The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Are We The World's Patsy on Spying?

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Some new intelligence on Canada's vulnerability to foreign interference is worrying to say the least. It suggests that interference by foreigners is deeply embedded in Canadian politics on every level. But the unanswered question is are we any different than most western countries? And Alberta's trans-gender decisions have not surprisingly become an issue too. Bruce and Chantal have their say on this and electoral reform plus more.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. And Chantel and Bruce are with us, as they always are. And we've got lots to talk about today. It's interesting, we've been discussing, there has not been sort of one overwhelming driving issue on this week to discuss, but there are a lot of, I guess, littler ones

that are of interest and are important to a degree. And so we're going to try and cover the whole landscape on this program today of all these issues. So that will mean that we probably won't delve into any one in length as we usually do. But we will try to cover as much as we can. Way to sell the show. We're offering you a salad this week. It's a salad.

With lots of ingredients. It won't be nourishing, but it's going to be diverse. It's going to be diverse. And there's bound to be at least one or two of the multitude of issues that we're going to discuss that will be of interest to you. And I know we're going to start with this one. And the reason we're going to start with it is a couple of weeks ago, I threw out a question to the Bridge listener audience as to if there was

one thing you'd change about Canadian politics, what would it be? And there were dozens and dozens, more than 100 different answers came in. It was great. It was a really good, diverse selection of answers on that. But the one that garnered the most answers was the issue still of election reform. We all remember in 2015, that's what Trudeau sold as part of the formation of his majority government, is that he would deal with election reform. Well, it turned out he didn't, and he reversed his position on that.

Well, in the last week or two, it appears that the NDP are going to move forward on some degree of election reform, at least in terms of proposing something for Parliament to discuss and debate. the NDP are going to move forward on some degree of election reform, at least in terms of proposing something for Parliament to discuss and debate. How seriously should proponents of election reform take the initiative on the part of the NDP, Chantal? Not too seriously. I mean, it's interesting, and it's interesting for people who believe that at some point Canada will get there, that the NDP is bringing in a motion calling on the government to set up a citizens assembly to discuss't know that it will pass or not. That's the first question. I don't believe that very many conservatives will vote for it. And I don't know how many

liberals will actually vote for it. So it's really hard to predict a map on that result. But the other thing is, it doesn't compel the government to do anything. It would at best give you a sense of whether there is a sizable contingent of liberal MPs who feel regrets over not having fulfilled that commitment back in 2015, 2016, 2017. The other reason is calendar. And even if all this massive vote for it, the liberals rally to it, there is a citizen, there's assembly in place, we will not be changing the voting system in this country

between now and the next federal election, nor should we. In the sense that the optics on this at this point would be that the liberals and the next federal election, nor should we, in the sense that the optics on this at this point would be that the liberals and the NDP, and to a degree the Bloc, are all ganging up to try to steal a majority government from the conservatives. And the last thing you want, if you're going to proceed with a major change in your voting system, is for the timing to make it look suspiciously partisan, as it would. And finally, I'm not totally convinced that the Citizens Assembly, as interesting as it would be for the discussion, would necessarily come up with a result that reflects the will or the

inclination of a majority of Canadian voters, i. voters, I don't think you could do that without having a national referendum on it. And in that national referendum, before you went for it, you would have to set up rules that say if all of the prairies vote against it, it's dead. Even if a majority votes for it, if Quebec or Ontario votes against it, it's dead. So it's easy to say, let's have this, and it's going to work out fine. But in smaller venues, i.e. provinces, every province that has gone whatever route to electoral reform has ended up in the dead end and is still using the first-past-the-post system. Bruce, you're nodding your head there.

As you often do when Chantal says what she says. Yeah. Well, that's because when he doesn't agree, he doesn't want to show his cards before he puts them on the table. For fear, I will try to preempt them. No, look, Peter, Chantal's dead wrong about this. And let me explain why. Have you ever heard me say that?

No, because it doesn't really happen. She's right about this. I think for me, the reasons are several as well. I think, first of all, there's no time between now and the next election to do it in anything other than a way that would look extraordinarily manipulative and would undoubtedly backfire on the government if it tried to do that. So I don't think it has the intent to do that. I think it basically will allow the NDP to continue the conversation however they wish when it comes to electoral reform, but they'll understand that there's

very little that they can do to change the system now. I think the second reason is that of all of the thoughts that liberal ministers can have about why they're 10, 12, or 15 points behind in the polls right now, breaking their promise on electoral reform might be something that they regret, but they won't see it as having been one of those things that has put them in this situation, and it isn't. And finally, I think that there's always been a certain amount of frustration with first past the post, and that's logical. It is a system that produces, can produce a lot of situations where more people vote against the person who wins in a riding than votes for that person. But the level of frustration usually has to be a little bit higher than it is right now with the expected outcome before you really get momentum around this idea. Right now, you've got a situation where, I think a little bit unexpectedly, you know, people are probably expecting the Conservatives to win the election. And what's unexpected is that, you know,

you might have thought three or four years ago, if Pierre Poliev was the leader of the Conservative Party, that progressive voters would be almost horrified at that fact. But the public opinion doesn't really look like that right now. And why is that the case? I think in part, it's because he's been presenting himself in a way that doesn't inflame those kinds of passions, that sense of horror at the prospect of him as prime minister. And in part, because people, there is a mood for change. And so people are more open to the idea of change. So right now, the level of fear about what kind of outcome there could be in the election is not very high. Should it be

higher? I think that's a different question. But without it being much higher, I don't think there's much momentum at the public opinion level for electoral reform right now. You'll be happy to know that Chantel was nodding through most of your answer. Quite a bit. Quite a bit. I was happy to see that. Yeah. For those of you who do not have this on video, this is fake news.

Well, then when you nod, it means you're shaking your head, really. That was just a regular head movement. There's always a lot of head movement. I'm trying to keep track of what good reason both Bruce and I found for this discussion and beyond the fact that it's always an interesting discussion. I think we're all on the same page. I think we are. The liberals need to be more scared talking about fear because Bruce talked about fear. The liberals espoused this concept briefly because they were in third place and suddenly they could see a future where they might not, as is the case in many provinces,

be a force to contend with for government. But at this point, despite their concerns, despite what the polls tell them, they're not scared enough to go there. Yeah, I also think that it was to some degree when they started pushing this in 2014, 2015, they were trying for second place. They didn't realize they had a shot at first place. And so it sounded good when you're going to be second and can't do anything about it. Anyway, that's just my opinion. Let's move on.

Well, let me say one thing about first past the post, because, you know, you're quite right. I mean, you just look at the stats in the last two elections. The winning party, government of Canada for the last five years, attracted through two elections, basically one out of three votes, right? That's all they got. And yet they're the government. So that's what, you know, drives election reform or electoral reform people crazy. All right.

Neither, not one of the three of us is a security and intelligence expert. However, we're going to, we're just going to talk about this for a moment. Because I found this, you know, we know the foreign interference commission of inquiry has started this week but at the same time global news came out with a their own report yesterday after an access to information so this document is real it's not a leak it it was it was released basically by the government through atip access to information. And the headline is, Foreign Interference Networks Deeply Embedded in Canadian Politics. And I'm not talking about just the government.

They're talking about right across the board, on all levels of government, federal, provincial, municipal. It's a pretty scary report, and it makes you, well, it makes you ask two questions. The question I sort of ask when i look at it is you know are we are we kind of the patsies out there in the western world that you know we could we're riddled with foreign interference or is this the name of the game these days in the international intelligence and security and spying and all that. Is that just what the landscape of that looks like?

I don't know. Bruce, have you got thoughts on this when you look at this report? Well, Peter, you said that I wasn't a security or intelligence expert. But, of course, if I was, I wouldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you. But let's just go with your assertion. Zero, zero, seven to the rescue. License to kill. Yeah, right.

That's right. That's why he travels so much, you know. Shaken. Exactly. Shaken, not stirred. Look, I don't think that we should be naive about this. I'm glad that this report came out. I'm glad that there's an inquiry into

foreign interference. I think this is a really important conversation for the country to have. I don't think that we should assume for a moment that Canada has somehow been, you know, stands alone as a country that faces this particular risk. It's a little bit like somebody was telling me the other day that, you know, all of the investigations into unidentified flying objects in the United States that are meant to understand if aliens are kind of visiting Earth, it appears that the only place that aliens wanted to come was certain parts of the United States and not anywhere else in the world. I don't, I think there's a tendency to get wrapped up in that.

I think they're already there. I think they're already there when you look at the way things are unfolding. It seems really unlikely to me that aliens would only be interested in one part of the planet. And it also seems extremely unlikely to me that foreign interference of the sort described in that document is only happening in Canada. I think it's happening in lots of places. I think that some of it gets exaggerated. You know, the role that a diaspora play and how they connect to an agenda of their country of origin.

That can be exaggerated sometimes in terms of is it some sort of deliberate act of foreign interference on the part of another government. But I don't want to suggest in saying that that there isn't a problem. There is a problem. There's a problem with foreign interference. There's a huge problem that's growing almost by the day in terms of artificial intelligence and its role in misinformation and disinformation. And you've got the combination of the ability to use the internet and artificial intelligence and malevolence by foreign state actors presents a bigger challenge to our democracy and to other democracies than has

ever existed before. And so it's a good thing that there's going to be more exposure to it. And it's really, really hard to figure out exactly what to do to stop it. Chantal? So you talk about patsies. Well, if we are, we are really in a good company. We're not alone in that room. It's been documented that foreign state actors played a role in pushing Brexit in the UK and achieved an outcome that now a majority of voters, if I believe the polls, find regrettable. It has not turned out at all, as some of the legends that were put forward to sustain it

at the time would have suggested. Just this week, it was also suggested that Russia in particular, but not exclusively, played a role in funding or pushing the Catalonia independence movement in Spain. I am sure that the Catalonian independence movement is for the most part propelled by Catalonia's sense that it wants independence and its history. I have family by association in Catalonia.

I have no reason to doubt that, but I also have reason to accept the notion that there are state agents, foreign state agents, that might find it in their interest to have one of the major countries in the EU blown apart by the secession of its richest or one of its richest provinces. You look at the narrative that is getting built in the United States against helping Ukraine in its current war, and no one has any doubt that there are foreign agents in

play. Also, they are kind of encouraging. The thing with foreign interference is that these are not agents or processes that suddenly come to push a new idea. They feed on something and they nourish it and they allow it to grow from where it is and they work from opportunity. So I don't think we are immune to those kinds of influences. Like Bruce, I'm not an expert and I understand that governments would find it really hard, especially in societies that prize liberty of expression, liberty of association, freedom to promote ideas. How you get to this particular phenomenon in an effective way is, I think, something that all democracies at this point are struggling with.

Okay. All right, well, we've solved that one then, clearly. I did find something. Justice Ogg is leaving on holidays. We've just written the report. That's right. They don't need any more hearings. I did notice something this morning, though.

It was in The Globe, which it puzzled me in a way. Part of the government's, the Trudeau government's reaction to these stories about election interference, foreign interference in politics in Canada, was to establish a new cabinet committee that just focused on this particular issue. And the Globe has a piece today saying, okay, that committee was formed, I think, in June. And the implication in the article is it's only met four times since. And I'm thinking, well, four times over six months. I can think of cabinet committees that don't meet that often. But does that show a lack of

concern about this issue? Or is that criticism? I wouldn't necessarily think that. I mean, you know, when we think about cabinet committees meeting, I guess the question is, well, what do they do when they meet? They don't meet and share their own stories about, you know, foreign interference. They meet to review documents and information that has been prepared and assembled. And it's a very structured conversation usually. I mean, it can be free flowing, but by structured, I mean, there's an

agenda. There are documents for them to have read before they get to the cabinet meeting. Sometimes there's a presentation at the cabinet meeting. And then there's a process by which their views are sought. And there's a bit of discussion. But to say that, to imagine that there need to be more meetings, you'd have to have some sense that there wasn't enough conversation or there was more material that they should be exposed to that they didn't get exposed to. And I don't know that we would know that. I think that I'm glad there is a cabinet committee. I think there should be a multi-party approach to this.

I worried that the last time we had an election, there wasn't. And this time it doesn't look like there's going to be. One of the bad things that can happen with a file like this, an issue like this, is that it becomes a victim of partisan activity domestically. And so that people don't really know what the truth is. They only know what they're hearing from one party or the other, which can be tainted by the party's own interests. It is in the liberals' interest, for example, to continue to draw attention to the fact that, according to the evidence in the document that you referenced, Peter, that China was involved in working against the interests of some conservative candidates. Even if it's not in their partisan interest to raise this,

it's in the country's interest for it to be discussed. So I don't know the number of meetings, whether that says anything to me. I'm glad that those meetings are happening. I think there should be more of them. Any thought on this, Chantal, before we move on? I'm mostly on the same page as Bruce. It's not the only committee where elected or members of parliament actually meet to talk about national security. There is also a committee that includes senators and people from all parties.

So to present this as a sign that the government is asleep at the switch for meetings that's over the course of six months that include Christmas and the summer break and a cabinet shuffle, I don't find that particularly shocking or a sign of much of anything. Okay. Well, with that, we're going to take our first break. And when we come back, there were interesting things that happened in three provinces this week. And I want to kind of divide that up and get a sense from you as to how we should be looking at these. But first of all, we take this break. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube version.

However, you're taking this in. We're glad you're with us. Okay, Chantel and Bruce, I'm going to divide this up in terms of provinces because there was something that happened in Alberta, something that happened in Ontario, something that happened in Quebec that I'd like your thoughts on.

Alberta ends up following, I guess, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick in the way it's looking at certain transgender issues in their schools. They're not all exactly the same, but they're similar. And they are receiving a lot of criticism from different areas. The federal minister is quite critical of the Alberta decision on this. Some transgender advocates are saying communities are terrified as a result of this. Bruce, why don't you start us on this? What do you think?

Well, it's hard not to look at what Daniel Smith has done in this area and ask the question, what is she trying to solve for here? Is she really trying to prevent harm to children? to me. It looks more as though it's an effort that a government takes if it wants to garner support from a part of society that has a particular issue with the LGBTQ community or the trans community. And so in that sense, relating it to what's happened in other jurisdictions makes sense to me, Peter. I think it does feel as though there is a part of society that has some legitimate concerns about the way gender works these days. But I don't think that's what this set of initiatives was. What was a little bit different about Danielle Smith and the way that she brought her ideas to the fore is that she created a video which made it sound as though she was being quite sensitive to the counter argument to what she was doing. But other than that, it still looks to me more like the kind of thing that will put more young people in harm's way than will help them. And so I tend to be with those people who say, this is somewhat cynical, this is dangerous. And hopefully it won't be something that is repeated elsewhere. And I'm sure there's going to be a vigorous public debate

and a political fight about it, and I think there should be. Chantal? Chantal? Parental rights are a fact, and you do want, as a parent, to know what your kids are up to, and hopefully they'll tell you about it. But what if you're a parent that doesn't really want to hear anything that offends your sense of what your child should be? We don't need to be writing fairy tales here. There was a time when kids who were gay in some families would never tell their parents for fear of reprisals or conversion therapy.

We're going to make you better. This is a sickness. What if those kids had not been able to confide in guidance teachers or others? Where would that have led them? We live in a different era on that score, or we like to believe that we do, but we're basically saying if you're a child, a 14-year-old, you're struggling with your sexual identity, your gender. There is no way that you're going to be able to confide in adults that you see on a daily basis without fear that they will go to your parents with this. Let me turn the clock even further back than a gay child.

There was a time when if you were 16 and you believed that maybe you were pregnant or you wanted to get on the pill, you would have to find a doctor that would see you without a parent. Because if you saw a doctor with a parent, you would not be telling that doctor what you wanted from that doctor. So this is real. It's happened.

And at this point, what I find, strangely enough, what I find most pervasive about the Alberta example is that by the same token, the government of Alberta is telling schools that it wants to veto their sexual education programs and make them optional. You're not opting out. You need to opt in. And I'm thinking, so we are going to raise a generation of kids who will be totally free not to be exposed to anything other than their parents' prejudices, and will grow up to be adults, perpetuating what in some cases will be totally misguided views about LGBTQ community

members. And all this with the sanction of the government that will, by the same token, I can't wait to see those cabinet meetings about what's on the curriculum for sexual education in high schools in Alberta. Wisely enough, Pierre Poilievre has instructed his MPs to steer well clear of this conversation in Alberta, and I think it's the wise thing to do. I also believe that within his own caucus, there are people who are as uncomfortable with these moves as the Liberal MPs or NDP MPs who have been speaking about it openly. But I'm curious to see what happens once these are tested in an election.

And that's going to happen this year since New Brunswick and Saskatchewan are going to the polls. And in New Brunswick's case in particular, the issue has been used as a wedge issue by the conservative government. And will they be rewarded for this approach? Will they be sanctioned? Will it have no play in the election campaign? This is all things we will see this year. And I believe that those outcomes will drive the federal conversation politically on this. And do you think it will become a part of the federal conversation if we're in an election in another year or 18 months? And I, you know, I know education is a provincial issue. We all know that. But it seems to me that it's going to be hard for any of those leaders to duck this issue when challenged on it, including Paul Yev.

I understand why he's doing what he's doing now. But when he gets around to the actual campaign, I don't know how. I think that's right, Peter. I do think that we are headed for a discussion about what is Canadian conservative. What does that mean? What does it mean on issues like this? How does it square to, to support this kind of parental rights and encroachment on what people can teach? How does that square with the idea of freedom,

being the freest country in the world? I think those are all legitimate questions for the other parties other than the conservatives to challenge the federal conservatives on. And I hope they do. And I say that in part because what the Republican Party has become in the United States is a is a cautionary tale, I think, for Canada. It isn't the case that most Albertans are clamoring for this kind of initiative. It is a small part of the population that feels highly motivated by an issue like this, probably highly motivated on the abortion issue as well. And the question becomes, are the conservative parties that are successful in attracting a kind of a bigger tent of voters, is their policy agenda going to be overly

influenced by the pressures that they feel from this segment of what is the conservative movement in Canada, as has been the case in the United States. So I think it's a very legitimate discussion. But in saying that, I don't want to minimize what Chantal was saying as the real issue here, which is that young people will be put in situations of jeopardy by this. This can feel sometimes to political strategists as though it's a clever play and the way that it's described is also clever because it's made to sound just sensible and somewhat

innocuous. But it's designed to please a certain segment of the political populace, but without as much regard as needs to be given to the risk that it puts people at. All right. We're going to move on into Ontario, where it's been interesting. Doug Ford has kept relatively quiet since the Greenbelt thing blew up in his face, and he had to do a flip-flop on his position there. And, you know, there's all kinds of investigations and things going on. But he's been relatively quiet.

But in the last week or so, there's been a sense that some of his MPPs, the provincial members, are thinking, you know, it's starting to smell around here. Maybe it's time to get out and look where it doesn't smell. It doesn't smell on the federal Conservative side. They look like they're about to win a big majority government. Maybe I should be running there instead of staying on the provincial scene. Is that

real? Is that happening? What do either of you have to say about that? Chantal? Well, for sure, there have been zero indications, on the contrary, that Premier Ford and Pierre Poiliev are best pals, or that they move in sync. On the contrary, I think since Pierre Poilievre has become a leader, I can't remember a time when he was standing side by side with Doug Ford,

but I can remember, and I don't even have a visual memory, but I can remember images of Premier Ford alongside Dominique Leblanc and Christia Freeland and Justin Trudeau, usually looking happy even if they were not always smoking cigars together. So, and the premier did enforce a no help in federal by-elections rule on his caucus when those first by-elections in Ontario federally came around under Poiliev's watch, and vice versa. So there's not a lot of friendship to be felt here or love. And at the same time, it's clear that there is not a no poaching rule.

And that is a problem, obviously, for the premier, because he lost the cabinet minister just last week, who will be running for Pierre Poiliev. He stands to lose others. And what that means is that he's going to have to hold by elections. And by elections, when you're in government and you're less popular than you used to be, which is the case in Ontario, can mean that you're going to take a hit. And slowly but surely, you lose your moral capital over your own caucus because you keep losing those battles.

So I think there is concern in Ford's office, but I also think that at this point the channels of communication between the most influential Conservative premier in the country, which is the premier of Ontario by definition and size, and the leader of the opposition who is leading in the polls federally, does not vote for a very harmonious relationship. I think these days I look at this from the distance of Montreal, seems to me that Mr. Ford has more time for Olivier Charle, the mayor of Toronto, and the New Democrat than he has for Pierre Poilievre. Bruce?

I think the Ford government is, I wouldn't say that they're in a lot of trouble, but I would say that the bloom is off somewhat. I think that people who pay a lot of attention to provincial politics, which isn't everybody, they have grown more frustrated with some of the choices that the government, the Ford government has made. Some of the questions about ethics around, you know, the land situation, the development issues around the green belt. Also, you know, the more recent questions about moving this Service Ontario into Staples and doing it on the hop, basically saying

that it had to be done on a sole source basis without, because there wasn't enough time to do it otherwise, doesn't make sense. And so there is a bit of a, I don't know, a stink, but a smell. I don't think that that's probably what's driving people to consider entering into federal politics. I think it's always been the case that for ambitious provincial politicians who don't see themselves becoming premier one day, it's tempting to see a wave forming that could elect you to the House of Commons and to imagine that you'd have a situation where you could be in the federal cabinet. I think that's what's going on. But I don't think Ford is in deep, deep trouble right now. I think he could be by the time of the next election. That remains to be seen. I do think instead that what you've got is

politicians looking at the federal situation and the conservative prospects and saying, maybe I should be part of that momentum. And that wouldn't have been the case a couple of years ago. It wasn't very long ago that observers would have said, well, maybe Pierre Polyev will be the leader of the conservatives, but the conservatives will wish that they had Doug Ford as leader. And maybe Doug Ford will one day be the federal conservative leader. You don't hear that anymore. Either parts of it. You hear people in the conservative movement saying Pierre Polyev is doing a good job leading the party and positioning it for victory.

And nobody's really talking about Doug Ford as a potential future prime minister. You're right about it. I mean, maybe in some difficulty right now, but he's not in trouble. I mean, there was another poll just in the last week that showed them 10, 12 points up on the opposition. Now, the Liberals have a new leader in Ontario. They've got a long way to come back, former mayor of Mississauga, Bonnie Crombie. It was interesting. The other night there was an 80th birthday party by his friends from a variety of different places

for David Peterson, the former Ontario premier. And there was a room full of, you know, conservatives and liberals. He was liberal. He still is a liberal. Business leaders, et cetera, et cetera. No Doug Ford, but Bonnie Crombie was there, and she was working the room. And she has the advantage of not having a seat in the provincial legislature, so she's working the province trying to close that gap.

So it'll be interesting to see how it goes, but Ford is still a powerful force in this province, especially in the greater Toronto area. Okay, one last provincial stop, and Chantal, you can handle this one. You've warned us in the last month that Legault was in trouble, when a year ago, nobody would have ever predicted that. He seemed to be gliding to, you know, in his political career and with a re-election at whatever time, more than likely. But right now, he's in deep doo-doo. Yes, that's one way of putting it, a bit of the kindergarten way. He is in such deep doo-doo that he used the word that you didn't want to use

in a news conference this week. Yeah, I saw that. In the English side of his news conference, he finished an answer with this doo-doo word that your mother taught you to avoid. Too much amusement. It's been repeated a lot in French because we, you know because when it's not a bad word in your first language, you are totally insensitive and immune to it, which is why Mr. Legault used it.

Because like other English swear words, they are kind of not resonating when you use them in French. But I pulled this week more seriously. The National Assembly came back this week. The premier held a caucus, as these things happened last week, and told Quebec that the government would be more disciplined, that it would stick to its priorities. Understand that more discipline meant, even back then, that the premier would not be all over the map, surprising Quebecers with things that seemed like rabbits, often dead ones that he pulls out of a hat. Well, two things happened when the National Assembly came back.

The inevitable one was a poll. Of course, there will be a poll, two polls. Both polls showed that the Parti Québécois has now a solid, solid lead on the CAQ and voting intentions. So solid that the people who do see projections looked at what would happen if there was an election tomorrow based on those numbers. These are all projections. This is just for fun, except for Mr. Legault. It showed that the CAQ would have a hard time getting eight to ten people reelected to a majority Patsy-Quebecois government. So this is, you know, par for the course.

We've seen those polls since last fall. At the same time, stories started breaking that mayors were told by some of the CAQ members that if they wanted to advance their files, maybe they should show up at a fundraiser where a minister was in their riding. Let's be serious here. Political donations in Quebec are limited to $100 a head. So you're not going to be buying very much with $100 and certainly not a minister. But there was a pattern. And the fact that the pattern emerged is because mayors and others feel the government is vulnerable, and so they started leaking emails that showed that this was happening. Mr. Legault held in this new discipline incarnation was to hold one news conference this week, and he did on Thursday, and surprised everyone by announcing that the CAQ will no longer fundraise from the public at all, and invited the opposition parties to do the same.

Now, will no longer fundraise. That's almost an admission that the system was being abused, which is not necessarily the case given the constraints on public financing. But the offer to opposition parties to do the same is really interesting. In Quebec, public financing is based on how well you do in an election. And so 85% of the funding of the CAQ comes from public financing, 7 million.

What do the opposition parties get? About 1.5 million each. Well, it's not 7 million, 4 to 1.5 each. Which party has been fundraising almost as well as the CAQ? The CAQ brought in $800,000 last year. The PQ brought in $700,000. In clear, Mr. Legault is proposing that he keeps getting that edge in public financing while all of the others, and in particular, the Parti Québécois goes poor. Obviously, today is Friday morning. The papers are full of analysis with the words panic, improvised, misguided.

No one is using stupid, but on one panel, I was asked if it was a rational decision, which is a heavy word to use. I went to impulsive, sounded like a better option. So things are not looking well. And I think some people are starting to think about what happens to the CAQ once François Legault retires. All right. Okay, we're going to take a final break. Come back with one more topic right after this.

And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantal and Bruce are here. I'm almost hesitant to bring this up given my own past, but I am kind of on the record about how I feel about the way things have been happening at the management end of the CBC. I have no problems with the journalism end, which I was from. I have enormous respect for journalists at the CBC. I'd like to see a little more support from management for the journalism,

and I'm talking about the senior executive management. But having said that, the president of the CBC, Catherine Tate, who clearly stumbled in an interview with Adrienne Arsenault, I guess it's a couple of months ago now, when she announced, Tate announced, that there were going to be 800 or so jobs lost at the CBC to make up for a shortfall in revenues. In that interview, Adrienne asked her, well, obviously you're not going to take bonuses

at the executive level anymore. And she fudged the answer. She basically, well, you know, we haven't got around to talking about that, which was unbelievable. Same day she was laying off people, or announcing there were going to be layoffs. Anyway, she got a second chance this week at a parliamentary committee to answer the same question, and guess what?

She still didn't answer it she still fudged her answer when the simplest thing would have been to say whoever recommends whatever i'm not taking a bonus she didn't say that she said ed you know it's not my decision. I'll have to wait and see. Well, I found that pathetic as an answer at a time when the corporation needs to be showing a different face than it's been showing lately. But maybe that's just me. I'm certainly biased on that subject, and I worry about the future of the CBC. But I wouldn't mind knowing how you two saw that. We have a couple of minutes left. Chantal. Oh, there's a group of people who thought she did just fine.

They're called the Capoeira's Conservatives. There was even some suggestions and jest on social media that maybe Miss Tate actually works as a covert agent. We were talking about Spice, a covert agent for the Conservative Party and its quest to defund and make the CBC disappear. It was a train wreck. I watched it. Train wreck from start to finish. You are totally right that she could easily have said there are performance bonuses built into some of the contracts of the people who work in management at the CBC. It's not that easy to say there will be no bonuses or whatever you want to call them this year. But in my case, even if offered a bonus, I would certainly decline to accept it, which is totally her decision, as you know. That did not happen. On the contrary,

there was a point where she expressed hope that she would be considered for a bonus. Really, it also became clearer to, I think, both the government and to people on the outside in our introductory presentation. She stated that the announcement that there would be job cuts was based on estimates that CBC doesn't really know how many jobs it will need to cut, but that the announcement was made on the eve of the beginning of a round of labor negotiations with one of the CBC's largest unions. And clear, a strategy to set up the stage for a labor negotiation. What also became clear, not over the course of that very painful to watch hour and a half, is that the government has no time for misstate. And I say that because the next day, the word from Heritage and Treasury Board was that at no time had the CBC been told that it should expect a 3% cut in its funding. That did not happen, despite the suggestion by CBC management

that all this is caused because we have a 3% cut to deal with in the next fiscal year. Not happening, or at least is not yet happened. So my only question is, Ms. Tate serves us at pleasure. She is on an extension of a mandate. What is the government waiting for? To either replace her on an interim basis or to appoint someone with a proper full-time term

to run the CBC in what will become increasingly difficult times for both CBC and Radio-Canada. Bruce, a couple of minutes. Yeah, a big mystery as to why she got that extension. There were plenty of doubts about her capacity to run that organization before she got the extension. The government had plenty of time to find another candidate who would have been better suited to running the CBC than Catherine Tate.

And no surprise, in a a way that she's in this situation where she's got the microphone speaking on behalf of the organization and saying completely dumbfounding things. It was a total swing and a miss again. And, you know, shocking in the sense that in an organization like that, she would have done a rehearsal. There would have been meetings to talk about. here's the question that you're going to get or the series of questions you're going to get how are you going to answer that and people would have counseled you know the way that they do you know answer it this way don't answer it that way try to avoid saying this or that or the other thing but really at the end of

the day they either gave her bad advice or she ignored good advice. But what came out of her mouth on the central question of whether or not she should get a bonus was incomprehensibly stupid. This idea that she could get away with saying, well, I won't be the one who decides whether I get a bonus. And the extension of that thought is that, yes, she would be the one that recommends to the board who should get bonuses, but the board will decide. It's either childishly naive to imagine that people would accept that on face as, oh, well, come to think of it, I guess she's right. It's not really up to her or it's just stupid. And it's putting the reputation of the organization at risk, making it a bit of a laughingstock in the political community at a time when it is vulnerable. Obviously, the criticism of the conservatives of the CBC is

quite trenchant and the risks of the organization are really quite significant politically. So it was a really bad day for the CBC, and lots of reason for people who care about the CBC to be disappointed in this tape. Yeah. Okay, I'm not going to say anything else. But, you know, it's a difficult time in the CBC. I feel particularly, you know, upset for staff at CBC, especially the younger ones, who are all vulnerable to the layoffs that are about to come, upwards of 800 layoffs. And it's, you know, kind of last in, first out situation, given the various contracts of the CBC. And you have a lot of young, talented people

who the future of journalism is built on who are going to lose their jobs. And while that's happening, you have an executive who's saying what she's saying about bonuses. It just doesn't seem to make any sense to me. All right, we're going to leave it at that. Lots coming up in the week ahead, starting with The Buzz, which comes out tomorrow, the weekly newsletter.

You can have it in your inbox by 7 a.m., but you've got to subscribe. It's free, but you have to subscribe at thenationalnewswatch.com. We'll have a new question of the week starting on Monday, and we are anxious to hear what you might have to say about that. So have a good weekend, both of you, Bruce and Chantel, and we look forward to talking to you in a week's time. So that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again on Monday.