly where she was going in her questioning. And then his pre-interview, you get a transcript, a sanitized transcript of that pre-interview. Obviously, there are issues. It's a national security environment. qualified as explosive about another federal party and asked the commission for guidance as to how he as liberal leader and prime minister should act on that. So in clear, the commission is being asked and the point of the prime minister doing all this and why it's not going to be a two-day wonder, is basically raising the issue to the commission and to Justice Ugg. Would she be inclined, for instance, to recommend that every party leader get the proper security clearance to be well aware of what is going on within caucus and within the candidates

that the party is putting forward. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that recommendation at the end of the year in that report, because it sounds very fundamental that you would want to know what's going on in your party, especially if you're going to be crafting a cabinet or presenting the country with 200 and some candidates. So I do think that what Mr. Trudeau did was to kind of throw a

grenade, but one that still has pieces that can hit Pierre Poiliev unless he does something about it. I have also found very few people who agreed with Mr. Poiliev that it was better for him to be an attack dog in the House of Commons than a future prime minister who knew exactly where his MPs and his candidates stood versus foreign interference. Bruce? Yeah, let me touch on the prime minister first and then Mr. Poiliev. I think that there's a lot of comments I've seen in the last day about how partisan the prime minister was. And there's a really strong argument to be made against the way that Mr. Polyev is handling himself on it.

The prime minister did it in the context of testimony. And maybe in that context, it's not the right venue to heighten the degree of partisanship. But he's had opportunities surrounding that and since that to sharpen his attack. And I think it's worthwhile to do that. I don't say that because I think it'll necessarily change the political dynamic for him personally. But I think that it does. You know, he needs to be consistent or the liberals need to be consistent in saying there's a real problem here, which is that somebody who is on the brink of potentially becoming the prime minister of the country is playing games around this question of security clearance. He doesn't want to act like a statesman. He doesn't want to represent himself as somebody who respects any institutional norms. I get the idea that the kind of the bro vote that

he wants to court doesn't like institutional norms. But those are all points that should be raised as very sharp criticisms of Pierre Poliev. And so far, I think that the liberal version of them, at least from the prime minister, hasn't been all that trenchant and could well be more. I think there's a double-edged sword here for the liberals, though, which is that this issue of foreign interference has been going on for some time. And if you're the average Canadian, you're not dialing into all of the details of this, you can't help but wonder, what has the government been doing? Yes, they have information, but is the problem still getting worse? Is it getting better? Is anything being done?

And there are reasons why the government can't divulge too much about this. But, you know, politics is kind of demanding this way. If you say this is a big issue and we all need to be concerned about it, but you can't tell people more about what you're doing to minimize the risk. And there are things like some of the testimony that came out in the course of the last several weeks, which look bad for the liberals in terms of warrants sitting around without any action being taken. So there is a double-edged sword for the liberals on this. If they want to prosecute the case against Pierre Poliev, they are at risk of having people say,

why does this issue seem like it's not getting better on this government's watch? But as for Mr. Poliev, I do think that it is high time for reasonable observers and critics in the news media to really put a focus on what is it exactly that he thinks is his argument for not equipping himself with information that could help protect national security. I know in the past he said things about not wanting to be muzzled, but he can criticize the government on any number of issues and does every single day. He's not muzzled. But if he says, I don't want to know any information that might be material to the protection of the country because my partisanship is more important than that, I think people

should hear that. I think people should have that drawn to their attention. I think it's a terrible argument. I think it's almost disqualifying if he would want to continue with that argument right up until the election time. So I think the attack should be sharpened on him, and I think he should change his position. I guess the point I was trying to get at on the moment where Trudeau raised the Polyev situation and spent some time on it and went directly after him, I guess the point I was trying to make is that if you were just tuning into that for the first time, you would get the impression from Trudeau's testimony that the only party that had a problem was the Conservatives.

It wasn't until later when questioned by the commission lawyer that he agreed that there were other problems with other parties and other parliamentarians being suspected. So I guess that's the point I was trying to make, is that, okay, you're going to slap me down here. Well, I'm going to say that this has been out there since spring. I know, I realize that. The prime minister wasn't revealing secrets when he says he knew of conservatives.

And the fact that there are others in context, I don't think he was there to give a review of the parliamentarian report, but why Pierre Poiliev opened himself to what happened there is because he is the only party leader who has refused to get the security clearance to read and get himself up to date on what the security services and others were saying about his own members. I mean, Elizabeth May read the report. Jagmeet Singh read the report. Yves-François Blanchet, who doesn't wake up in the morning dreaming of having a top federal security clearance, is in the process of finishing it. Why?

Because it is the job of party leaders to know what's going on and to be able to tell Canadians, I did all that I could using all the tools that were offered to me to make sure that I'm offering you people who are not on the payroll or if getting something from foreign entities to exert influence in the House of Commons or within the government. So if all party leaders except Justin Trudeau had said, we're not doing this because this is just a way to muzzle us, the prime minister would have been on weaker ground. The other issue that people forget,

and it's because they don't have to watch this commission every single day, is that Justice Ugg has read all the unredacted documents that Justin Trudeau is talking about. So if he were making it up and using her stand to just score points, she would have found a way to rebut him when she did ask her questions. She's not the type of judge to just say, yeah, use my platform to score cheat points. But finally, and here I'm into more of a double standard thing. Suppose you believe the prime minister in drawing outside the lines? Because I have for months watched the leader of the opposition draw outside the lines,

and he still was when he accused the prime minister of lying under oath. That is basically where we are. You may like it or not like it, but at some point, Mr. Poiliev's refusal to get a security clearance has been feeding conspiracy theories on X and elsewhere for months and months that we have been ignoring rightly because they are conspiracy theories. But at some point, you do want to ask the question, can you give us a serious reason for not wanting to know how far or whether foreign interference is reaching inside your team? Peter, can I just add one thing?

Yeah, just let me respond quickly. Those are all fair points. I understand that. I'm not suggesting he's trying to play outside the lines. All I'm suggesting is that in his testimony he went right after the conservatives and I know there's lots of this that's been out there for months if not more than a year. But the only leader who doesn't want to know is why he should go after Polyev. I understand that. I'm not saying he shouldn't go after Polyev. I'm just saying that the way it was presented sounded initially

until he was brought back online, that there was only one party that had this issue. Anyway, that's all. Bruce, go ahead. And then we've got to take a break. But go ahead, Bruce. Well, I was actually going to say i think it's been an embarrassing issue for the liberals for a long time now um so i think to the

extent that there's another aspect of it um that's what i saw this week which is that with this amount of time and the closer that pierre poliev gets to becoming the leader of the government, if the election turns out that way, you know, we're at risk of not, as a society, as a political culture, really stress testing that idea. And when we watch how Donald Trump campaigns for office in the United States, the emphasis is very much on, I don't care about what the institutions do or say that they should do or how institutional politics is supposed to work. It's about me. And from the beginning of his leadership campaign, Pierre Pauliev doesn't talk about party. He doesn't talk about institutions. He talks about Pierre for PM. And, you know, full marks to him.

It's a democracy. He's entitled to do that. And it's worked for him so far. I think in part it's worked for him because of the enormous fatigue with the current prime minister. But if we don't stress test the idea that somebody is going to head into office without informing themselves of some basic facts about national security, then that should be on us as a society. He knows that there's every chance that this news cycle will keep turning and he'll escape scrutiny about this and we'll turn our attention back to how many names are on a letter and whether there's going to be a shuffle and whether there'll be a prorogation, all of which are important subjects. But this is no less important. And I think the fact that the prime minister raises perfectly fair ball, and if anything, I think more people need to be talking about it.

And the question needs to be more aggressive. All right, let's turn to names on the list to use your cue. Let's turn to those other subjects and we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk. It's the Friday episode of The Bridge. Bruce Anderson, Chantelle Hebert, Peter Mansbridge here.

You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. We're glad to have you with us. Okay, caucus revolt time. You know, for the last, what, year? Six months anyway, we've sort of known of one MP who's come out publicly and questioned

whether the Prime Minister should step down or not. It's become two that we know the names of this week. But all the reporting suggests there are 20, 30, maybe even 40 out there who are prepared, if not already, to sign a letter calling for the prime minister to step down. Do you think it's fair that we don't know the names? Because clearly some of these people know the names.

It's like the last segment. We don't know the names, right? Here we are again. We don't know the names because clearly some of these people know the names. It's like the last segment. We don't know the names, right? Here we are again. We don't know the names. Or we do know the names, but we agree not to publish the names. Do you remember? Yeah, I absolutely remember. And we named the names.

But when the liberals were trying to get rid of John Turner and wrote a similar letter, none of them wanted to own up to his or her signature. I remember standing outside that caucus room and no one had signed it, but it was full of signatures. I'm talking about the journalists who are covering this story. We named names in that. In that example, we named names.

When we found them, but we... No, no, no. On the initial story. No. Yep. Yeah, I know. I did it. And the one... There were many letters about John Turner, and the one that involved the senators, my friend John Lapierre signed it and then discovered that most of his colleagues would forever remain anonymous and felt like he'd been trapped into signing something. Where suddenly he looked like he was a big culprit and he knew others who would never, ever admit that they'd signed letters. If you really want to get rid of a leader, then you need to look to the Canadian Alliance and Chuck Strahl and others

who wanted to get rid of Stockwell. They felt that he was bringing, taking the party down as it was trying to lift off to become a real government alternative. What did they do? They left caucus and sat as independent and then eventually as conservatives behind Joe Clark.

Let me tell you that all these people who are signing these pieces of paper that are so nicely phrased, apparently, if they all stood up and said, we're going to sit as independent as of next week, there would be no Justin Trudeau leadership at the end of the week because Mr. Trudeau couldn't sustain his government. But otherwise, OK, let's be clear. The vast majority of liberal MPs believe that they will lose the next election, as do anyone who is reading a poll these days. Many, but not all of them, believe that they could make things better with a different leader. And probably more than the number who were signing the letter believe that. If at this point Justin Trudeau doesn't know that, he will, of course, to know it between Sunday and Wednesday's caucus meeting.

Will that cause him to go? I don't know. I'm like Bruce on this. Who knows? It doesn't sound like that. And going back to what you were saying about the prime minister's testimony at the Foreign Interference Commission, I was watching that performance and I had to think that any neophyte leader as talented as he or she might be would not have had as good a day as Justin Trudeau had that day. So it's easy to say out with the old, but no one is agreeing on what the new looks like. And time is running out. The one thing that's not there is the rumors of a list. And I think from

my standpoint, the rumor of a list is as powerful as the list or the letter itself. I mean, if you're the leader, it doesn't really matter if there's a piece of paper. If you believe that there are 20 or more members of your caucus that want you gone and are going to manifest that desire in some way or another, that's a nuclear day. That's a devastating situation. Yes, some people could look at it and say, well, it's a fraction of the caucus. But here's the other question. The corollary is, where is the list of people who fervently believe that Justin Trudeau should stay? As far as I can tell, and maybe you or Chantal have been able to pick up more evidence of

this, I've only seen Mary Ng on the record saying that this is the right choice as far as she's concerned. Now, I think others probably feel that way, but I'm kind of where Chantal is. I think the vast majority would rather take the plunge with somebody else, understanding that there's a degree of risk there that it could turn out worse, but because the persistence of this gap against an improving economy, against the fact that the government has rolled out a bunch of different policy initiatives designed to kindle support, despite the fact that the prime minister can have a good day at a commission hearing or a good day giving a scrum talking about India. If none of those things seem to help, it's not surprising that caucus members who are looking at losing their jobs are saying, what can we do? In our research, what I see is that if you substitute any one of 11, call 11 different names for the prime ministers as a liberal leader, you don't necessarily get more liberal votes. What you do is you get a reduction by six or seven points of the conservative vote, a reduction of the NDP vote by three to five points, an increase in the undecided. Is that a, does that look hugely attractive if you're a liberal caucus member? No, probably not.

But does it look like a better choice in the circumstances? Potentially it does. So I think next week is going to be an absolutely crucial week for the prime minister. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I think if there are 20 who feel the way that they're reported to feel, there's probably significant number more. And for him to keep that pressure're reported to feel there's probably significant number more and for him to keep that pressure from continuing to build is going to take something that that is so unusual um and that we haven't seen yet um and that requires a lot of kind of creativity on his part and and those around him let me get back to my question, though, because I think it's an important one.

In the reporting of this story, if it's going to be continually mentioned by the journalists or kind of heading the journalism on this, that there are 20, 30, 40, whatever the number is. One assumes they've checked that. So is there some obligation on their part to name names? No, they won't get that information if the basis upon which they get it is that they have to name the name. So you have that choice of, well, we won't report it, even though that we know that it's happening. And you're both in journalism, that's not my field.

But it does feel to me that those choices get made every day in political coverage, that you gather information that you feel is reliable information, and that you choose to publish it, even though you can't name names, because that's the terms upon which you get the information. Is it a bigger ethical challenge in the crisis of leadership? And if the number is 20, I don't know, that's above my pay grade, doesn't feel like it to me. It feels like this is a huge story. And to not cover it because you can't name those names, not only would render your news organization uncompetitive because everybody won't live by that standard for sure, but also I don't know if it's doing a service to readers and listeners and viewers to not run with that story.

But isn't it an opportunity for some who are in the vortex of this story to basically duck responsibility for it by not putting their names forward? I mean, what is the reason they wouldn't want their names out front? I mean, I'm just puzzled by it. I'm not sure where I fall on it. It just seems a bit odd to me. I don't think that people who are mounting efforts like that usually publish their names in advance.

First of all, let me say that I do not and have not seen that letter and have not spoken to people who have signed it. And the only MP that I saw on the record calling for the prime minister to go this week, Sean Casey, had not signed that letter. So I am not speaking with knowledge that I'm keeping to myself in any way, shape or form. But I understand from some of the people who broke that story that they were quite, that some of its promoters were quite chagrined at the notion that it was, the story was coming out so early that they were hoping to use this week's break to kind of build momentum, but to do so in a

covert fashion. And in as much as parliament wasn't sitting, it sounded like a good opportunity to kind of build up a letter and deliver it privately to the prime minister. That was the original plan. The plan wasn't a leak so that all week people would be hunting for MPs. Now, can I just add, maybe picking up on Chantal's point, if you don't mind. To answer your question, Peter, from my standpoint, none of these MPs want to embarrass the prime minister. None of them want to make the party look bad. None of them want to see a change that they think is in their party's best interest, as well as in their own best interest, and presumably in the country's best interest as well. So that's the reason why they don't want to be public, is that they would rather none of this become public. They would rather, I'm sure, have a situation where the conversation turns into a decision by the prime minister to step aside. If they don't get that, I guess they have to look at what their options are.

But their first instinct would not be to embarrass him, to put him or the party in a bad light. And I think that's what's going on here. Well, if that was their intention, one of them leaked it, at least. Yes, but loose lips, as you know, have sunk more mutiny ships than we can count over the decades. I want to go back to one of the points you raised about ministers coming forward to say a couple of things. The first is, if a senior minister went to the microphones next week and said, I'm joining these for the good of the Liberal Party, that would be the end of that. And I'm not saying this is happening,

but imagine Chrystia Freeland or François-Philippe Champagne going to a microphone to say something like this. It's game over once that happens. But the other thing is there are MPs who have come out to support the prime minister this week, but they have done so out of their own initiative. You would have expected more of a rush to the microphones, one that was propelled possibly by the PMO.

I did not see that happen. But I did hear two interviews with senior cabinet ministers in France this week. And they kind of played out a bit differently. One was Mélanie Jolie, who was doing the rounds in French to talk about India, etc. And who, in the interview I heard, was not asked if she supported the prime minister, but said, you didn't ask me. And the host said, well, because I'm assuming you back him. And she said, yes, but I want to put it on the record that I believe that it's best to

go in the next election with Justin Trudeau. The other interview I listened to was with Dominique Leblanc, someone who was seen as close to the prime minister. He also wasn't asked, but he took zero detours to say it. I'm not sure he mentioned Justin Trudeau by name. And the issue did come up, obviously, of this, these. And he was very, very careful. He was walking a very fine line, but that line did not include a very enthusiastic embrace of how great Justin Trudeau was. And I did note the difference between the two. Other ministers, if they've been coming forward to say how much they believe Trudeau is great, they've been doing it, I guess, within their own family circles,

or not where I was listening, which was mostly French. Okay, we're going to take our final break, and then we'll come back and talk about the other thing that Bruce said. You know, we end up talking about when we move from one subject to another, we're going to talk about the cabinet shuffle. We're so predictable. He's given me all these great ideas for subjects. We'll be back after this and welcome back final segment of uh good talk for this week bruce anderson chantelle hebert peter mansbridge here good to have you with us okay final subject um cabinet

shuffle a little bit a little bit of background as i think it was Chantal mentioned earlier, the four cabinet ministers who were publicly announced this week as not going to run again had made that clear earlier this year and had certainly made it clear to the prime minister's office. But people seem to understand it. Here's what I've, you know, these four roles will now get to be filled. Here's what, it didn't surprise me actually, but I did find it interesting that when the pictures of these four people were put up on the screen, I didn't recognize any of them.

Maybe one, one looks somewhat familiar. I didn't know the names. They weren't familiar to me at all. Now, I don't know whether that says more about me than it says about the situation, but I think it could possibly indicate that out of a cabinet of almost 40, there are a lot of them in there that nobody knows about. They don't know their names. They're not in portfolios that pop up in the news every day.

And they're just sort of unknowns. But to them, it's important. Having a role in the federal cabinet is important to anybody who gets one. And they carry that honor with them the rest of their lives, having been in a federal cabinet. So the question now becomes, does he fill those roles? That's Justin Trudeau. Does he fill the roles? Does he shuffle, does he truly shuffle his cabinet? Move some people into big portfolios that weren't in there before?

Move some who were in there before out? How extensive is this? Is this part of the overall game plan to hold on to your job? What do we take from this? Bruce, you start us. Well, on your first point, I think over the years, with the way in which people consume information about politics and the amount of information people consume about politics leads inevitably to a situation where fewer people know fewer senior people in politics it doesn't matter what party um i think it gets compounded when cabinets are as large as they have been and when there are portfolios that didn't exist before and the substance of which

you're not sure you can really put a finger on i remember thinking that when i think it was mona forche was named the minister responsible for middle class prosperity um these um this kind of i don't want to say cheapening of the way in which these roles are described to people, but it does kind of break down the ability for the average person to follow politics and to know who's important and who's responsible for what. And so in that sense, there's been a trend in the direction of fewer people knowing the names. You know, I think as a general rule, the people who are leaving, definitely, as you say, Peter, this was known for some time. These are not reactions to dissatisfaction with the prime minister.

People come and go in politics and need to be replaced. And these were all quality individuals. The next step for the prime minister really, I think, goes to whether or not he thinks he's got a big problem or a small problem. If he thinks he's got a small problem, he'll do something relatively modest. And he'll use the opportunity to find people who he believes will be extraordinarily loyal to him and put them in the cabinet to help maintain his leadership, but without looking for kind of swing for the fences changes. I don't know whether he thinks he's got a big problem or a small problem. He has generally been acting like he thinks he's got a small and manageable problem.

To me, it looks like a bigger problem, in which case the logic would be a prorogation, shuffle, and some sort of a major reset from a policy and a personnel in the cabinet standpoint. But that's me projecting my thinking that he's got a big problem, which may be not his thinking about the size of his problem. It's hard to believe he thinks he's got a small problem, but nevertheless, point made. Chantal. Or sometimes, you know, you can have a big problem that cannot be resolved by fixing your smaller problem, which is cabinet. Not everything, you know, suppose you break your leg, it won't help if you put your arm in the sling. So we're basically in that category.

Listen, to judge whether a shuffle is significant or not, just adding on players. You look basically to two portfolios, especially if this is a shuffle that is designed to come on the heels of the U.S. election. And the first portfolio you look at is foreign affairs. whether Mélanie Jolie is the best actor to be dealing with the next administration I don't know and since I don't know who is going to be leading that administration that's even more obvious but I do know that that was one of the big changes

that Justin Trudeau affected in cabinet when Donald Trump came to the White House the first time. He shipped off Stéphane Zion to a diplomatic world and put Chrystia Freeland in the job. And the other question is always finance. If you are going to shift your minister of finance, it's getting really late in the game. There's a fiscal update coming by every echo that we are getting from, for instance, the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The ceiling that Ms. Freeland put on the deficit, which was 40 billion, is going to be broken, significantly broken. We're not talking 100 million here. So do you do something about that by changing personnel or not? So if there are no movements in those two, then you're looking at cosmetics and what Bruce has described. And that means, given parity, that at this point, Pablo Rodriguez, who has left cabinet, has not really been replaced either. So you've got,

you know, three women's spots and two male spots to audition for. Most of the trouble that Justin Trudeau has with caucus with that letter stems from Atlantic Canada. None of the vacancies are from Atlantic Canada. It's Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec. So you cannot go into the Atlantic caucus and say, you know, let me make you happier by appointing more of you to cabinet. We'll see. But if that's, you know, trimming around the edges and the current postings that are going to be made vacant by those decisions, I don't think anyone will notice the change

because they will not even have time to learn the vacant by those decisions, I don't think anyone will notice the change because they will not even have time to learn the names of those ministers and the exact title that they have inherited. You know, all of that makes sense to me. However, I think that in the spirit of if I were Justin Trudeau and I thought I had a pretty big problem, but I was still going to try to stay on and shuffle the cabinet. One of the things that I might be willing to bend in this shuffle is geographic rules, maybe even the gender balance question, because sure, there would be a backlash for that. But if the point is that you want to put talent in the cabinet that you think you have, that's on the bench, that's got energy and that can deliver for you, maybe you've got to look at that. I mean, I think of people like Adam Vancouver and a really quality MP who I think would make a good addition to cabinet. There's Patrick Weiler on the West Coast. There are people who could add some energy to the lineup. And if I were Justin Trudeau, I might look for

a way, whether or not he's breaking those rules or bending them or finding some other solution to them. But I would focus first on who are the energetic voices that I can have move to the front and represent the party and my leadership? Okay, 30 seconds, Chantal. So if Trudeau drops gender balance in the cabinet, let me make a prediction. I don't like to make them. I'll make one. It will be the equivalent of when he decided to cave an exempt home heating world from his carbon pricing.

A bending on a principle even more fundamental. When I'm in trouble, I'm going to go look for the guys. So good luck with that. Yeah, you can see the headlines if you try to do that. Okay, we're going to leave it. Well, then he just makes it a little bit bigger and sorts it out that way. Oh, yeah, right. Let's have a 50-member cabinet now. I don't know. I like Coyne's idea. Cut the cabinet. Cut it in half.

Anyway, I'm out of time. I'm out of time. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Chantal. Good conversation, and we'll do it all again next week when Good Talk returns at that time. We'll see you Monday. Janice Stein will be here launching another week right here on The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you again on Monday.