The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Canada vs India: Where Does This Lead?

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Is there a way out of this India story or are the two sides just too entrenched in their positions?  Chantal and Bruce have their thoughts on the story that has dominated the headlines all week.  And Doug Ford -- does saying you're sorry clean up the Greenbelt mess?

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there from Toronto. I'm Peter Mansbridge on Televares in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa and what a week it has been. I want to start off on the India story, but I want to start off in the present as opposed to, you know, three, four or five days ago. I don't want to sort of rehash everything from the beginning of the week. I want to get right to the crux of where we are now, because the interesting thing about this story is it's changed a number of times in the way it's been reported and perceived to the point where we are now as we enter a weekend, how would you describe where we are on this story this weekend, Bruce?

Sorry, just pausing. I'm trying to understand the question. How would I describe where we are on this story? Yeah, like I don't want to go through a sort of day-by-day blow of the week. I want to start with now. Where are we on this story between Canada and India and other countries that now are involved? Where are we?

I think that we're, I think we're in a place where the federal government has said what it's going to say. The opposition leader has said what he's got to say. In fact, he said two different things. We'll come to that. The Indian government has said what it wants to say. The U.S. government has kind of clarified its position. I think things are likely to be relatively stable for a while, but who's to say there isn't more information coming out? Yesterday, there was more information coming out that added to the argument, anyway, that the, first of all all that the federal government had some substantial intelligence upon which to engage in continued conversations over a period of time

with the indian government about this before doing anything publicly so this notion that you know trudeau blew the whole issue up by deciding to go public. I think that's just a bad take on two levels. One is that there were lots of private discussions before. And two is that nobody seems to in a fashion that I think is responsible and establish a context for the conversation at the political level or do I just let the Globe and Mail do that? I think he made the right choice in that regard. The other thing that was kind of left hanging as a criticism of the government was this notion that Ottawa was rebuffed in its efforts to have support of its allies. I think that was fake news. I don't think that there was ever really much evidence that Ottawa was rebuffed by anybody in that effort.

I think other countries don't have the same exact interests as we do when it comes to one of our nationals being killed, allegedly allegedly by a foreign government but that doesn't mean that they rebuffed us and in fact when pushed on this a little bit the american government couldn't in my view have been more emphatic that it was allied with canada on this that it took these allegations seriously and that it believed that canada was right to pursue an investigation to bring this matter to some just conclusion. So, you know, maybe there'll be some who think that this was a bad week politically for the prime minister. I frankly don't think that's the right way to kind of even think about this.

The real issue is that he became aware that a Canadian national was killed potentially with the involvement of a foreign government. And so what could he do about it, other than to be fairly aggressive in pursuing our national interests, regardless of whether or not this is a big trading partner or an important strategic ally, I find it kind of strange that people are even suggesting that we should moderate our interests in protecting that basic principle that you can't come into our country and kill one of our nationals if the strategic significance of the country or the trading relationship is this big as opposed to that big. And so I don't think it's – I'm not scoring this, I suppose, as a which party is winning or losing particularly, but I'm sure some will.

Just before, I asked Sean Teldewy, and the rebuffing story was given a degree of credence in the middle of the week because it came from the Washington Post, the much heralded Washington Post. The headline did. Yeah, the headline did. Once again, we had that story. But nevertheless, it was out of the Washington Post. And it wasn't like some, you know, social media posting.

It was the Washington Post. They have since retracted the story. And clearly, as you said, Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor for Joe Biden, made it pretty clear, at least by the end of the week, where the Americans stood. Chantal, where are you on this story in terms of where we think we are right now? I'm not going to do a play-by-play, but I will note that I talk the better day in the week for the story, for the information that people need to get their heads around what's happening. It was not Monday when the prime minister stood up in the House of Commons, but Thursday when a series of

blocks fell in place. What happened on Monday with the Prime Minister's statement required, even if you're fair-minded, some leap of faith in what was being advanced by Justin Trudeau. By Thursday, that leap of faith had become a lot easier to make because there was less faith involved and more facts brought to the fore. I don't believe that the leaks that have shed light on how much evidence the government of Canada has, how it tried to present it in India by sending Jody Thomas to India. I don't think those leaks were unauthorized. The people who were giving this information were officially not authorized to speak about them publicly,

but they didn't happen by accident. This is, as opposed to all the leaks on the China file, this is not some whistleblower coming out of the woodwork and breaking some oath or some principle of office. It went to shoring up the prime minister's assertions without the prime minister himself going public with facts about an inquiry that he should not be the one disclosing in any event because his pulpit is too high and it resonates too loudly. What also happened on Thursday in the U.S., I don't think the timing was an accident, was even more clarification that the White House and

the administration are seized of this issue and that they did not set it aside. There's some play by Justin Trudeau who's down in the polls and he's trying to make life difficult for the rest of us who are trying to get along with India because we don't want to get along with China anymore. So I thought that left the government in a pretty decent place, if you can put it like that, by week's end politically. And the credibility of the prime minister on this issue was shored up by those events. But a decent week for Justin Trudeau remains a very bad week for the Canada-India relationship. And where there is more clarity as to why the prime minister acted the way he did, and on what basis, there is very little clarity as to the way forward. Our policy a year ago, after months and months and months of discussions within government circles, was that we would have this endo-China approach

to diverging our interests from those of China. It's kind of, what was it, the friend-shoring that Christian Freeland, the Minister of Finance, talked about. Well, the cornerstone of the friend thing was supposed to be India. And I don't think that this is going to be fixed anytime soon. I'm not going to put the blame on Justin Trudeau's government because what we are seeing is a government in India that has a very nationalist agenda that is creating strains amongst various communities in India, and they are such that they are in play in Canada

among the same communities within the diaspora. So the solution to how we go forward does not involve so much a change in government in Canada as a change in the way that the government sees its mission in India. And that's way beyond our reach. And to the last point, because I can't help myself on this one, to Bruce's point that he doesn't believe that we should moderate principles to preserve a relationship, well, I would just argue that much of the industrialized world set aside or moderated a hell of a lot of principles to get along with China over the past two decades.

And it has brought us here in golden China and has ended up causing everything that we've seen. So if this is the end of our moderating our principles, and I don't believe it is, it would be welcome. But I think by and large, most other countries who are not directly involved in this story will be happy to moderate their principles to stay out of the fray and move on with their own strategies to engage India. I'd like to roll back the tape and make sure that that's exactly what I said. But if it was, I'd take it back. Because what I was trying to say was, and I said, I think when we talked about this on Wednesday, Peter, every country does have these challenging relationships with others, which require you to pursue aggressively some issues,

but to try to maintain a relationship that allows you to work on others. Perhaps that's a, you know, put another way, that is an interpretation that says moderate your principles. But what I was really saying is that if we allow a precedent here, that a foreign country could be involved in killing one of our nationals, that's a degree of moderation, if you like, that I don't think that we should establish as a precedent. And I think that the moderation that happened, that did happen, is the extensive conversations between the Canadian government through our national security advisor with the Indian government before making anything public. And there's every reason to believe that this

would have continued to be a away from the public eye conversation had it not been for who knows how the Globe and Mail got the information that led to the threat of a story going public. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't the government of Canada officially that decided to do that. But that once that that was going to happen, I don't think that we should set a precedent that our willingness to moderate our principles goes so far as to say, well, it sounds like it was a bad thing, but we're going to put it aside. So I'm not suggesting that Chantal was saying we should, but I want to make it clear that I wasn't saying that there should be no moderation. I'm saying I think there needs to be a line around this. If we had been presented with India, if India presented us with an allegation that our security services were involved in killing an Indian national in their country, how would we have wanted our government to react?

We would have wanted our government to say, we're going to get to the bottom of it. We're going to cooperate in an investigation. That's not how we roll internationally or anywhere. And the fact that India hasn't done that is kind of telling. And one of the story threads that hasn't, in my view, been properly picked up by most or maybe any Canadian media organizations is, did India do this? I see a lot more journalism being created on, did Trudeau play this well or poorly, or was it a distraction? Which honestly, relative to the larger question, so why, if this happened, why did it happen? Did it happen? I don't know.

I just feel like we're talking about the wrong issues on this, not here this morning, but the country for most of this week. Okay, I want to weigh in on this, but let Chantal just have a quick response. Well, here's my question and my problem. I'm all for thinking that the prime Minister handled the issue properly this week. But I am left with the question of whether Canada and the Trudeau government would have sucked it up and kept this under wraps if a number of journalists had not been working on the story and if it had not lived in fear that the same leaks that plagued its strategies throughout the spring on China would come and plague. Or in clear, someone sat somewhere and said, there is no way that this will remain secret.

It's going to leak. But absent all that, I'm not so sure that we would have been so forward on the part of the prime minister and his team to be transparent with parliament or even to call would be on its way or packing its bags at this point, and that we would still be negotiating that free trade agreement with India. I agree. So I think the China mess that the government made for itself last spring kind of dictated its behavior this week. And I wish I could say that the government was guided by principles, but I'm not willing to go there.

All right. Let me back up the conversation a little bit, because I tend to agree with a point that I think you both made earlier, which is that this story changed significantly on Thursday when the U.S. entered the fray in a very vocal way. When Jake Sullivan stood at the microphone on Thursday, it wasn't to answer a question. It was to make a statement. He basically interrupted his own news conference to say, I've heard that blah, blah, blah, and I want you to know that we're with Canada on this. And we are, and this to me was the really important point.

And it comes to exactly what both of you were saying. He says, we have talked to India. We are engaging India on this. Not just sort of a, you know, we've told India we're not happy, this is serious. We are engaging India on this, which would seem to indicate they're entering this fray to try and end the fray, to try and find a way out. Basically, for the Indians, Canada doesn't need necessarily a way out on this if everything they're saying is true. India does, given their initial statements on this. And I

think back, and I know there are differences in this situation, so let me make that clear. But I think back to the Khashoggi situation, where Khashoggi, an American citizen, was murdered, which is about the nicest way to say what they did to him, by Saudi agents in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in Turkey. They denied involvement initially. The Trump White House basically didn't say much of anything about it because they were all pals. But eventually, what happened,

because I'm sure there were some diplomatic movements going on by the Americans and others to the Saudis saying, you've really botched this and you've got to come clean. And the way they came clean was they said there were rogue elements of the Saudi intelligence service had done it. They admitted to that and they put on a little show trial and some guys were sent to jail. I don't know whether they ever went to jail or if they're still in jail or what have you, but that's the way it was resolved. And you don't hear about it anymore. And the relationships, including

between us and the Saudis, still exist. And one wonders at this point, with the Americans engaged on the subject, whether this is going to end up in somewhat of a similar way. The out for India can be rogue agents that get carried away and try to find an end. I mean, what else is going to happen? How can it possibly be resolved, if in fact all the elements that we're hearing are true?

Anybody want to say anything on that? Of course, there's the matter of those taped conversations of India officials. It's the inconvenient matter when you want to talk about rogue elements, and you know that there are recordings of conversations that would suggest you have a big rogue cell operating. Right.

I don't know where India goes from here. I don't know if... I'm sure American pressures make a big difference to India and to its standing in the world. I'm not convinced that the Americans are alone in asking those questions. For sure, some of the elements of small things that happened this week in the larger scale of things, the visa closure. Well, I suspect you guys have gone to India and gotten visas. I did. I went and stood one Saturday morning in a place that was packed with people getting visas. I kind of stood out. Most of the people who were getting visas were Canadian citizens of Indian descent who were going home to see families. Most of them were not Sikhs by the looks of them.

Up to a point, the people who stand to suffer most from this visa closure are the family of those Canadians who live in India and are now cut off from their Canadian relatives. Those families are not going to be terribly thankful to the Modi government for having done this. I'm not sure that it is a sustainable closure, the closure of the visa offices in Canada. On other fronts, I'm sure that there are many ways that the India government can make life more complicated for Canada, but at what cost? The temptation, I suspect, is going to be to just let water flow under the bridge

and hope it all goes away. I'm not sure that the recourse to rogue elements is going to be an easy one. No, it may well not. Not as easy as it was for the Saudis to put it this way. Yeah, quite possibly. But the important part of the American, you know, engaging with India is a clear signal to India,

who have been the kind of darling of the West in the so-called counterweight against China, and that's including Canada. It's kind of a warning that don't assume everything is fine here. This is not fine, and you can't get away with this. And we want you to be a clear partner in the investigation of what happened. And the Americans saying that can make a big difference on that international reaction. I mean, everybody wants it cooled out and cooled out quickly. Even the prime minister keeps saying that, right? Not trying to provoke anything.

Just want to get it, you know, let's get an agreed upon. I'm not sure the Indian government is there. No, I don't think they are there. The rogue element, right? That if we say everybody wants to moderate this, I think there is one player that I'm not sure that's true for, which is Modi and his government. I think that there's a chance that they're quite happy with this story. I don't mean to overstate that.

I don't know that much about Indian politics, but I've been consuming as much as I can to understand why. Essentially, their response seems to be okay or annoyed that you said this, but Canada is sheltering people that we don't like. You know what? I mean, if these two countries, two positions is India's murdering people on our soil and in india's answer is canada is sheltering people that we're unhappy with um i think reasonable people in canada anyway and in the united states would say that's not an equal competition uh of arguments that don't murder people is a stronger argument than we don't like people that live in your country that have issues with our domestic politics. I think part of the reason why

this is felt as rocky as it has for Justin Trudeau doesn't really have much to do with the substance of this particular issue, but it has a lot to do with the state of repair of his political career in Canada. I don't think that he's given the benefit of the doubt by anywhere near as many people as used to be the case. If this had happened in 2016 and he had taken exactly these steps, I think public opinion would have been kind of massively behind him. But it's not now. And that's just life. And that's not I'm not I'm not crying crocodile tears for him on this. I think it's part of why I think his insistence that he should run in the next election is a problem for his party, is a problem for him.

I think that sometimes you just don't, you can't expect the same level of public acceptance of what you're doing and how you're saying it and the positions that you're taking this many years into a mandate. So I think that's part of the challenge that he's got and it's part of why when he went to india um last month i guess it was maybe it was earlier this month um the frame seemed to be uh at least in many um media pieces that i saw is like modi's unhappy with trudeau that therefore supports our thesis that Trudeau is now considered a lightweight and an annoyance on the international stage. I don't know that that was really true, and I certainly don't think that we should allow ourselves to judge our success in global diplomacy on the basis of whether Modi likes us. But that happened. And it happened, I think, in part, because there are more people, more voices,

more institutions who are looking for a way to say, Trudeau, could you get on your way? And could we have another page in this kind of leadership of the country. And I don't know what he can do about that, to be honest. Okay. But up to a point, part of the angle of the coverage was also paved by Prime Minister Trudeau himself with his very first visit to India, the costume wearing, etc. So for sure, he is returning to this place where he actually took a credibility hit as a result of his own actions. People are going to be looking at how he fares the second time around. Coincidence has it that he is going there on a mission that is bound to make his host look like he has zero time for him. And until Monday, you don't know why. But it's not just that Trudeau has been in power for eight years

and suddenly people are skeptical or more skeptical of his pronouncements. It's also that he messed up that first visit in a way that most Canadians still have those pictures in mind and still cringe when they see them of that first trip. Now, having said that, do not assume that Modi does not know that Justin Trudeau is in trouble in Canada, in public opinion, and does not feel somehow that this is a prime minister that will have a harder time rallying public opinion behind him than he will in his own country. That being said, Modi and his government have been unhappy with Jokhmeet Singh, with Arjit Sajjan, with whoever is a Sikh within the three main parties in the House of Commons.

India has literally accused Arjit Sajjan of being an agent of the separatist forces for Khalistan. And I am sure that if you ask Jagmeet Singh or his counterparts in the Conservative caucus, they would say that they have been the target of much the same issue. We have one of the largest, if not the largest, seat diaspora in this country. And it is very engaged in politics, as we can see in the House of Commons. But from India's perspective, it basically means that we are infiltrated by sympathizers because this government in India is black and white. You're Hindu and you're with them.

You're not Hindu and you're not. I was struck by the first large group that came out in support after the World Sikh Organization of Prime Minister Trudeau was a large Muslim organization, because Muslims have been having a tough ride also under the Modi government. So that's why I'm not sure that the U.S. will manage to convince Modi that he doesn't have more to gain by just continuing to taunt Justin Trudeau and Canada rather than find a path out. Well, let's see made a difference to the way of the characterization of the story at least for the moment let's let's see where it goes from now and just just so we know um there is a a Sikh diaspora in different parts of the world right

they're left India they're in Australia siz in australia sizable number in australia sizable number in the united states but nowhere is it greater than it is in canada um and that's why modi's eyes look to canada on on on this issue um we'll see where we'll see where it plays out but this is you know this may be uh you may be a temporary story here, but it's not a temporary story in the background. It's going to carry on. We'll see where it goes. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

We'll come back with another story of interest on the domestic front. That's right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk, the Friday episode of The Bridge right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform,

or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. And could I encourage those who like to comment on our YouTube channel, and many of you do, some of you constructively, that doesn't mean you agree with what you're hearing necessarily, but you're constructive in your talk. Others are, you know, just, they clearly haven't even listened to the discussion. So, you know, not only are we not interested in those comments, we kind of pass over them fairly quickly. Okay, moving on to a discussion about something that happened in Ontario by week's end. It's not often that you hear a politician say, I'm sorry. It's not often that you hear a politician say, I'm sorry. It's not often that you hear a politician, a leader say, I made a mistake. It's not often that you hear that leader say, I'm

completely reversing my position. Well, Doug Ford did all of those a number of times in a statement he made to the people of Ontario about the Green Belt. We've discussed that at different times on this program. He basically promised one thing, did another, and now he's paying the political prices with plummeting polls, etc., etc. So he's now saying, giving all the land back to the Green Belt, it won't be developed. The developers will lose their position on there. With hopes that this is the end of the story.

I'm not so sure it's the end of the story, because we haven't got to the follow the money part of the story. And there are millions, if not billions of dollars, potential dollars involved in this story. But the scene of a political leader basically dropping to his knees and asking for forgiveness is one we don't normally see. We rarely see.

Does it end the story? Bruce? No, no, I don't think it does. But I think that was the hope on the part of the premier. Look, I think that the more facts that have rolled out about this Greenbelt situation and the way that the Ontario Conservative Party handled it and what their interests were as they saw them and the relationship between

the government and the developer community, you can either end up consuming all these facts and deciding, okay, so what Premier Ford wants us to believe is that he never wanted to open up the green belt he only decided under this duress of feeling that there weren't enough homes being built quickly enough in ontario that he had to break his promise so that he could get more homes built and then unbeknownst to him andingly to him, it happened that a bunch of developers decided to get involved in trying to find some sort of economic advantage out of that decision. I'd kind of like to be as naive again as I was earlier in my life that I could believe that version of events, but I'm past that. I think the other version that makes more sense to me, and I consulted my notes this morning,

I went back to a March of 1973 conversation between John Dean and Richard Nixon that was recorded, that we subsequently found out was recorded, where Dean was talking about the trouble that Nixon was in. If the burglars, the Watergate burglars, weren't compensated. And Nixon, and he said, you know, they would need some money. And Nixon said, how much money would they need? And Dean said, maybe as much as a million dollars.

And Nixon said, we could find that. Why is that relevant from my standpoint? Because to me, what Nixon was trying to do there was figure out what will it take to stop this story from closing in on me even more than it has already. So I'm not suggesting there was a degree of criminality in what Premier Ford said, but it looked like a firewall strategy to me. He was trying to say something to the public that would turn off the glare and take down the scrutiny that was encroaching on his office. He's had a terrible run on this issue. He's lost minister.

He's had a terrible run on this issue. He's lost ministry, he's lost staff, he's got this story still kicking around about developers at his daughter's wedding in his backyard, bringing money, being encouraged to bring money. No, I think there's a lot more that can be pursued and should be pursued on this. And I think we wouldn't have had the events of yesterday had it not been for really good journalism and persistent journalism being done on this issue over the last several months. And an auditor general who had faced the wrath of Doug Ford

a number of times on other issues, who her and her department laid it all out in their report, which really kicked off this whole process a month, six weeks ago. Chantal? On the point about good journalism, which is why you need local, in the larger sense of the word, boots on the ground. You can't just have the bird's eye view of local or provincial politics

and expect the accountability function of the media to operate. And these days, it's getting harder and harder. And to Bruce's earlier point on the program about not seeing enough journalism about what actually happened in the India story and the assassination. It is a lot easier with limited resources to do a good job on what's going on at Queen's Park rather than a good job on what's been happening within the India government and its various factions. It's also cheaper. But I agree with Bruce. There has been blood in the water for weeks,

and people have been drawn to the sharks that were drawn to the blood in the water. A couple of government ministers, some senior staffers. The sharks are still circling. The only person left in the boat is the person that the sharks have the most appetite for. That's the premier. And yesterday, he took both oars and tried to oar himself out of the bloodied water as quickly as he could. Like Bruce, I am skeptical that this will end the story because this is not just the story of a broken promise. We've seen people break promises and eventually apologize for them. I'm thinking of Gordon Campbell, who lost his government

for breaking a promise not to have an HST in his province, having promised it. But this was a policy issue. This one is something else. It smells more of the kind of deals that municipal governments in my province, in Montreal and Laval to name them, got themselves in trouble and that eventually prompted something called the Charbonneau Commission about the corruption between the construction industry and various officials. And on that basis, I'm going to be curious to see whether the RCMP closes the file on the basis of an apology by the premier or whether they continue to look into this, because clearly a lot of not-not-wing-wink was involved. Whether that

crossed the line into criminal behavior, I have no way to tell. But it is a serious, serious issue. And you cannot just wipe the slate clean by saying, well, I'm sorry, I should have talked of something else. And, you know, don't hold it against me that I was in such a hurry to provide you with more housing that I broke a promise and then let everyone have their way to build or to make billions of dollars off my decision. Yeah, I mean, I think that point about motives that he included in his statement yesterday, he said, well, I'm really, really, really, really sorry.

I'm sure he is. I can't imagine a politician being more sorry for a decision that he made that has come back to haunt him and put his premiership in some peril, I think. I agree with Chantal about the sharks in the water. They're hungry and they want him. And I've not seen another issue in his time in office that comes close to as dangerous for him. And I remember when we talked about this issue, whenever it was that wedding party was, I said, I don't think i've ever seen a

more bald on its surface scandal uh of such significance for a politician um but when he said i'm really really really sorry that i broke my promise because it made people to question our motives. I think it wasn't the breaking of the promise that allowed people to question his motives. I think it was things like developers at his daughter's wedding in the backyard bringing envelopes of cash. I think that kind of thing is what made people question the motives, not the idea that, like if he had said, look, this housing issue is such a crisis that I'm going to develop a system where some land is going to be released. The process for accessing that land is going to be arm's length, completely above board, secure beyond belief from any kind of skullduggery. There's going to be a lot of

affordable housing. There's going to be a lot of processes associated with it that is transparent so that people can see it. I'm not suggesting that would have been a good decision, but I am suggesting if you were really worried about people questioning your motives on this, you needed more than the process that existed, and you needed not to have developers at your daughter's wedding. I just want to, before we take our final break, just briefly refer back to something Chantal said

about the importance of the RCMP investigation that is apparently going on right now. First of all, I should declare that my company that I have, that has been quite active since I retired from daily journalism with the CBC, has had a small contract with the Ontario Auditor General's Department. I find it interesting that in terms of the RCMP investigation, my understanding is the auditor general,

once she dropped her report, said there are other parts to this that need to be investigated by the Ontario Provincial Police. She handed it to them. They determined they couldn't handle it. They felt they were in conflict because of their relationship with the Ontario government. So that's how it ended up with the RCMP.

And one of the things the RCMP is known for, they're known for a lot of things, and these days not all good, but one of the good things they're known for is their ability to trace money and the movement of money and following the money. And I don't know whether that's what they're doing right now, but if they are, it may be an important next step in this story because we haven't got to that part of the story yet. But, you know, as you've both said, the carcasses that already litter

the ground, the greenbelt ground, as a result of this scandal are numerous and they all have stories to tell. And most of them haven't told them yet, or at least they haven't told them publicly. So we'll see where the story ends up. Okay, we're going to take our final break and we come back, something we promised a little earlier, and we'll finish off with that today, but this first. All right, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto.

Bruce is in Ottawa, Chantal's in Montreal. Bruce mentioned earlier that on the India story, the opposition leader, who I'm sure was entering this week with great expectations of how things would go as a result of the polls that have been very much in his favor, up late and some of the issues clearly are ones that can work for an opposition party like rising food prices, inflation, housing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But instead, Air India became the dominant story for most of the week, if not all of the week. But it was interesting to see, and I'll get you to start on it, Bruce, because you raised it first, is that Pierre Polyev said he appears to have had two different positions on this story

as the story moved along this week and which I guess raises some questions about credibility on this issue I'm not sure how do you see it yeah first of all I think Pierre Polyev has been having a pretty good summer I think that most of the things that he's been working on have been effective for him. There's some polling out consistently now that shows that he's very competitive with Justin Trudeau on the simple question of who do you prefer as prime minister. There's a poll out today that says that he's ahead of Trudeau on that. And he's ahead in parts of the country, geographically and demographically, that should be quite worrisome for the liberals, including among younger people in Atlantic Canada. So he's generally having a good run of things in terms of how he's managing his political exposure. In theory, because his party is, I think, quite ahead in the polls and because he's now entering that zone where people will judge him as the next potential, the next prime minister, the level of scrutiny on him should go up.

I don't know whether or not that's as true today as it might have been in the past. There's some structural issues in the media environment that I think work to his favor, both the fatigue with the incumbent, but also I think the leaning of some of the businesses that are involved in private sector journalism, not all, but some. And so I don't know if the scrutiny is going to go up on him, but I think that this was the kind of situation where if scrutiny of his approach to politics was going to go up, he's going to have difficulty continuing to do the thing that he did this week. What he did this week on the first day was decided that the right thing to do after meeting with the prime minister and being briefed to the extent that he was with the prime minister to say we should all lock arms in unity on this in Canada because one of our nationals

was killed and we should get to the bottom of it. I suspect what happened after that is he heard from a lot of people who are supporters of his party or in his party who didn't like the degree to which that sounded like he was aligned with Justin Trudeau. And so the next day he said, Justin Trudeau needs to come clean with more facts. Now, my problem with that is, I think the right position for him was the one the day before. I think if he had a problem with the degree of disclosure that Trudeau gave him in that meeting, he should have asked for more disclosure. And if he really wants more disclosure in those private briefings, he should have asked for more disclosure. And if he really wants more disclosure in those private briefings, he should agree to get security cleared, which he has so far chosen not to do. And I think those questions deserve to be asked of him. Why don't you get a

security clearance rather than just sort of decide that it's okay because he's the opposition leader, he wants to protect the right to criticism, criticize the prime minister that's what it looks like but to me that's not a sufficient response and the second issue for me is the apparent hypocrisy of saying one thing uh we should all stand in unity one day and then the next day saying i'm going to put this knife in the prime minister's back because that feels like a better public posture for me. Chantal? I agree that it is better day was Monday and not the subsequent. The prime minister needs to come clean.

But it's also that I watched, it's the first week back. So I watched question period every day for four days. And seems to me Mr. Poirier was around most of that time. And so was the Conservative Party, obviously. So if you're going to have a presser to say the prime minister needs to come clean, probably the logic of your presser should be that your MPs in question period, when they have the opportunity, would be pressing the government with more questions. That did not happen all week. There were no questions. It was all about cost of living. On a larger scale, I thought this was an interesting week, and I'm going to kind of take a turn away a bit from India on this. This was the kind of week that

has demonstrated to the conservatives how hard it's going to be, regardless of whether there is more scrutiny, to keep the focus on cost of living issues and on Pierre Poiliev's successful message. Because now that the House is back, you would need to be in a bubble to be able to continue to pursue this issue and ignore all the others. And I'll give you some examples, because it wasn't just India that saw the leader of the opposition say one thing in the lobby and then silence in the House of Commons. Those demonstrations from coast to coast to coast and counter demonstrations about gender identity found the conservative caucus missing in action on both sides of the argument. Nothing to contribute. The word to MPs, stay out of this conversation.

Undoubtedly, it would be a divisive discussion within the caucus. A lot of those demonstrations, you didn't have to scratch very hard to find that there were a lot of people, not all of them, but who had homophobic opinions and were not demonstrating just about whether parents should be consulted about what their children choose to do on gender in schools, but also opposed the LGBTQ community, period, in terms that we have not heard for a long time in this country and that were relatively disgraceful. But Mr. Poirier was nowhere in this debate, not even to do what Premier Legault did on Thursday, which was to say these arguments in the street are disgraceful and we need this conversation to take place at a level-headed level.

That didn't happen either. And then there was Danielle Smith in Alberta, who has announced that she wants her province to leave the Canada pension plan with no less than a bit more than half of the money that is in it, that is shared between nine provinces. Again, very hard for Mr. Poiliev not to have some opinion to give Canadians as to how he would deal with this if he were in charge of the CPP. And then finally, what's been happening with Premier Ford, and how that jibes with the notion of taking out the gatekeepers, which sounds to me like that's what Doug Ford just tried to do with the green belt. So I thought overall, it was not the week that any party expected. It's not just the conservatives. This was not the week that had been scripted by strategists on both sides. But it has illustrated an interesting point, which is it's going to be impossible to just be a record of talking points and ignore all of the things that are happening that will involve some stand from the presumed future prime minister. All right.

Got to leave it there. We're out of time. But it does prove that one element, you know. What was it? Harold Wilson used to say, a week in politics is out of time. But it does prove that one element, you know, what was it, Harold Wilson used to say, a week in politics is a long time. Lots can happen. Lots can change. One quick question to Chantal. I asked this with the risk of having my head chopped off. You said you watch Question Period three or four times this week. What do you watch it on? My iPad or my phone in this case, because I was in transit every day that i'm on my way to help with

homework well it clearly wasn't a television so you're you don't carry it no i don't you hold true on that you hold true on that promise okay thanks to you both great conversations on all these subjects bruce chantelle have a great weekend. We'll talk to you again in a week's time. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Monday, we kick off a new week with What Are We Missing? Jana Stein will be back with us to talk about the places in the world we aren't talking about because we're so focused

on a couple of places. It's been a very popular addition to the episodes of The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks again for listening. Talk to you again on Monday. a couple of places. It's been a very popular addition to the episodes of The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks again for listening. Talk to you again on Monday.