The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Debates Matter

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

One down two to go.  The debates have begun and they matter.  Chantal and Bruce deconstruct last night's French language debate and look ahead to the next two next week.  Everything is now at stake in a very tight race.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. In Montreal, Chantal Hébert. In Ottawa, Bruce Anderson. We're all ready for a little good talk on the morning after the first debate. And as we all know, through the history of television debates back to, I guess the first one was in 1968 in Canada, that debates are often the opportunity for the opposing parties who want to seek government to pound away at the government of the day.

And there's no doubt we saw some of that last night, but we also saw some pounding going the other direction as well, mainly targeted at the Conservative leader, Erin O'Toole, who seems to be the one with some momentum. There was also some pounding on the Bloc Québécois leader. But, you know, Chantal, we'll start with you. You're in Montreal. You've had the evening and the night and the early morning to think about this as the dust settles on last night's encounter. What did you make of it? Well, first, I tend to think of debates, and no, I didn't watch

the 1968 one, for the record. But I tend to think of debates and no, I didn't watch the 1968 one for the record, but I tend to think of debates, not as, you know, a boxing match or a tennis game, but more like a card game. And everyone has cards and it is the hand you are dealt. And you need to play that hand as best as you can.

Using that, I would say that Justin Trudeau made the most of what is not necessarily a great hand, but still managed to make the most of it. I think that the liberals who are rattled at this point in the campaign did not come away from this debate thinking that their guy was not on and that he was not up to fighting back. I suspect this debate will not necessarily reverse trends, but it does keep the Liberals in the game, and it does mean that they get to fight for another day. But by the same token, I think Aaron O'Toole, in his hands,

he's got, especially from a Quebec perspective, he had a few twos and threes, low cards, and they were exposed last night. And the one low card that was really exposed that I think will continue to dog his campaign is the child care agreement. province where $10 a day childcare is a reality, the notion that the conservative government would scrap the agreement between François Legault and Ottawa that would pour $6 billion over X number of years into the system is a big deal. François Blanchet's game in these exercises is basically to go after the failings of anyone. But he's the one who took on O'Toole on child care. And you could tell that O'Toole did not want to say that he's going to scrap the deal, but he could not say the opposite. And, you know, on gun control, on the environment, if I were the Conservatives, I would have been happier

if last night had been the last debate and not a warm-up period for two more debates next week because now a lot of weaknesses on the part of the Conservatives that could be exploited by Trudeau, but also by Jagmeet Singh and by Yves-François Blanchet have been exposed. Bottom line, yes, Aaron O'Toole did better than Andrew Scheer, but that's like saying you managed to drive your car to your house

without crashing it totally, which is what happened to Andrew Scheer last year. I'm not sure he established the kind of connection with the audience that he would have needed to get more momentum in this province bruce well you know first of all i was so excited about what i consider to be the end of the pre-season and the beginning of the actual season that i couldn't wait to get out of the radish field and and into uh into my living room watch this on on TV. I'm finally ready to really consume a lot about this campaign, and I think that, as I read our polls anyway, I remain of the view that the movement in the polls,

the apparent movement in the polls, is kind of largely helpful to the liberals in an ironic sort of way because it creates the opportunity to spend the next couple of weeks talking about whether people want a conservative government or or don't want a conservative government which wasn't really a conversation that was legitimate up until this point but i i do believe that all of our indicators continue to show that a very large number of people are willing to consider voting liberal. So there's there's plenty to play for for the prime minister. And my take on the debate last night is very similar to Chantal's, even though I I didn't.

And I can prove that I have notes so I can show them to you. But we didn't talk about this before. I didn't feel like the point about the liberals feeling motivated by Trudeau's performance in the debate, I think, is an absolutely important one. I do think he was energetic. I think that this was the first moment where there was some comparison shopping going on, right? Up until this point, the entire artillery of all of the armies in favor of change get to talk about the failings of the liberals. And that has effect. There's no question that it has effect. So last night becomes a different kind of conversation where people do, you know, to paraphrase Brian Mulroney, you know, you don't have to be perfect. You only have to be better than the other guys. And that becomes something that people start to evaluate when they see people on a debate stage. I thought Mr. Trudeau was energetic.

I thought he did what people had kind of been a little surprised by in previous debates, which is that he showed that he's in command of the files. He knows the files. And when you have somebody who's speaking without a lot of hesitation, which sometimes affects him when he's in scrums, when he's on the attack and he's pressing what he thinks is an advantage on an issue, and he did that on a number of issues last night, he's a pretty effective debater. And when I think back to 2015 and 2019, I think a lot of the liberal success came about as a result of him performing better than expectations. And I kind of feel like he did a little bit of that last night. But I take Chantal's point. I agree with that. I wouldn't make more out of that one event. event, but it will motivate an otherwise slightly demotivated team. On O'Toole, I think that the-

Just a sec, hold on a minute. Just so you don't go for your promised 15 minutes out of the gate, let me just stay on Trudeau for a moment, because i watched um i watched the debate the whole debate which is probably the first time i've seen an entire debate without having to worry about anything else in terms of you know workload but i watched the entire thing but as you both know my french is very limited so i was i watched body language more than actual language a lot and uh what struck me about Trudeau is, and I think you both hinted at this in some fashion,

is that he was, you know, very animated and energetic from the first moment to the last moment. I mean, a two-hour debate is no easy thing. You could see a couple of the others starting to lag by the last half hour. But not in Trudeau's case, which, you know, translation to me is he knows he's in a fight, a real fight. You know, it may be the fight of his political

life, and he has decided that he's going to throw everything at it to try and perform in a way that gets him back in the game. But whether he's scared, I know Chantel suggested it too, some of his party is definitely scared. They're very nervous about what's going on. Whether he is or not, I don't know. But he certainly acted in a fashion that we haven't seen in this campaign. And I'm not sure I've seen in him in the six years he's been prime minister.

And I thought that was really telling. Whether that's good or bad in the end, I'm not sure. It's certainly better than what he'd looked like in the initial part of the campaign. He still doesn't have an answer to the big question, why are we having this campaign? I was wrong on that. I thought, as I've thought in the past past when that question comes up on day one it'll disappear after a couple of days you won't hear it anymore it was still kind of the headline maker last night in many ways for some people that he still can't really explain what it's about, why there is one, and an election campaign. Anyway, those are my thoughts on Trudeau.

So I hate to interrupt Bruce's soliloquy while he's on stage, but you wanted to say something, Chantal, before? Well, before Bruce switches to his 15 minutes on Aaron O'Toole, you are right, it's not just body language. Last night, and that was also the case on the Radio-Canada interviews on Sunday night, all leaders were interviewed for half an hour on Radio-Canada Sunday night. French and I suspect also in English, he always seems to be acting as if he's acting his own character. There's a gap between authenticity and Justin Trudeau's performance. Last night, he was on stage as Justin Trudeau, not Justin Trudeau playing who he thinks Justin Trudeau should be like. I think that probably made people who have this image of Justin Trudeau should be like. And I think that probably made people who have this image of Justin Trudeau

playing Justin Trudeau, it probably made them say, well, he's not as bad as that. He looks pretty solid. On that basis, I don't think that tomorrow we're going to start seeing numbers that show that the floor has fallen from under the liberals in Quebec. I would be surprised, but then I've been surprised before. To your point about the election timing, yes, Bruce is right. Many people are coming to the campaign this week, but talking to people about other issues this week, they all raise the election timing. Right. All right, Bruce. Briefly on the election timing question, just so you know, and I know that there's some skepticism about polling, including around this virtual table. But we measure the how people feel about the timing of the election as an issue.

And so our answer categories are I'm happy that there's an election. I'm unhappy that there's an election, or I wish there was an election, but it's not going to affect how I vote. And I'm so angry about the fact that there's an election that I won't vote liberal. The last number is about 12 or 14% when last I checked. So it's not nowhere. But the fact that the opposition leaders are talking about it, even though it's only really about a 12 to 14 percent public opinion. And most of that 12 to 14 percent, to be honest, are people who would not have voted liberal anyway. I don't think that it's as big a public opinion factor as it appeared to be because the opposition leaders were going after it. In fact, if I was Trudeau last night, there were probably a couple of moments where I thought they don't like this conversation.

So they're going to try to move it back towards a conversation about why an election timing. And I was looking at that going, well, that's not a very strong strategic, you know, to Chantal's point earlier about the card playing. It didn't feel like they won that hand. But anyway, I've been on too long already on that point, and I'll just make a couple of points quickly about Blanchette, Singh, and O'Toole and see what you think about those.

I think O'Toole has three kind of challenges. One is him as a person, two is his policies, and three is his party. I think he's done pretty well on the O'Toole as a person side of things. And I don't think he hurt himself last night at all. And he might've helped himself a little bit, but I think his barrier, including in Quebec, and maybe more particularly on some issues in Quebec is around party and policy. And I think that the, the biggest,

the best moment for Trudeau last night, in some ways, was when Blanchet did his work on O'Toole about child care. I thought O'Toole looked like he had a terrible answer on that. I think the rest of the country won't really know what it means if they even observe that that exchange happened. But I think in Quebec, it sounded like the thing that might make people say, I'm glad that was raised. I don't know if it makes me want to vote for Blanchet, but it might make me think I better do this thing, conclude this deal with Trudeau and have him back in office. I feel like Blanchet for me, so I think it was a mixed to poor outcome for O'Toole, even though I thought as a debater, he, you know, he did relatively well, but he's carrying some policy loads on his back that are uncomfortable.

For Blanchet, I think that the question for me is if you're a Quebec voter, why do you need him? You've got a strong premier. You've got a premier who's working out arrangements with the prime minister. The BQ does really well when there's a prime minister who looks like he wants to exert authority over Quebec. And I don't think Trudeau really comes across that way. And I didn't think that Blanchet was as charming or as interesting or as novel a character after his rookie outing. And so I don't know that he would have made progress if that's what he needs to do.

And then finally on Singh, I thought this was maybe the first time, I don't think it'll matter very much to his prospects in Quebec. I don't think that he improved his prospects in Quebec, but I think it's the first time he's really been stress tested in the current political context. And I feel like

his answer on the slippery question of would you support a conservative government remains a problem for him. And I expect that we're going to hear a lot more about it in the English language debate, especially on things like, would you support a conservative government, even if you know, as you do, that they're going to rip up those child care deals, that they're going to roll back our climate ambition, and that they're going to reopen the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Those are all vulnerabilities for Mr. Singh that are going to come into focus in the next few days. And I didn't see anything in his performance last night that made me think he's really ready for that. Okay. I want Chantal to give us a little sense on the Bloc Québécois situation, because Blanchet has taken a bit of a hammering in the last few days in the Quebec media,

and by, you know, strategists and analysts and professors and the like about his performance, his personal performance in the campaign. And I'm wondering what impact that has and, you know, a sort of, you know, not a great performance last night in the debate. What's the impact for the bloc and the overall picture for Quebec, which is so critical, you know, for the Liberals, the NDP, NDP. It wasn't that long ago they had more seats in Quebec than anyone else, right, under Leighton? They had one last time, and they dropped 16 points

in public opinion in Quebec. So a bloc in trouble, or seemingly in trouble, with a couple of weeks to go, what's the impact? It's complicated. Let's take the NDP out of the mix. I think the person who had the least to lose last night was Chuck Mead Singh because he has the least to gain in Quebec. If he manages to win a second seat, Ruth-Hélène Brosseau, who used to be a well-liked MP, has decided to run again. If he manages to win that seat and keep the seat he has,

which I think he should, that's about it. He is not in those mathematical dynamics that you talk about. There is not going to be a rush to the NDP, I don't believe, after last night. The liberals, perversely, have always needed the conservatives to do a bit better in Quebec than they had been doing in the pre-election polling because the conservatives take down the bloc and they allow liberals to squeeze in the middle if the conservatives are strong enough. It's hard to measure. It's like electing a minority government. You can't do it just by saying, oh, let's have them in 20%. That's out of the liberals' control.

Blanchet's situation is interesting. That hammering you talk about, the person who was holding the hammer was Mr. Blanchet's situation is interesting. That hammering you talk about, the person who was holding the hammer was Mr. Blanchet himself. All those wounds are self-inflicted and they go to tone. And the word that kept cropping up over the past days has been arrogance. And he has made a series of missteps. First, saying that a tunnel between Lévis and Quebec City, it sounds very local, but it's a big deal in this province because people in Quebec City want it and everyone else is thinking, wait a minute, what is this? So he tried to have it both ways by saying,

well, maybe it could be something good for the environment. Then all the environmental allies of the bloc went, what? The PQ is against it. That's his sister party. And then this week, Raif Badawi's spouse, who has been jailed in Saudi Arabia, she's been trying to have him freed for years now. She's running for Mr. Blanchet in Sherbrooke. And in the past election, she had supported or expressed support for Maxime Bernier.

So when Mr. Blanchet showed up with her on a day devoted to equality between men and women, journalists wanted to ask her about this. And he prevented her from answering, saying, this is my newser, and we're not doing this, which came across really, really badly. So by the day before the debate, Mr. Blanchet was mowing his lawn on Twitter to show that he was trying to get his head ready for the debate, which I think he did. And a lot of that tone was toned down for the debate. But think back to 2019. No one paid much attention to the Bloc Québécois. He did not get much scrutiny. This is different this year.

Back then, the secularism issue was big. Bill 21 was in the making. François Legault had just arrived. It's not on the radar. And the problem for the B constitutional bill by the Quebec government to put Quebec's national character in the constitution. It didn't happen. The new language law in Quebec versus the new federal language law, no fire there. So, Mr. Blanchet has basically been someone in search of an issue. And he has to fight for his seats in Quebec City against the Conservatives. But at the same time, he can't go against after Justin Trudeau too much, because then he's going to look like he's going to be supporting the Conservatives as a government. He is not in a great place to get to the end of the campaign.

But I think last night he looked more likable because it had become a likability issue big time. When you've got former PQ ministers saying, my mother doesn't like him anymore, that's not a good sign. And my mother will vote as voted for the Bloc. You think, okay, this isn't you know the federalist fighting uh the bloc leader who is a patriot it's people from his own ranks saying look we can't stand you you look like a jerk that's basically been what he's been told all week um i'll explain

this in a second but are you sure he's not a liberal? And I say that because of your use of the descriptive word for him as being arrogant. And I thought the liberals owned the arrogance description. You know, dating back decades, they always were tarred and feathered with the, they're arrogant, they're all too arrogant. So it's kind of funny to hear it being used against somebody of a different party and especially of the Bloc Québécois leader. Bruce, did you want to say something on that before we moved on? Well, I did want to I wanted to actually touch on two other questions which came up in which we didn't have a chance to talk about yet. And one is the absence of the deficit as a as a conversation thing, which I think is really interesting, because if you'd sort of said to me at any time in my life watching politics that you'd have the biggest deficit and the biggest debt by far that we've ever had and we'd have a debate and it wouldn't come up.

It is really it didn't come up. The conservatives amazing. Really, it didn't come up. The Conservatives wouldn't really try to prosecute on it. And so it represents a kind of a pandemic-inflected understanding on the part of Conservatives that if they want to win the election, they need to choke down the sentence that the deficit will solve itself, which I think must have been a very difficult conversation internally to decide that that was the position that they were going to take, because they did get the kind of the snide reaction that you'd expect. But they probably made the right political calculation in terms of taking that message forward and knowing that some part of their coalition wouldn't like it. The second thing I wanted to mention is I thought that the debate about or the debate part about guns was a was a challenging moment for Mr. O'Toole because there is, you know, that he has a position on guns, which most people outside his party wouldn't really like. And most and many people inside his party think is really quite important from the standpoint of expressing the frustration that gun owners and especially hunters feel about that.

I don't know if that'll be part of the debate in English Canada, but it seemed like a difficult moment. One more of those policy questions. And then the last thing I want to say is I thought the debate about vaccines probably looks like it could become a continued storyline, especially, you know, Chantal mentioned school is back in Quebec. It's coming back in Ontario, I guess, next week. And I thought Trudeau was quite good on it. And I think that we are going to see polls, continue to see polls that show a conservative party with a four or five point lead. And going into the coming week, I think that, you know, if I look at how Trudeau prosecuted that question of vaccination, I think we're going to see more of it because I think he was pretty good at it. I think he made a fairly passionate, but for most people, quite logical argument about the choice that we all should make in order to get choices back.

Okay. I've got to take a quick break, but do you want to make a point on that, Chantal, before we move on? I'm not sure that it's all that effective, the liberal push on vaccines. And the reason for that goes back to the way that Justin Trudeau managed the pandemic. And that is not a critique of his management of the pandemic, but of the choice he made to not overtake the provinces in the leadership of public health measures. And on that basis, I suspect many Canadians who want vaccines to be and vaccine passports are more inclined to look at their premier. I also think that Premier Ford this week, while he clumsily changed his position on vaccine passport, probably gave an assist

to Erin O'Toole in the sense that it's now hard to say, look, all those conservative premiers won't do it while others like Francois Legault and John Horgan, NDP, and CAC are doing it. So I get the point, but every time I see this debate unfolding, it looks contrived. It looks like the debate that the liberals absolutely want to have because someone somewhere, I'm not going to name. Yes, I'm going to name Peter Donovo wrote an op ed four days before the election saying you can win a majority on this, which I happen to think is not the case. Okay. I do think the landscape on this issue, like so many things,

changes if not day-to-day, week-to-week, and I think this one has the potential of changing with school back everywhere in the country. I mean, some of the things I've heard from parents of young kids, and I'm sure you've heard about it from your family, Chantal, with your with the grandkids. The you know, it is it's really upsetting families. It's stressing. It's stressing. I agree, but if I'm angry because of my grandchildren, I'm going to go after François Legault and Premier Ford. Also, though, I do think that it might be a different issue in Ontario and BC than in Quebec, because I think that Legault has done a very good job of not only taking the responsibility

it has, but kind of maybe exceeding expectations or at least performing up to expectations there. And that hasn't been possible to say for a number of other premiers. And so there might be a little bit more demand for the strong federal message on this. But, you know, I think Chantel is not wrong to say the liberals shouldn't overestimate the value. I didn't read that op ed and I don't know how much impact it had on strategy or anything like that. But I do see in our polls that a lot of people say that vaccination and finishing that job and finishing the pandemic is a pretty crucial matter for them. So if Trudeau

finds a way to make the choice look more stark and important in the coming days. I think that that will probably help him in the in the matter of finding three, four or five points at the expense of the conservatives, which is really, I guess, what we're talking about. But we'll see whether whether he he does that. I also think in addition to the school return, though, that these protests happening outside of hospitals are pretty ugly pictures. And they reinforce the idea that this isn't just a, a political contrivance of the liberal party, but an actual thing that we need to be aware of. And we need to decide, you know, in,

in some analysts look at this and say, well, these are legitimate opinions. I think a lot of people say, well, any opinion is legitimate, but these behaviors are really challenging for the rest of society. And we do have rules about certain kinds of behaviors, and sometimes it's uncomfortable to make those rules. But I think there's a divide there that's pretty lopsided. And I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. I do think Aaron O'Toole has done a decent enough job of distancing himself from that crowd. I suspect the main advantage for the Liberals to continue pushing it is not so much that they can put fingerprints, O'Toole fingerprints on that, but that every time Aaron O'Toole has to say these people are not welcome in my party, the calculation is that you're sending

conservative votes to Maxime Bernier, and that's good for the Liberals. All right. I'm going to take that break. I will once again, though, say the schools thing, I think is going to be a big deal in the final two weeks of the campaign. I also think you just have to look at the rising numbers. Where are they rising? They're rising in Quebec.

They're rising in Ontario. They're rising in Alberta. They're rising in Saskatchewan. And BC. And BC, sorry. And you, you know, those have to be taken. These are big numbers that have suddenly taken off in the last couple of weeks. And there's no indication that they're about to calm down.

So those are all things that may well impact on this, just how much the vaccination issue plays into a federal campaign. We'll see. Okay, going to take a break. I want to talk about the NDP because the incoming is going to start, I assume, on the NDP. And I want to talk about how ready they are for that when we come back. This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. All right, we're back with Good Talk.

Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. You're listening either on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or wherever you get your podcasts, The Bridge, Good Talk. All right. This time around in the last campaign in 2019, a lot of nice things were being said about Jagmeet Singh

and the performance he'd had. In fact, I think most people were giving him kind of credit for the best performance, and the numbers were tight, as they are now, and the Tories, the Conservatives, were ahead a point or two in many polls halfway through that campaign. What happened? What happened was what traditionally happens. The Liberals went for the soft NDP vote.

And by the end of the day, the NDP, I think, ended up at 16% in the polls nationally. And they lost, you know, a fair number of seats. I might have used those numbers to describe just Quebec the last time around, but I think they're more in terms of the national numbers. Are we about to witness the same kind of thing? And I assume if we are, the NDP is better positioned to try and handle that kind of a situation than they were last time around, having seen what happened to them last time around. Chantal, why don't you start on that? I'm not sure that they're better positioned. And that is not true incompetence or lack of

preparedness. But this dynamic is a familiar one, and it is real. I would be watching Ontario in particular, but also BC, to see if there is movement from the NDP to the Liberals. BC, because last Sunday, Aaron O'Toole on Andrew Canada said that if he becomes prime minister, he's going to resuscitate the Northern Gateway pipeline. It was an interesting part of the interview in the sense that he said, I'm not going to push a pipeline through Quebec because François Legault

doesn't like pipelines. And then turned around and said, besides, I'm going to push Northern Gateway, which as it happens, the premier of British Columbia, many in British Columbia do not want. So whether that makes people there say, I'm better switching to Trudeau to keep the Conservatives in this debate at bay is a question mark. Dito in Ontario. And what's different in the NDP numbers this year, and Bruce would know that better than me and the Conservative numbers, is that there is movement that is not good for the Liberals in a place like Ontario.

So the NDP lost much of its urban seats in Ontario in the last election. I think Singh's problem was obvious at the debate last night. And it is that he has a very meagre, concrete offer to make to voters beyond influence that you would like if you're a progressive. And why is that? Because the $10 a day childcare, which used to be an NDP plank, has been taken away by the liberals because he is, and to his credit, he's not willing to say that he would scrap the Trans Mountain Pipeline now that we've invested so much in it. So he doesn't have a big item to say, if you give me more influence, I'm going to do this. He also has to fight memories from the Harper decade, half of which was in a minority

situation. And the fact that the only thing the NDP and the Bloc Québécois could do in that situation was try to prevent things from happening rather than push for things to happen. And yes, the liberals supported Stephen Harper at crucial times, and that made those things possible. But still, it's a fact of life that if you're a new Democrat, you're going to have more positive influence on a minority liberal government than a minority conservative government. I think a lot of people who are saying they're going to vote NDP are still working on the premise that their choice is minority or majority liberal. Bruce? both NDP are still working on the premise that their choice is minority or majority liberal. Bruce. You know, I think it's, it probably is the central question that's going to determine the outcome.

Will that NDP vote hold or will it slide towards the liberals? And if it doesn't, then the conservatives will win the election. And if it does, then the liberals will win the election and depends to be seen by how much. So what do we know about those voters? I guess I think that we know that the NDP number grew in part because Jagmeet Singh comes across as an affable, a genial, well-intentioned, articulate individual who speaks to a lot of the values that a lot of younger progressive voters in particular hold dear. And he speaks with a passion and an values that a lot of younger progressive voters in particular hold dear. And he speaks with a passion and an empathy that people can relate to.

I think the challenge for him in some respects is that his numbers also grew in part, I should say, because of the collapse of the Green Party vote. But if he has a challenge, it's that the inclination to vote NDP felt up until now, like there's no cost associated if you're a progressive voter, that there's no risk of getting a conservative government

and there's value in having a stronger NDP in the House of Commons. And now I think that math has changed. So it remains to be seen whether voters will kind of dig into enough issues or enough of the dynamics, or whether they'll just go and do the thing that they kind of felt like they were inclined to do and not really think that much about the outcomes. And I don't honestly know in my own mind, how much engagement we're going to see of what sort to know how that's going to

turn out. The only other thing I would say is that to the extent that the NDP numbers grew because of a drift from the liberals, which has been an effect, why did that happen? I think that Justin Trudeau and the liberal machine can come across sometimes as overly self-satisfied, kind of annoying in its description of its accomplishments, as, you know, just self-lionizing to the nth degree. Do you mean arrogant? Almost as though the substance of what they're doing isn't the problem. It's actually probably going to be popular if people really stopped and listened to it. But if you wrap it in kind of stinky fish wrap paper, it's going to make people kind of forget about the substance and go, why are these people so into themselves?

And is there somebody who's not so into themselves? And and I think that so that's been a factor. And I think the best thing for liberals in watching last night is probably saying, OK, when our campaign is not about that or when we are in a situation where it can't look like that, which is kind of an extension of ministers running around the country saying, I've got a big idea and it's got a big price tag and you're going to love it because we're good people. I think there's a reason that Jagmeet Singh centered on the liberals are more talk, less action on a lot of progressive issues. And I think it's overstated like most of these slogans are. And I think that it's been hard work for the Liberals to kind of cut through that and say, well, actually, on climate, here's what we've done. Actually, he's more talk than he could ever really do. So that's a difficult thing to kind of get into.

But I think the Liberals need to challenge the notion that an NDP vote is a zero cost, zero risk vote for those progressive voters. And they need to find a way without sounding self-aggrandizing to let people know what they've done and what they've got on the docket to do. And that's hard to do because people don't pay that much attention to that many issues. So it's not going to be easy for the liberals for sure. You used every descriptive word except arrogance well i you know it's overused so i exactly like there's no it's like there's 60 varieties of arrogance too and i don't know that it's intentional i think in fact i think they they they regularly challenge themselves to find a way to avoid it.

But there's a lot of the, it's like our golf swings, Peter. I don't know if Chantal has it. Oh my God, here we go. You know, there's that one thing that you know you're doing for 25 years and you wish you could stop doing it and you see the video of it

and you go, oh, that looks terrible. But you keep on doing it. Oh, there was only one thing. There's a self-righteousness, not to use arrogance, to the DNA of the Liberal Party that has been there for a long time. And it blinds the party and its leaders to what they actually come across as. To this day, we'll always remember watching Paul Martin. We're at the tail end of the 2006 campaign, which he lost, so it's not going well. And he is standing in Toronto

on a stage with a lot of his candidates from the GTA, and he's telling people that Stephen Harper will undo same-sex marriage, that he will undo abortion rights. And standing behind him are people who for more than a decade, liberals, who have voted against every piece of legislation, including small sentences that open the doors to more gay rights, to more equality for LGBTQ people, to abortion rights. And you think, do you realize what you're saying? I mean, until Justin Trudeau came and took on the leadership, the Liberal Party was a party that, Saturday was the Charter Party, but that allowed a caucus of anti-abortion MPs to thrive within its ranks and vote accordingly. But they seem totally clueless to

the disconnect between what Paul Martin was warning against and who the people behind Paul Martin actually were when you looked at their voting record. And you see it to this day, people who are associated with the Liberal Caucus or the Liberal government will tell you, we've done this, that, and that on gender equality. Then you look, no, you haven't. Not in the armed forces, not in the RCMP. Two institutions where it doesn't take a big brain to know that there would have been systemic issues.

But they don't see the gap between their talk and their walk, more so than I think any other party that I've covered. Okay. Just before I take our final break, to get back to the question that started this segment off about the NDP being prepared for the attack on those soft NDP votes who could go liberal, what's the issue?

If there was one issue, one, that would lead that kind of movement, what would it be? Climate. Climate. Bruce was talking about green votes going to the NDP. There is no doubt. It's not propaganda that if the Conservatives form the next government, they will take Canada in a different direction on climate change and that that direction amounts to turning

the clock back, not just on carbon pricing and the carbon tax, but on a host of other legislation that the Liberals have put in place on environmental assessment, tanker ban off the northern coast of BC, the building of a new pipeline, Northern Gateway. It is impossible for the NDP to seriously say, as Mr. Singh said about other issues, that it's the expression in French is bonnet blanc, blanc bonnet, white bonnet, and bonnet white. It's impossible to say that on the climate change issue. There is a difference and there is a choice there. And if part of your growth comes from the greens, that is where you stand to be weak. Bruce, just on that, on the one issue, you agree with Chantal on that? Yeah, there's no two answers to that. It is the climate change issue.

And the conservative position, as you and I talked about earlier this week, if you look at it from the standpoint of the targets that Canada has set, which are 40% to 45% reduction now, going to 30% is basically saying burn the planet faster. And I think that that's a real important point of differentiation for a very significant number of voters, including progressive voters in BC, including younger progressive voters everywhere. Okay. We're going to take our final break.

We'll be back with a question that Bruce will love. You're listening to The bridge with peter mansbridge all right peter mansbridge back with chantilly bear and bruce anderson the final few moments of our uh good talk for this week. The media. It's a great night for the media. I love the media. It's so much fun to watch the pros do their work, and that was great. Here's the

question, because I agree with Chantel, and I think we all agree that you can't describe the media as a monolith. There are different organizations, different players, different people, and different policies and different guidelines that different organizations meet. Having said all that, so far, is the media doing, Canadian media doing a good job on this campaign? Bruce, we'll give you the opening on this.

Well, some are obviously doing a great job and probably some are leaving me a little disappointed. Why don't I leave it there and see what Chantal has to say? Boy, that's really staking out the ground. Some are good and some aren't so good. What do you think, Chantal?

I've coordinated the coverage of campaigns in Quebec and federally for La Presse, not the name of the newspaper. And the coverage of a campaign is a mix. There is always stuff that possibly gets overplayed and stuff that gets done that doesn't get enough space. But I think overall, if you look at what is on offer, Canadians are getting a lot of good information. I taught what happened on Radio-Canada on Sunday night

with three journalists quizzing each leader for 25 to 30 minutes, 12 minutes for the green leader because the time is apportioned on the basis of your representation. I thought that was a useful public service, and it was done in a very professional way. It's impossible. You've worked in the media. You still do. There is the best and the worst. And that's okay. Because if there

were people sitting in judgment to say, this is the best and this should not happen, we would lose out on diversity of views and angles that maybe don't look obvious at first when you think someone's trying to pick a fight here, but in fact, become huge issues. So by and large, I think we are relatively well served. You do know, and we are part of that phenomenon, that there is a lot more opinion out there than there used to be when we started off in journalism. But I think the mix is still on balance pretty interesting. And for those who say the social media distorts this and that, I work on both sides of the language divide. And for a long, long time, people were allowed to say in one language and reporting things about the other side of the divide and never be corrected on it because the audience would not know.

You could do that. You could say just about anything in English about Quebec or just about anything about the rest of Canada in French. And there was no penalty for BS. The social media has changed that. You cannot get away scot-free from corrections and being pointed out as someone who is misleading when you do these things. So we have different issues and different problems, thanks to the social media. But we also have a lot less possibility of covering politics in silos. And I think that's probably an improvement. All right, Bruce, that's given you time.

You know, I agree with Chantal. There's plenty to appreciate about the professionalism of the coverage. I think that probably the things that, you know, that worry me maybe are, you know, I grew up and I know that it's print and virtual now, that there was a little bit more diversity. And it troubles me a little bit that we have one chain, basically, that in English Canada, you know, has a pretty distinct and unrelenting point of view about what political outcome they would prefer. And I think that it bleeds into their reportage, not just their opinion material.

And of course, we've seen in the last, I think probably the last two election campaigns that they sold their front page to a political party, which I don't think is a good sign in terms of journalism. But so sometimes when I read some of the columns and some of the commentary in that chain, I find myself wondering if there's enough diversity in the coverage that people get access to. And that's partly a function of the economics of the business. They're the last chain standing that reaches a very large number of people. And then the only other thing is that really that Twitter

sort of creates this sense that you need to have an opinion right away. And I love the fact that Chantal was saying before we came on the podcast that, and Chantal, forgive me, and Peter can erase this part if you don't want it said, that you didn't spend the evening watching what Twitter had to say about it. You watched it and you had your own opinions. And I think that's a really useful reminder that even though it's really tempting, it's kind of like a dish of candy that you just want to kind of dip into every once

in a while and have some it isn't necessarily that good for you in terms of forming your own independent point of view and avoiding some of the overheated rhetoric which um which i do sometimes and and which lots of people do on social media so those are my those are the things that i'm kind of worried about a little bit but i'm not going to do a big kind of. I just want to say for the record that on the progressive side of the media, quote unquote, you can also read some pretty hair raising columns and opinions that make you think really. And I'm not going to go to names, but it's not just on the right. No, that's true. That's absolutely right. And in fact, what's going on in the States with MSNBC and Fox is I can't watch either of them now because, you know, nobody wants that diet that that seems like it's just, well, we don't.

We know that you only want to hear one point of view. So I take your point. And I think that those, every action has a reaction and it doesn't really matter where it started. Uh, but if that's all we ever get, we're going to be less well-served. Yeah. Okay. Listen, that, um, that kind of eats up our time for, uh, for this week, but it's been great, good talk. Um, and I think that's a great piece of advice. Are we going to change the name of the podcast to Great Talk? Are we liberals and we think so much of ourselves? That would be arrogant. We're not going to be arrogant.

They would go, amazing talk. Okay, listen, let me just say, because I think what you both suggested is a good way for all of us to go into next week, which is big time in terms of the debates, the French language debate and the English language debate, is to try to leave your phone, your Twitter machine away from you during the actual debate. You know, draw your own conclusions, make your own mind about uh what you're witnessing you want to look at it afterwards fine but uh don't get clouded by by those thoughts some of them uh sort of off the wall ugly ones anyway we're out of time chantelle thanks so much look forward to next week and bruce obviously same thing um well there will be a show on monday

it's a holiday of of course, Labor Day. But we will do the Insiders on Monday. They're anxious to go as well. So we'll talk then. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening.