The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk: Canada Wins - Canada Wins!

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Sometimes sport can be such a nice distraction. Like last night. Canada's first-ever win in World Cup Soccer. And what a win, 6-0 in front of a home crowd in Vancouver. Nice distraction for the PM, who was in attendance, after what some felt was a bended-knee performance for Donald Trump at the G7 in France. He wasn't alone. What was that all about? Do they still think it pays off?  Chantal and Bruce are here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle-A-Barre and Bruce Anderson. This is our last good talk before our summer break, although we will be back once in July and once in August. I'll give you the dates on that a little later on. I'll talk about today, as always, as we complete the season before the summer hiatus, as we call it. I got to tell you, you know, I'm still in Scotland. I'll be back by Canada Day, to be back in Canada, but I'm still in Scotland right now,

and they're soccer crazy here, as they are in many parts of the UK and Europe. Scotland won its game the other day, and the place went nuts, and still is that way. It's continue to celebrate days later. But I got up in the middle of the night here. I wanted to watch what would happen to Canada in Vancouver in the game against Qatar.

And it was an incredible night. It made me think back to the 70s where I was assigned by the national desk to go do a story on soccer and it's growing involvement with Canadians, especially young kids. I mean, I'm sure, you know, Chantelle, you probably took your kids to soccer. You're probably taking your grandkids to soccer. Bruce, you too, I know I have. But you never thought, at least in those days, that it would ever reach the point where we,

we, Canada, would be in a World Cup game and win and not only win a little bit, but win convincingly. Six, nothing in that game last night before a Pact House, and I'm sure Canadians watching from coast to coast to coast, suddenly devotees to soccer. So I wanted to spend just a moment on it. because I'm sure people are talking about it everywhere in Canada.

What did you make of it, Bruce? Well, it was great. Pardon me, a bit of a cold lingering. So if I hack and a cough today, you'll forgive me. But I loved watching the game. I thought it was a great experience as a Canadian to kind of see the amount of motion that's been building up around this team and Canada's participation in.

What I think has some degree of controversy around it, this year's World Cup, I think all of that goes away when Canadians see a Canadian team get on the field and do its best. And last night's game was terrific from that standpoint. I think a couple of things that stood out for me. This is such a demonstration of all the different parts of the world. Obviously, there are some countries that aren't represented. There's, I think, 47 in total, but it gives the viewer, the fan a sense of the degree to which people from all different walks of life, from all different parts of the world can get together, can compete, can shake hands and walk away from an event like this, can experience the idea of competition, but also a set of standards, a code of behavior, a code of conduct. And so the cultural mosaic thing that we've been talking about, the prime minister's been talking about in the last little while

really kind of comes through for me as I look at the crowds in the stadiums across the different games that I've been watching this week. And the second thing, and the only other point for me is when all else seems like it can fail us in terms of bringing people together, because politics can become so divisive and so polarizing, music, sports, recreational activities that people share in common. Those are things that really just kind of get over that fence and take this to a place emotionally where we're not thinking in terms of,

well, what is the person sitting next to me who's enjoying this spectacle, who's just cheering as lustily as I am? What's their political kind of perspective on something? Instead, there was a real sense of Canadianness, and you could kind of feel it through the screen. sense it in the way in which the coverage was handled and obviously see it in the huge, huge crowd at BC place. Yeah, you know, the PM was there. Not dressed in a suit like, you know, some of the other suits around there were dressed last night to sort of officially be there.

I mean, he looked like he was ready to hit the field and, you know, take position if they needed an extra player. Chantel, what did you make of it? Under intense jet lag, I would say about Mark Carney, considering that he left the G7 in France to make his way all the way to Vancouver. So lots of flying and lots of, I suspect, not really knowing what time it is anymore. Yes, people were watching. Of course, they were watching in Montreal. I think there are interesting aspects to this. Well, for one, it's kind of a consolation price for the way that the way that the,

hockey season ended with no Canadian team at the end. So there is that. There is also the fact that it shows that soccer has become something that Canada does, which was not the case. You are right decades ago. I remember being assigned to cover Les Jues de la Francophonie. So that took place in Morocco, the first Francophonie organization games. And that would be 1989 in that area or 1990.

And the Canadian team did okay, but I remember I was working with sports people, but not doing sports. One of the producers who knew more about this, listened to my news report about, you know, how the Canadian team had done, etc. And said, this is one of the events that will put soccer on the map more in Canada, because we are talking about soccer and the Canadian team. What I found interesting, you hear all kinds of things, obviously, reports around the event. Do you know which country in the world has the most players on the field in this cup? And you totally understand that by that, I mean, there's not one team that's got more players than all the others. One country has produced more players by far among all of the teams in this tournament. and at its France, which is really interesting.

And they have players, obviously their own team. They have players spread out, which kind of tells you something about the reach of La Francophonie, that their players have spread out to so many teams across the world, not just Canada and Belgium. So our Switzerland. So it's a really interesting kind of way to present the world in a different shape than the way we tend to see. than the way we tend to see it these days. Yeah, you know, man, that team, the Canadian team, is really a reflection of the country

because there are players from all across. There's a lot of players from Quebec. In fact, you know, one of the best was, you know, badly hurt last night. I think his leg was broken. And so he's out of the tournament. And that's a problem for Canada. But they look, you know, listen,

we're not getting carried away here. I don't see them play in Argentina or England or France. Or France. In the final. But, you know, they've got a real good shot at winning their group and moving on to the, you know, the next part of all this. So good for them and good for Canadians who are realizing that we are a player now in soccer or football, as it's called by most of the world. And, you know, good for us and good for them. All right, let's move on to things.

Politics. The Prime Minister might have had fun last night. I was trying to figure out whether he, and not just him, but his counterparts, were having fun at the G7. Because, I don't know, that scene, and it wasn't just Carney, it was that scene where, you know, Trump brought out some version of the peace deal, as he calls it, some peace, some deal.

to sign at the table. And they all applauded him and clapped for him and shook his hands and, I don't know, pat him on the back, whatever. And you know full well that most of the people in that room, just like most of the people in the world, who've watched this last four months, think this whole Iran war thing was a disaster of epic proportions. and that Trump screwed it up

and should never have gone there. And yet here they were applauding him and the prime minister was very specific what he said in an interview and then I think again in the closing statements that the war was worth it. Now was this just a part of the old tradition of, you know, sucking up to Trump

because there are a lot of bigger things on the table for them for their countries. What was going on there? Let's Chantal you start here. I think it goes beyond sucking up to Trump because he's there and, you know, the sucking up would involve the birthday gifts.

We apparently gave one or the dinner at Versailles that the French president organized for the president. I'd say that's sucking up. That's also a way to make sure Donald Trump doesn't leave until the end of the meeting because he wants his dinner at Versailles. But I think the six other members of the G7 all have a compelling interest in having Donald Trump put an end to his adventure in Iran.

And on any basis at that point, yes, I think everyone understands that this is a disastrous ending to a disastrous adventure. But I don't think anybody believes that there would be an endgame that would be great. So they want normal C in as much as possible to be restored, oiled, and tankers to go back through the strait, and possibly the U.S. moving on after Mr. Trump has claimed victories. Prime Minister Carney is a bit more forward on this in the sense that he is not only, it's easy to say at the G7 summit with Donald Trump in the room, great work. It's another thing to be giving interviews, saying how the war was worth it and how the great this deal is. I think Mr. Carney called it a game changer.

I can only assume that up to a point the prime minister is expending political capital because he is, to earn some IOUs to try to unlock some other files with the Trump administration. because on CNN, Carney actually has more credibility when he says it's a good deal and there are good things about it and it's beyond expectations than any member of the Trump administration

at this juncture. So that assist is a real assist. I'm not sure it's enough for Trump to carry the day with the agreement. He's staking a huge beating on it domestically. And he cannot be on. unaware that this is happening to the deal. But it looked like the Prime Minister was seizing an opportunity to push Canada further in the good books of the presidency at a time when every source will tell you that what the talks on Kuzmo and trade need is for Donald Trump and Mark Carney to tell their teams resolve this.

and one person is not saying that so far and that person is Donald Trump. All right, Bruce. I'm intrigued to hear how you're going to handle this because you have been a critic of this war for the last few months. So I'm intrigued to hear how you, and not just a simple critic,

you've been pretty upset about it and the way Trump has handled it. So how do you square your feelings with the way the prior, Prime Minister characterized it, or do you need to? Well, I think the, I think Chantel's first point is one that I was thinking about a lot, which is that the G7 in the time of Trump is always an eggshell event. Everybody goes there thinking, not what can we accomplish,

but how do we avoid having another fight with this guy who's so mercurial, so unhelpful, so disinterest, interested in our agenda or mutual cooperation. He's only interested in his own kind of ego being stroked and kind of strutting on the stage in a way that it still mystifies me that more Americans don't see how obnoxious it is. It's just devastating to the reputation of America for him to continue to portray himself in his country in the way that he,

and the people standing behind it on the stage convey their views. It's so anathema to everything that we've been kind of accustomed to in terms of a world order where heads of state get together and actually try to do some useful work together. Anyway, all of that to say eggshell event, deal struck, microphone in front of a Canadian Prime Minister count down to the July 1st deadline. What's the worst thing that can happen?

The worst thing that can happen is that is our Prime Minister takes that moment and says, you know what, I need to draw a line around what I didn't like about what was done in the conduct of this war, some of which he'd said before, not consulted in advance, concerned about international law.

So he didn't do that. He instead, and I think it is important to parse what he said, he said there's a lot of work to do. This isn't all done just because it's on a piece of paper. He said the most important thing is the removal of the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon, which has been a threat that the world has seen coming for a long period of time. And essentially, as I understood what he was getting across, he was saying if that is the conclusion of this, then this was worthwhile.

Now, people can take issue with the worth it, you know, does that apply to everything about it? Did they hear that conditionality in what he said? Probably most people didn't because it gets kind of shortened and abridged to the way that you put it in your question. I'm not being critical of how you put it in your question, but that was what he was referring to as I understand it. So that's the position that he took. That's the thing that he thought he should say in the context in which we are. And I think Chantel's kind of put her finger on it, which is that whatever else he might

have to say about the way in which this was done, probably not the time to take that microphone and say, I'm going to say it to the world through CNN because Canada has a lot at in the conversations with the U.S. And it'll be up to Americans. To your point, Peter and Chautel, you said, you know, a lot of people in America are giving a beating to the U.S. administration. A lot of Republicans are.

This is maybe the most meaningful crack in that Republican cohesion that I can think of. People like Ted Cruz saying what, they're saying. Mike Pence, I saw, you know, really interesting interview with him. Now, they're all looking at it from a different standpoint. They're looking at it from the standpoint of how does America want to conduct itself and give, is giving money back to the Iranians that we froze.

Is that a good thing? Those are going to be different considerations from, you know, my own. You asked me my own view. I think it was a disastrous event. venture. But the Americans are having a good debate about it. And it's good to see. They should have a good debate about the kind of leadership that they have. They should have a really good debate about whether or not Pete Hegeseth represents the values that they want to see represented internationally about America's military might, America's military presence in the world.

They should have a good debate about whether or not their president represents them well as a country on the international stage. He doesn't. It was terrible. It was just another chapter in the terrible story of Donald Trump, in my view. I should just point out, though, that giving an interview to CNN on the part of the prime minister is a choice, not a microphone that happens to be under his mouth as he is giving a scrum. So a decision was made to move this forward and move it into the Canada-US audience sphere. I also find the rationale that it removes the nuclear threat to be based on a lot of faith in a sentence that says, they promise they're not going to do this.

Yes. How many fingers crossed do you think that there are behind the backs of the people who are saying that? And on what basis would anyone believe that? But I think the real fear, looking at not just Canada, but the other countries in the G7 minus 1, is that under the pressure that Trump is under in the U.S., this deal will fall apart. And the first priority for all of those leaders is an end to this adventure. Even if it means going back, not even to what was the situation before the war, a bit more of an advantage to Iran now than they had before Trump went into this, but to stabilize this.

And that is an overriding priority. I also noted, and I believe that on that, I find Mr. Carney more credible than on his notion that this is a game changer, that he insisted that it would kind of unlock possibly the impasse with the U.S. over Ukraine. that, and he didn't say it like that, I will soften up Trump on Ukraine, especially since Ukraine is winning. And I do believe that on this, this is one part of Trudeau's legacy that Mark Carney has moved forward, and that does matter to him. And possibly, yes, Donald Trump, who feels that he wants to be on the side of winners, may come to change a bit of his language on Ukraine, although you couldn't have known that from his Secretary of Defense,

appearance in Europe on the day after the G7, where we were back to the you're all free loaders, and where Karning was attacked and all but named by the Secretary of Defense for this so-called middle power alliance that involves freeloading. So it's really hard to know where anybody, including Donald Trump, stands on anything after this week, as usual. Okay, Bruce, I know you want to say something else. Let me say one thing. And it's on this nuclear issue. First of all, Iran has said nothing from what we've seen in this deal that they haven't said before about their ambitions or their future with nuclear.

And I find it, you know, I find it passing strange that the prime minister would pick that example. because there is no question at the beginning of the war back at the end of February. The nuclear issue did not even rate on Trump's reasons for going into this conflict. Don't forget, he was still saying at the end of February that they had sent, ran back centuries in terms of nuclear capability by their bombing run last summer. Suddenly, when nothing else worked in terms of an excuse, he dragged out the nuclear issue again. to put before the people because it does work.

When you put that in front of Americans, it does work. They say, oh, yeah, okay, that's a good reason for doing this. That was not a reason he used at the beginning. Anyway, I just want to make that point clear, because we tend to forget what happened at the beginning of this war before very quickly became a disaster for him and how he had to reposition his excuses. Remember, at the beginning, it was helping all those protesters.

who'd be killed. Yeah, that was forgotten. Yeah, that was forgotten within 24 hours, not helped by the fact that the Americans killed 160 school kids by a misguided bomb attack on day one of the thing. And there was regime change, and there was a list. There were a number of different things. Anyway, Bruce, you wanted to make a point,

which I'm sure wasn't any of those. No, actually, I'm very interested in your point. And I agree with you that the whole adventure was poorly conceived because I think it was meant to replace in the headlines the Epstein conversation. And it never would have happened that way under any precedent in my lifetime before Trump, in my view. The reason being that that kind of intervention in the past, it's always been normal that a U.S. president would reach out to allies and say, We don't want to do this alone. Here's what we want to do. Will you support us?

Will you state your support? Will you provide other types of support as well? None of that happened because Trump doesn't approach the world that way and because the purpose of it was a headline switch and a demonstration of some muscularity and the idea of kind of big boys playing with big weapons and the rest of the world is supposed to just kind of stand idly by and hope for the best. It was also a demonstration of a relationship with Israel that has worn thin, I think, for the Trump administration, to put it mildly.

And where I wanted to go with that is to pick up Chantel's point about the Ukraine-Russia situation. Two things have changed materially in the Trump zone. One is the relationship with Putin over the war in Ukraine, and the other is the relationship with Netanyahu over the situation in the Middle East. Both of those things, now, Trump being Trump, he might go back to the same positions next week, two weeks from now, three weeks from now. We don't know. But Trump is running into a calendar problem, as we've talked about before with the midterms and the primaries before the midterms. The amount of influence that he can have on his party is mostly contained in that period of time where Republicans nominate their candidates for Senate and House seats. because he uses his influence to pick the candidates who are the most loyal to him in the Republican Party and to ditch the others. Now, he's running out of time to have that influence. After that, the Republican nominees, whoever they are, they have to get elected.

And I think what we've seen this week is we don't, first of all, hear a lot of Republicans saying this Ukraine situation is going the way that we want it to. and Zelensky just has to put on a suit again and mount up and take the medicine that Putin wants to give him. We don't hear any of that from the United States anymore. I think that's a good thing. I think the prime minister is saying Ukraine is going to win this war, and we should all understand that, get on with figuring out what happens after that. I think that was a good thing for him to do. But the relationship with Israel, especially over the bombing in Lebanon,

has really put that, you know, has taken a turn for the worst in terms of Israel's or the Israeli government's perspective, but maybe for the rest of the world, a turn for the better in the sense that there's more hesitation on the part of the U.S. government to do things that might, well, at the same time saying we're trying to reduce tensions in the region actually have the opposite effect. For Canada, I still feel. think we're in this perplexing situation where dealing with the Trump administration is like dealing with nitroglycerin. Every day, you know, Chantau made the point about what Hegsith said seemed to be picking up some anger from Carney's Davos speech and not so much from the substance

of what we said, I suspect, but because people are talking about it. People are talking about a different way of organizing themselves in the world. And as the Secretary of War, he's coming up against that reality. He's seeing that in the conversations that America is trying to have with other countries about selling armaments, selling equipment, doing whatever it is that they want to do with other countries or don't want to do. You know, America is pulling out troops from Europe. Big announcement, big splashy announcement headed right into the G7 meeting.

What was the purpose of that? Was it to say, we're coming and we're going to humiliate you again? or we're going to try to humiliate you again. So he picks up that reaction and then it becomes, well, we need to express our pissed off inness the fact that other people are pissed off at us. Well, you know, America is not a serious place right now at the political level. And, you know, our leaders all have to deal with that reality. And I'm sure it's not an easy reality to deal with.

Okay. Just a quick last thought on what we witness over these last couple of days. days at the G7 and forget of all the stuff we've talked about so far. Some of the optics looked like Trump and Carney were getting along much better than we've assumed throughout all this. I mean, there were a lot of, what do they call them, side congresses? You know, they're whispering back and forth about various things. But you made an interesting point earlier, Chantel,

that there's no evidence that any of that has done anything in terms of the difficult situation that Canada and the U.S. find themselves in in terms of trade negotiations. There was no clear signal from the two of them or from Trump, on the contrary, that, you know, let's stop just haggling via the media or via ministers and let's tell them to. get this, whatever this is, let's tell them to get this done. That did not happen. On the contrary, Trump left the G7, saying, I don't like Kuzma, but then I may sign it to whatever he thinks

he's going to sign. We are, I mean, the reality is if he doesn't like Kuzma, you can give a six-month notice to get out of it. And when he does that, then he can deal. and manage the reaction in the United States to that decision, but he cannot wake up one morning to tear it up. Two, if he wants to rewrite it, he either rewrites it and it has to go through Congress, or he rewrites it on the sidelines, and the next president can just take all of that on day one and get it off the table. So we are still in that no man's land, and until there is a clear signal which by all information we all got did not happen at the G7. It may have been what Mark Carney was hoping for. I still believe he sacrificed political capital by going on CNN on this Iran deal to

try to break that logjam, but so far it hasn't happened. Now that July 1st deadline is not a real deadline. No one is going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight on July 1st. But at some point, the American or the administration's actual intent, even on the form, is far from clear for people who are observing this from the outside. And I believe it's far from clear for people on the inside of the Canadian team. And on the American side, too. I think that it's pretty clear to me that you have senior people in the U.S. side saying, well, we're going to have a version of Kuzma going forward. and then there's Trump on the tarmac saying, well, it was up to me, I'd rather not have it.

I might sign it, but I might not. And what would he sign? You know, I mean, this is not serious, but it is what it is. He approaches it. But don't forget those tariffs on steel, aluminum auto, I think a lumberous part of it. They are divorced from this Kuzma conversation. And one of the possibilities on those tariffs could be that some of those get changed or dropped.

I'm thinking of aluminum here, which has turned out to be at a huge disadvantage to the United States. But what you still hear, and that was not at the G7, but you still hear through, you know, the noise coming out of U.S. officials, is this notion that the provinces are now. selling U.S. alcohol is a major issue for the administration. It's not a big economic issue, but they see it as a sign of bad will. Okay. Enough on that, or Bruce will start talking about how much he misses Bourbon again. Yes, true. Looks like you could use one right now. Yeah, look at him. What do you think he's having for that so-called? cold, whatever it is. Okay, we're going to take a quick break

and we'll be you're right back because there's lots more to talk about coming up after this. Okay, we're back. This is the bridge, the Friday episode, which is, of course, good talk with Chantelle-Liber and Bruce Anderson. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform or you're watching us on our YouTube channel.

I'm glad to have you with us. We're taking a break, summer break, coming up now. We'll be back on July 17th for a special July summer edition of Good Talk. And also August 28th will be a special summer edition of Good Talk as well. July 17th, August 28th. So I'll circle those on your calendar. So the House of Commons is no longer sitting as well.

And it was interesting as the final hours clocked down, the conservatives put out some stats, including what they say is the attendance record of the prime minister for question period since he became prime minister. And they say he's hit 100 question periods where he hasn't turned up. Now, we've had the talk about question period, what, going back decades, right? And does anybody care and does anybody watch, et cetera, et cetera? So I'm just wondering, I mean, apparently. that's, I don't know, the worst attendance record of a prime minister ever.

I don't know who keeps track of these things. I don't know if ever, but in recent, Maloney, go down from Maloney on, yes, it is. So what? Should we, should people be concerned about that? What is it showing lack of respect or that he's too busy doing other things? Or we know he's been away a lot, but we also apparently know that he's been around at times. in the nation's capital, in his office, which is just, what, one floor above the, well, in the old center block days, I don't know how close it is to the current.

But it's close enough. Close enough. Okay. So what do we make of this? Do we care? Does it, is it important? Who wants to take a run at this? Bruce, you go ahead.

Your mic's not on. You're muted. Somebody has muted you. I'm muted myself because I had a little coughing fit. people are obviously entitled to care about whatever they care about in terms of how they judge the prime minister. I think that if you're asking me, what do I think Canadians are focused on, I don't think they're focused on measuring his performance on the basis of what number of times he's

shown up at question period. I think that if it turned into a situation where they were convinced that he was knocking off the job, playing golf like Donald Trump or having a nap every afternoon and not, bothering to wake up to go to work, then they probably have an issue and be somewhat frustrated by that. But I don't think that this prime minister looks to most voters like he's kind of half-arcing the job, that he's instead working hard. He's traveling the world a lot. And the purpose of those trips is pretty clear to people, at least from our polling, that they see him really working hard to diversify our trading relationships and to build stronger relationships with other parts of

the world beyond the United States. I think that it's logical that Pierre Pauli Ev and the conservatives are frustrated by this because they think that their best opportunity for visibility is when their leader gets to attack the prime minister on a TV-based platform. I don't think it works for them as well as they think that it does because I think the prime minister gives at least as good as he gets in the House of Commons. But other than that venue, nothing else seems to be able to draw much attention for pure poly up these days. People aren't in an election mode. They're not that interested in what he has to say about the shortcomings of the government. His version of the shortcomings of the government don't really square with public opinion, even among most conservative

voters right now. So I don't find it surprising that he's complaining about that. I don't find much evidence that Canadians would see that as a really trenchant concern because the prime minister does make himself available for questions from the media. It looks accountable to most people and looks like he's working hard every day. You know, I don't like that you're implying that taking a nap and playing golf is not a good thing. It's a good thing. It is a good thing.

It is. You still get up and go to work. You do your thing. Okay. So Jean-Cretchen used to play golf, and that didn't prevent him from attending question period regularly. He actually used to play golf with Bill Clinton, and that ended up being an asset at the time of the referendum. So maybe we would want Mark Carney to play golf with Donald Trump a bit more

if he's going to skip question period and maybe build a more productive relationship than what we've seen to date. Mark me down is pro golf. I'm pro golf. Don't worry about it. I know you guys are pro golf. I knew I was on solid ground here. I have also not found that Mr. Carney for all of his travels is more occupied on a foreign and, scene on the international scene and Stephen Harper, Shanklyssain or Justin Trudeau, who all found more time to go to question period. For me, the issue isn't whether people care,

it's whether we care and the Prime Minister cares about institutions. And caring about the institution of Parliament does involve showing up for question period and for allowing the other parties to have input and debate, with the Prime Minister over various issues. How they use their time? Maybe Pierre Poelliev does not use it productively. Maybe he uses it to try to get clips that he can put on social media. There are still some valuable questions coming from other parties.

The Bloch-Chebecois, for one, has been asking serious questions throughout. And I do believe it's part of the role of the Prime Minister to make the institution relevant by the... being part of it in the same way that I believe Pierre Puellev should have been at the installation of the Governor General out of the same need to show respect for institutions. We can't say that we want a healthy system and a healthy democracy and have our leaders pick and choose which institutions they grace with their presence and their respect. And on that basis, I do find the attendance stance record of the prime minister to be in need of improvement.

Be it by doing what Justin Trudeau used to do. Be there at least on Wednesdays and take all the questions or whatever. But some sign that Parliament is more than an inconvenience to the prime minister. As for people not caring, Bruce is totally right. I don't believe anybody wakes up in the morning outside of the strategy room of the opposition parties to say, gee, you know, he missed another one. And it is true that the media does take a break from QPU when the prime minister isn't there.

Fact of life. But I also remember a fairly devastating exchange between Michael Ignatzev, the leader of the official opposition and Jack Leighton, the leader of the NDP at the time of the 2011 election, when Jack Layton basically cut the legs from Michael Ine Nietzschev by pointing out his attendance record. And there are times when these issues do come back to bite you. This was one of those times, big time, as in why don't you show up for work if you believe

all of that you're saying? So me, I don't find the prime minister is working hard a valid enough excuse to treat parliament, not just him, but the way that they have forced marched. nine pieces of significant legislation to the House between June 1st and this week. I find that that kind of sends the message that Parliament doesn't matter. And people who vote happen to think

that they send people to Parliament to bring different perspectives to the political debate. And when you skip or you curtail debate, you're actually saying it doesn't really matter because we're in charge. there were times this week, not Mark Carney, but others who really sounded like they were indulging in a familiar trail of the Liberal Party in government, and that is arrogance, and the notion

that there will never be an end to this liberal reign, and you should just get with the program. All right. Time for our final break. We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of good talk for, well, for this season, really. Chantelle A Bear, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansford, Joel with you. Glad to have you with us. So for this final segment, I guess some thoughts from each of you as we head into the summer about what you're thinking about, I don't know, state of the government, state of parliament, state of the country. What's on your mind?

Bruce, why don't want to give it a crack here? Yeah, really two things. And I've been doing a lot of public opinion work in the last little while and wrote a couple of pieces in the last period of time on Substack about it. One of the things that really has struck me is that without really a lot of fanfare, we're just experiencing less polarization in our politics, even as it has. been growing in some other parts of the world and has been obviously very pernicious in parts of the world. We wake up this morning and see Andy Burnham winning that seat in Manchester and in the UK.

I'm interested in that because it looked like the UK was headed for a potential win by Farage. Maybe it still is. But it could also be that these democracies which are toying with polarization, with acceleration, are maybe taking a second look at it. And maybe that's in part because they look at what's happened to the United States and said, that's got to be a bit of a warning lesson. Whatever the situation is that's causing that to happen in Canada, but I do think the U.S. is part of it. In our polling, we see much less tendency for people who have a partisan leaning

one way or another to say, I could never support a position by that, by that particular leader. You know, in this context, obviously, with a liberal prime minister, it's striking to me that somewhere in the order of 60% to 65% of the BQ and NEP voters are pretty happy overall with the way that the government is approaching, not just the economic issues, but a lot of other areas of responsibility, including some that have been quite polarizing in the past, climate policy being among those.

and about half of conservative voters also saying, I'm okay with the way things are going. It doesn't mean they like everything. It doesn't mean that they don't have some kind of partisan DNA deep down, but we never had that much of it. It only looked like we were becoming more polarized because people were angry and they were frustrated and they were feeling like they weren't getting what they wanted

out of their political system. And maybe because they didn't see the risks of extreme polarization, but it does seem right now that the temperature as measured by polarization is coming down. The second thing is that how people are experiencing the economy is different from how the economy is kind of reported politically. There's the political reporting about the economy. There's the economic reporting about the economy and there's how people experience it. what we see is that people have normalized about the same level of discomfort as they experienced a year ago, a year and a half ago. It's not great, but it's not getting worse, and it's not making them more angry or frustrated for the time being.

And I don't think that's because they're paying attention to the policy mix and saying, I like this, I don't like that, or this measure that was announced is really going to help me. There's a little bit of that. But I think by and large, people have decided that there's a, not a new normal, but there's a period of time that we're going through that is unusual by any historical standards. It's caused by geopolitical disruption, principally led by the United States. And we're just going to have to grind our way through it. And so the normal expectation from a polling standpoint, which is that there's this many people

continuing to feel that the economy is a real struggle from a climate. cost of living or housing affordability challenge, which are the two biggest items, that the instinct to say, you know what, this government isn't worth it. They're not getting the job done. They're not meeting my expectations. I'm looking for something else. That isn't really happening. And I think the biggest part of that is that people are looking at the situation saying,

I'm getting through it, if I'm getting through it. And that's okay for now because I want to believe that we're going to get through a period and get to something better. Chantel. Yeah, well, I don't disagree with Bruce's main point, i.e. the polarization that people kept writing about, even in the middle of a debate in two major provinces over their future in the federation, the polarization is down. I think there are people out there, more than the polls show, that think to themselves they would like to look at something else, but we're,

when they think that, they look at the only alternative to Mark Carney. And that is Pierre Poyev, and they come away with the conclusion that that something else is not on offer. And it kind of shows Mr. Poyev's polarizing approach is out of sync with the mood, which goes a long way to explain why his party is in much worse shape to date than in the last election, while the Black Quebecoe and the NDP are either doing a bit better or holding steady. and they cannot become a replacement. People do not see them as a solution to Mark Carney. But as long as the conservatives think that they are doing well

by indulging in the kind of politics they're indulging him, I think they're actually contributing to making polarization a bad thing for many Canadians. I mean, this week, the conservatives and the House of Commons were so bent on voting against the new anti-hate legislation that they managed to vote against an amendment that would have added the news. Klut-Lux Klan invention, the amendment would have added the news to the numbers of symbols that are considered hate-driven symbols. You did not have to vote for the legislation to vote for that inclusion, and still the Conservatives

managed to line up to say, no, no, no, the news should not be in the list of symbols that are offensive and racist and hate motivated. And you kind of look at that and think what's happening to this major force in Canadian politics, the conservative movement, where it seems that the constructive work is being done by people on the outside, Jason Kenney, Aaron O'Toole, people who have standing and who have things to say but are increasingly divorced from anything that the official opposition is doing. That being said, I will be curious to see on November 1st whether Mark Kearney and his government have managed to negotiate the waters of a pipeline project, a vote in the Quebec

election and the plebiscite in Alberta and whether Mr. Carney land. with dry feet or whether he starts getting water to his chin trying to wait out of this. Because there are events in the calendar. People say Alberta is voting on whether to have a referendum on whether to have a referendum. But Quebec is actually doing the same thing. We are being asked if we want to elect a party that wants to have a referendum. So I am really curious to see where we all land. on November 1st, starting obviously with the federal government,

because it's going to be a really intense political time. It's interesting because usually at this time of year, as you approach the end of June, things look, okay, we're all going to take it easy for the next couple of months. There's nothing really on the table, nothing really on the agenda, where in fact there's a lot this year, not just in the fall, but through the summer, obviously, with the whatever's happening with the talks out of the border,

whatever's happening on the on the Gordy Howl bridge, still sitting there, perfect to drive on, perfect across the river on, but not being opened still at this time. It's crazy. All right, listen, hope both of you have great summers. As I mentioned to listeners,

you both will be back during the summer, July 17th is our next good talk. So almost a month from now. And August 28th. Those will be two summer special good talks. So as I said earlier, circle your calendar with those dates. They'll be,

I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about after, as we just said, there's lots on the agenda. Tomorrow morning, the buzz, which will continue, I think through the summer. That's the plan anyway. no summer break for the buzz but it can be in your mailbox inbox at 7 a.m. tomorrow you just have to

subscribe if you haven't already and in the thousands have so join the throng you can do that at national newswatch.com slash newsletter you all have to do is give us your email no no cost involved no subscriber fees or you can subscribe to bruce's substack

Do you give that away free, Bruce? Absolutely free. Absolutely free. And it's good and well worth it. And he churns the stuff out on his substack. I'm not selling anything for free today. I'll try to think of something for the next fall. Okay, that's it.

We'll talk in the summer. Thanks, gang. Bye for you guys.