The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Did The Debates Change The Needle?

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Four leaders, one moderator, two hours of debate.  In a five week campaign did those two hours change the shape of Canada's election race?  That's the question for Chantal Hebert and Rob Russo on this week's Good Talk.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Bair and Rob Russo. Good Friday to you in all senses of that word. It is a good Friday and it's good talk here. Um, the day after two days of debates Wednesday night in French last night in English and as these things usually go if somebody is leading in the polls they become the punching bag on debate night and that certainly was the

case especially so last night where the other three leaders went after Mark Carney big time. So let's try and assess what all that means. Has anything changed as a result of these two days, and I guess especially so last night, for the rest of Canada, so to speak? Rob, why don't you start us this week? You know, we're always asked this question, and I understand why we're asked this question. And I think the honest answer, and one you rarely hear from me, is I don't know. And we don't know.

We almost always get it wrong when we try to guess, but we don't know. We do know that that unlike past elections, or the elections, we covered when we started our careers. Let's say that there were people busy last night cutting clips of what was said during the debate, and that is what's going to be the most preoccupying thing for the parties over the next couple of days and getting those into people's Facebook feeds, into their Instagram feeds,

so that somebody turning up for an Easter meal will have something fresh to talk about and to arm themselves with during family discussions. Here was my takeaway. I thought both debates were actually pretty good. The French debate in particular was excellent. Last night's debate was very, very well conducted as well. I think if there was a big winner, it was the moderators

and the way people conducted themselves, generally quite civil. I think if we were going to look at a big loser, it has to be the Debates Commission, which has clearly kind of lost the plot a little bit, couldn't figure out the timing. Anybody who's followed the Montreal Canadiens over the last four years, and I have, should have realized that I would be sitting in front of my television set with my lucky Ken Edzean sweater on on the last night of the season hoping and praying they'd get into the playoffs. That was their first error. Their next error was, I think it was an error to

credit the Rebel News organization in the way they did. They did it in essence caving because they didn't want to continue to try and wage an argument with them. Which to me is, I can't fathom it to tell you the truth. So they were the big, the big losers, the big winners, I think was Canadian democracy. Okay, just before I get to my assessment of debates, I also think one of the biggest losers was the Green Party. Its entire campaign was centered around the fact that Jean-Antoine Pétainoux, not Elizabeth May, would represent the party in both debates. For what reason? Because he looked like a new generation of green leaders Elizabeth may remember it come

and gone and come again as leader, and because he is very comfortable in both official languages, something that is not completely the case for a miss me in French. What we discovered over the course of the past few weeks is that the commission sets conditions to be in the debates, but then does zero due diligence and allows weasel words to define those conditions. In the case of the Green Party, it had to satisfy two or three conditions, the same for everyone. I have someone elected in the House of Commons, it qualifies on that basis as does Le Bleu Quebecois. To be at 4% or over in the polls, Le Bleu Quebecois qualifies for this, so it's in, the Green Party does not. The third condition to run 90% candidates and 90% of candidates' writings. The Bloc does not have to fulfill it. It fills the other two.

The Green Party said it would, and then it didn't. It was more than 100 seats short of the count for running candidates in every writing. And then you discover two things that the Green Party was asked to show that it had endorsed the proper number of candidates, different from running them apparently, and that the Commission did not bother to do due diligence to find out if these people actually existed and were running anywhere. And so on the morning of the debate, when the party has already spent time preparing for it and its election strategy centered around it, the commission announced that it was dropping the Green Party.

Announced that at 7.20 in the morning, since I have a part in this play, I will tell you why 7.20 in the morning. Since I have a barton display, I will tell you why 720 in the morning. The night before, I got a tip that the Green Party was being dropped. I asked around, got no responses, which sounded like that was true. No one said that's not happening. I go to Rézou-Canada every morning. So I went inside, as usual, and I went and counted the podiums and discovered that where there had been five, there were four left. That's investigative

journalism at its peak, Peter. And so I went on air and said either someone in the rehearsal broke one of the podiums so badly that they have had to hire extra help to rebuild it. Or else the tip that I got is right and the Green Party has dropped. Five minutes later, suddenly they announced this is the morning of the French debate. So looking at the stuff that Rob has talked about and this, I don't know what the commission that has to organize debates in this case, had four years to do it, manages to dig itself into such a hole. As for the debates, yes, we're not very good at assessing and the he won or he didn't win is meaningless. But I do believe that both debates, but especially last night's debate, confirmed that we are in a binary battle between the conservatives and the

liberals. And that's probably better news for the liberals than for the conservatives. Why do I say that? Because, well, it's not good news for the bloc and the NDP. Both leaders worked hard on that debate podium and did not do badly. But in the end, especially last night, that debate, when you walked away from it, was really dominated by two personalities, Mark Carney and Pierre Poilier. If that's the case, then it helps the liberals

more than the conservatives. Why? Because Mr. Pauilieff would have needed people to walk away from watching the debates thinking, I'm going back to my party, the NDP, I'm going back to the Bloc Québécoa. We need to have these parties with a greater voice in the House of Commons. I'm not convinced that happened. And if that doesn't happen since the start of the campaign, what we've seen is not that people who are conservatives are not rallying to Pierre Poirier. We've seen that people who are new Democrats and Blec Kiviqua members are going over to the Liberals. I'm like Rob, that doesn't mean what I'm saying is what will pan out.

But I would also argue that if the polls over the course of the weekend start showing that the conservatives have really picked up steam thanks to the debate, the English debate. That may push new Democrats back into the liberal fold and the blood give a go. The dynamics of this campaign are complicated for anyone who's not running for the liberal party. As for the clips, it's Good Friday. We're up early in the morning and tweeting it as a workday. But the next four days are not normal news days. And you do lose a lot of the momentum from those clips over the course of as long a weekend as this.

We'll see if people really spend a sunny Easter day chasing chasing votes across the dinner table rather than chasing chocolate eggs. In the case of my family, the choice is already made and it's not going the way of politics. One of the things about last night is that it was really the beginning of the holiday weekend and it'll be interesting to see what the numbers are like in terms of how many people were watching the event last night. And if those numbers were not as high as some people had expected, then the value of those clips will be more important. The attempt at least to get the what's in those clips massaged by the parties, I should say, who put them out. I mean,

they're only going to be looking for what works for them. But that will have some, I want to assume, some impact. I should say, seeing as we've kind of mentioned it, the debate commission, which we'll touch on when we talk about the rebel news stuff a little later, The debate commission, which we'll touch on when we talk about the rebel news stuff a little later, there's certain things about debates that they have control of, but they hand over the actual control of the debate itself to whoever's picked to run it and to produce it. In this case, it was the Radio Canada for the French and the CBC English service for the English debate.

I got to say, I mean, the French are usually pretty good anyway at this. They haven't had the screw-ups in debate shows that the English side has had. The English side did really well last night. I think Rob's right. Part of the reason they both were good was because in both cases the single moderator, both experienced guys, very experienced, were very good. But the whole of the format, I liked the format last night, I like this idea of the open sessions where the leaders kind of went at each other and questioned each other. I thought I was interesting, it was good.

So on that part of it, congratulations to them. The feeling I had, and so I want to get your reaction, the feeling I had watching last night was that it was Poliev's best moment so far in the campaign. He wasn't the aggressive, hammer-em-hard Polyev, but he was still getting his points across that he hammers away at. He just seemed to be in good shape last night. What that does for him at this point in the campaign, I don't know. Carney looked like Carney. He wasn't entirely comfortable. But then, as we've said all along,

it's unlikely that he would be. He's never done this stuff before. But I think the night last night was a Poliev night, a squeaker perhaps. But I think he had the edge. Anyone want to react to that, Rob? A couple of points, First of all, you said you weren't sure how many people would be watching last night because it was the first night of a long weekend. I believe the numbers are in for the Radio-Canada debate and it's over 1.2 million, which is a significant increase.

That's Wednesday. That was Wednesday night, though, right? That's right. That's 49% more than in 2021 for the consortium. That's right. They were all just sitting there waiting for the hockey game to start. I think that confirms something we've been talking about here. People are engaged in this election. They are paying attention to the election. They're following it. They're concerned about one issue in particular, but the other issues of affordability as well.

Everywhere I went, people talked to me about how hard it is, particularly younger people, to get by in the world today. Your suggestion about Poiliev. I found Poiliev fascinating during these two debates. Yes, he kept the pit bull on the leash. But just to sort of refresh how much of a tight leash that was on, I went back and looked at the leadership debates and how he performed against Jean Charest in particular and how he was intent on pulverizing him. And then I went back and looked at the session that they had, it was a remote session in 2023, I believe, or 2022, when Mr.

Carney appeared at committee and Mr. Poiliev turned up to question him. And I asked myself, who kidnapped Pierre Poiliev? Because he's not the same guy. He isn't. His bulldozer method of essentially asking loaded rhetorical questions and compelling his interlocutor to answer with a yes or no question, gone, gone. He did pepper Mr. Carney with questions, but he was strongest, I thought, Mr. Polya was strongest, near the end, particularly in the last two or three minutes when he was asked to

wrap up. I'm sure these are going to be cut into clips where he essentially looked into the camera almost lacrimosa and said, I haven't forgotten you to the people that he couldn't get to on the campaign trail. Once again, showing lifelike tendencies that he hasn't shown over the last two or three years. Of course the question is, and I don't disagree with those assessments, the question is, will this work this late in the game? This is exactly the kind of performance that is exactly the kind of performance that Pierre Poirier would have needed back in January. Last year, last year. Yes, and it would have worked and protected him better from the disappearance from the scene of Justin Trudeau. So I am not sure there was also quite a lot of slipping in slogans and they may have lost the attack dog mentor but they did this.

Or is to always slip in the slogan, bring it home, which is a mystery to francophones by the way, nobody understands what he means when he says that. Even bilingual francophones are at a loss to tell others what it may mean. But I think the liberals by and large, and we've seen rookie prime ministers, and by rookie, I don't mean rookie politicians. We've seen Kim Campbell and John Turner and how they performed, or even Paul Martin on the debate stage as incumbent prime minister. And I would argue that Mark Carney did better than all of them. And that's probably good for him because the debates did not help any of these previous leaders.

The liberals really feared a, and Pierre Poilier tried really hard to get a deer in the headlights moment for Mark Carney. In Franchet, we see Francois Blanchet who was trying for that. And last night, it was Pierre Poiliev, and that did not happen. And if it had happened, it would have unraveled the entire branding that the liberals had worked for in the case of Mark Kearney. He's someone who is confident, who is stable, who is serious, who can keep his cool in a crisis. So he just couldn't afford that moment. Does that force you to play defense possibly more than you would want? That is also par for the course if you're the incumbent in those debates. I don't remember ever having watched a debate where those who decide who wins and who loses went big on saying the incumbent won.

This was really the incumbent's night. It's almost never the incumbent's night. The question is, do you walk away with such deep scratches that you can't hold on if you do have a lead to whatever lead you have? Or does it turn things around? I don't know. The French debate, the consensus that it won't have changed anything is really, really strong. It could be really, really wrong, just because everybody thinks that nothing happened. I saw I met the E. François Blanchet on the morning after he was going in studio when I was leaving and we chatted.

He looked like a man who had had a mountain lifted from his shoulders. off the debate stage, you always feel like you didn't do well. But then, you know, you see messages come in and he seemed to think that the kind of feedback he was getting meant that he'd done what he needed to do. I don't know. It's really hard to get into people's heads. If they're looking for a prime minister, which I still think they are. Probably those debates did not work the miracles that the NDP and the Bloc were hoping for. We'll see next week. If I can Peter, just about about Carney. If you wanted to know how the race is going so far, all you had to do was total up the questions when the moderator, Steve Pagan, said, you can ask any leader you want a question. Well, all three of the other guys in opposition

turned to Carney. That was an acknowledgment of him and his frontrunner status, and that they were going to try and put a dent in that. If you look at why people have supported Carney in public opinion polls up until now, it's not because he is a deft political order or operator. It's because he represents in their minds the notion of somebody who is sober, sepulchral at times, and capable. And last night, I thought, he looked like that. He certainly wasn't dazzling, but he sounded quite confident and at times was in his element.

Less so, I thought, in the French debate. In the French debate, there were times when he had a kind of a blank stare on and and it looked like he was being held hostage at times but last night I thought he was far more confident a far more poised scored some points showed flashes of some personality as well but nobody wants personality from him. So I would have said if I were around Mr. Carney, mission generally accomplished. But again, nobody knows. Nobody knows how people are going to react to that. You know, it's interesting, you talked about that moment where they each had the opportunity to question one of the others and the three

of them all, their questions were all for Carney. And then when it was Carney's turn, he said, well, I'd like to ask myself a question. Yeah. And if we agree, and I'm not sure that we all agree here, because I haven't heard Chantelle, but if we agree that we saw a different kind of Poliev last night, there's still 10 days to go. Why can't that make a difference? I'm not sure. I'm going to quarrel not with your sense that you saw a different Poliev last night. I don't disagree with that. I'm going to quarrel with the 10 days thing because of Easter. day's thing because of Easter. We're talking a week at best. So I don't know what the strategy of the parties is going to be looking at those 10 days. I don't think that going back

to rallies, rallies, rallies is necessarily the best route for Pierre-Puéliav, because he can't help himself when he is fed energy by a crowd the old Pierre Poiliev eventually takes over. There have been very few interviews, especially in English, between leaders and people like you. And in the case of Mr. Poiliev, if he wants to build on what looks like a makeover from the debate, he would probably be better advised doing those than resuming the usual announcement today, bad news conference, more or less aggressive or useless, and then the rally where anger

seeps out of the room. But I'm not in the business of giving advice. Can you change things? It works for the liberals too. Brian Mulroney came out of the English debate in 88, behind John Turner. John Turner was very good in that debate. But over the course of those same 10 days, Brian Mulroney did what he needed to do to end up on election night with the second majority government. So the debate momentum is fleeting at best, and it is going to kind of deflate over the course of a four-day weekend. Pauliev has done some interviews but not high profile interviews and talking about like whether it's with Vashe at CTV or Rosie at CBC or Adrian at CBC whomever, he hasn't done any of those yet and there's no indication that he's going to but it may be something that they're going to spend this weekend thinking about is how to play out that final week. You're smiling, Rob. Yeah, I think that's exactly the debate that's been going on

in the war room among conservatives. And I think that they are going to go in that direction of more long form interviews to try and reinforce the image of Pierre Poilieff, the guy that we saw particularly in the last half of the debate last night. I think that's where they're heading, to try and get a broader audience. And the question is, how quickly and whether or not it's too late. Our friend, Corey, tonight, who has been,

our friend Cory tonight who has been- I can't wait to hear how you're going to describe- Well, I'm going to call him a cogent critic of his fellow conservatives. Last night, while throwing a laurel in Mr. Poiliev's direction also said that because he's a Saskatchewan farm boy, he can say this, that you don't fatten up the pig on the day you take it to market. Yes. And I just, it's totally unscientific, but waiting to do a panel last night, I was watching the tail end of the news special on the CBC. And there are three voters who are on hand, undecided voters, to give their first impressions, whether it had made them. Well, one was decided, but the first person that they went to was someone,

a younger man from Brampton, which is where the election is playing out, who was hesitating before the debate between Pierre Poilier and Mark Carney. And I thought it was really interesting for those of us who overthink these things. He said, I'm going to vote for Mark Carney. Why? Because he didn't interrupt anyone. And last night, I could see on my social media feed that the constant interruptions or attempts at interruption, in particular, in the case of Jatmeet Singh, at some point became an issue, rather than whatever he was trying to say.

People were getting annoyed that there was always this constant attempt at speaking over in particular, but not exclusively Mark Carney. So this is anecdotal. It doesn't mean anything, but it was interesting that this was, you know, I thought Mark Carney looked like a prime minister and he didn't interrupt everyone. Okay? I do think there's some truth to that and I can tell you, you know, I've received dozens, if not hundreds of emails in the last week as part of the program trying to get a viewer's sense of what it is they wanted to see on debate night, not issues, but what did they actually want to see from these people? And one of the constants was, I don't want interruptions.

I want them to be polite to each other. They can still make their points. I don't want slogans. I want questions answered. And you know, I was ticking them off last night. There were some great questions that Steve was asking. And in a lot of cases, he never got the answers, right? They just move on to something else because they don't want to answer the question or they want to

make their other points. And that drives viewers crazy. And I can remember, you know, from my day, same thing. If you don't get an answer to the question, people are really upset about it. So that happened, that happened a lot last night. I mean, you know, Jhergmeet Singh was trying to interrupt everybody at every time and every moment. I mean, he was- More Poiliev though. And that's interesting. You gotta ask yourself why, what is he thinking?

If he's interrupting Mr. Poiliev and needling him more, it's clearly because he wants, I think, NDP switchers who are looking at the liberals to feel a little bit more comfortable about coming to him if he's going after Poilier. That is the only thing that I could come up with, because disproportionately he went after Poilier, whereas Mr. Blanchet went after Mr. Carney almost exclusively because the Liberals are eating his lunch in the province of Quebec. So it was deliberate and I do think there is some method to what they were doing. Well, it's also that if you're going to save the furniture, in the case of the NDP, you're doing this in BC and in BC, the conservatives

are usually your main opponent. So you are also fighting that battle. I also thought that we didn't talk about the substance of some of those points that were made last night, which I believe reflects the reality of when people watching debates are watching debates, they are not watching them in the same way as when you're doing an interview with the leader. They pay a lot less attention to, you know, the actual substance. But I did feel, and I got some comments from conservatives who also felt that, especially in the first hour, that the word pipeline in the mouth of the conservative leader was coming back too much for his own good. And I was getting messages from senior conservatives saying, pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, can

we get off this topic, which does not play well, of course, in Quebec, but does not play well in BC, that has emerged as a major battleground. And there was a level of discomfort, like, can we just move on to something else? Because this is not, it's great for the base, it's great in Alberta and Saskatchewan, it doesn't work well in the areas of the country that you absolutely need to win to form a government. An Alberta liberal messaged me during the French debate to say he'd lived his whole life for the day when he heard so much accord on pipeline.

So some people were happy about it. Now I know the farmer had called for a wide array of topics to be discussed and issues to be discussed, but were you surprised how little the Trump issue played out over the two hours last night? Yeah, it felt like we'd gone to a different galaxy where Donald Trump is not the reality that he will be over the next four years. And I totally understand the need for other issues to be debated. But at some point, you know, I was trying to get to sleep last

night, I thought this felt like a break from reality in this way that we didn't have to think about the elephant in the room is like everyone agreed that the elephant is there. And we're going to work our way around it, which begs the question, will Donald Trump again impact on the campaign and the light lead up to the vote between now and then? Will something else materialize just Just because he's been not totally but still ignored for the course of two debates doesn't mean that the issue is not

going to resurface thanks to something. But yeah, there was a bit of that feel. I think because of the themes that were selected and a deliberate attempt to talk about the other issues that we had not been talking a lot about, but one tell-all about Trump is the interesting debate about why have we seen no costed platform before the debates. Now, usually someone would have come up with one and then point the fingers at the others for not doing that. But both the liberals and the conservatives were supposed to present those costed platforms last weekend. And they both kind of in tandem, if they're not doing it, we don't need to do it kind of thing, still haven't. But the fundamental discussion isn't that we haven't had costed platforms. It is that when we do,

how solid or serious can we treat them as? The Quebec government presented a budget a few weeks ago, and argued that its budget was good to go good for the road. And then this week lost or have its credit rating downgraded by standard and poor, which means that the numbers in that budget and the targets no longer hold. So do we really believe those costed platforms are going to resist the test of reality for more than a week and a half, as in until the day after the election. I don't. Rob, do you want to make a point on this before we take our first break? Yeah, I would just say that it wasn't for lack of trying by Mr. Carney to bring the subject back to Trump. Almost, well, several questions that weren't related to Trump,

he would say, this is why we need to prepare for Donald Trump. So he was playing what he thought was his strongest card. I believe that there is no more pressing issue than our relationship, security, and economic relationship with the United States. But at the same time, I thought it was a good thing

to have other issues get an airing. And they got a thorough airing last night because they're right there. When you look at surveys, they're right there. Affordability, cost of living is right there. And it was an important thing for people to get some sense of where people stand on those issues as well.

Okay, let's take our first break. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Friday episode of The Bridge, which is of course good talk. You're either watching us on our YouTube channel or you're listening to us on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. I want to talk briefly anyway about this rebel news thing because it has been sort of boiling away for a number of years now. I mean, Ezra Levant has been around for 30, 35 years. I can remember when Barbara

Frum used to have him on the journal every once in a while, spouting his theories about life and politics in Canada. But before we talk rebel, can somebody explain to me the election commission? Like who are they? What is their decision process? And I'm not looking for anything wrong here. Their decision process. Well, we've seen the result of that. But who are they and what clout do they have and who gave it to them? Well, they are a creature of government and it's really a very small staff like two, three, four people from what I understand headed by Michel Cormier, our former colleague at CBC Radio Canada, who is the executive director. They have a board

of directors or a board of advisors. They include former politicians like John Manley and Deb Gray of the Reform Party. But essentially, their task is to make sure that all Canadians get access to their politicians in a debate format politicians in a debate format in a way that is fair and that allows for issues to be aired. They might pick the date, they might not. Again, that's in conjunction and I must say as somebody who was tangentially involved in some discussions about debates, these things are often decided in conjunction with the political parties as well. We've all heard and or been involved in discussions where the political parties are quite rigid in setting their own terms for what the debate might

look like when it might be. In 2015, I think Stephen Harper refused to take part in some debates. And we had an instance, which I didn't think was too bad, of let 1,000 debates bloom. And I think that's probably where we're going to end up again. The media landscape is unrecognizable.

Even in the last 10 years, so many news organizations, as we used to know them, have disappeared. A lot of news, what I call mirages, have appeared. They appear to be news organizations and news presences in states and cities and towns, and they're not really there. And so we're gonna have to look for a different way of doing these things that reflects that. But I still think it's important that there are

two debates at least in each official language that is accessible to people in every section of the country in both official languages. And I think you do need some sort of formal presence in order to make that happen. Okay. Talk to me about Rebels. It all started when Stephen Harper decided he wasn't going to attend the consortium debates. There was no commission in 2015. The consortium was the consortium of networks. Like CBC, CTV Global on the one side and TVA, as you can add, Nouveau, as it's now called, on the French side. But in that campaign, as Rob points out, we never had so many debates.

Mac Lanes had one, the Globe and Mail had one. In the end, Harper relented and attended the French debate hosted by Rézou Canada. And I think they all had a separate one. Yeah, they did. So we didn't lack for a debate. Let's be serious here. The campaign in 2015 bears little logistical resemblance to this one because it went on from the first days of August until October 19th. So we've had more debates when campaigns have been longer. That was also true in 2006 where it started pre-Christmas and went on till the end of January.

But so this notion came about we should have a debates commission to organize the debates and the condition to go on one of the debates, the French debate, which everybody always seems to agree you should go on to. One of those conditions is if you want to go to the French debate organized by the commission, you're going to have to go to the English one. So fine, except the commission decided early on and under a different leadership to get really creative and reinvent the wheel. And so the first sets in 2019 featured a variety, everyone who was part of the consortium, including print media, and to send someone to ask questions. Well, it was unproductive in the extreme. Those of us who work in the print media,

some of us have talent to do what Peter, you used to do for a living. Others like me have zero talent for that. I'm good at answering questions. Don't ask me. I told the star that if they wanted me to go on that as one of the questionnaires, I would resign the next morning rather than go there. So that was the first experience. Second experience, let's reinvent

the wheel. A non-journalist becomes the person who is the referee, Sashi Kurl in this case, from Angus Reed polling research, becomes the person who is going to referee. With the consequences that we saw, an exchange between the moderator and the leader of the Bloc Québécois, unprompted by the Bloc Québécois, that kind of turned things around in Quebec because it was perceived

that the moderator had stepped out of the role of referee to kind of get on the ice and see if you can body check one of the other players. So this year, wow, we came to after much research to this incredible idea that seasoned veteran journalists should actually single-handedly lead those debates. We used to have debates like that before. You don't need a Bloc Québécois? Forget the commission, its rules and its ideas. So they kind of got themselves into this pickle. In the first instances, they refused to have rebel media. Rebel media went to court and they had to allow rebel media to come. This year they went one step further. They gave rebel media five times more representatives than every other media was entitled to.

Why? Because they don't like trouble. Well, if you don't have the backbone to stand up for anything because you don't want to be going to court, maybe you should just get out of the playground because it ain't the friendly playground that it used to be even a decade ago. And they're not journalists. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. They disguise themselves as journalists, but they're advocacy groups. They're actually registered with Elections Canada as third party interveners in the election campaign.

Exactly. And the tell is when they did have a chance to ask some questions, a lot of the questions were about themselves and the fact that they were hard put on because people didn't speak to them and people didn't treat them well and people didn't take their questions. I can assure you that, you know, I enjoy my job. I can't think of anything I'd rather have done. But otherwise, I'm really quite boring. And I don't think that I should inflict my pain, my suffering

on anybody else, and certainly not my journalistic organization's pain and suffering on anybody else. There are places to do that. But if you get the opportunity, the privilege of asking our political leaders questions, it's because you're there to ask questions that people want you to ask, not what you want to ask. Nobody cares really about how hard done by you are

because they're not taking your questions. And I don't seek to try and get, you know, polite exchanges. I don't mind that it's rough and tumble. You know, I'm really upset that they cancelled these scrums last night because they might have become unruly. They're called scrums for a reason, okay? We're not supposed to just politely sit across a velvet rope from each other and pose question and answer. Fine,

if that works. But you know, our job is to get our foot in the door as reporters and not take it out and get them to answer questions that taxpayers voters want answered. That's what our job is. And I didn't think that they were fulfilling that job that night. And we will one think that they were fulfilling that job that night. And we will one day know the back story of what happened last night, because we weren't on site, but it looked like an ugly kind of thing with some trying

to crash the CBC News special site. That's not what journalists do. I mean, we are competitive, but we do not go and rupture proceedings. I'm going to take you off topic for just one second because there was an instant poll done by Abacus on debate impressions from last night. It just landed in my email. And so I'm not going to go through all this. It's very long. But among viewers, I'm quoting here, liberal leader Mark Carney registered the warmest response. 59% said he left a positive impression 22% disagreed. Pierre Poilier, 53%, but 30% negative and the others are kind of back. So I read this really quickly, but it doesn't go the way of a game changer. When you read all the fine print, and that is a snapbook,

they talked to 600 viewers who had caught the debate. Their conclusion is we'll see if the clips kind of shift an advantage more clearly to someone. But based on that, it doesn't look like either of the main leaders, the two leading contenders, disappointed his or her supporters or those who were considering voting for either of them. One of the things that we've learned about debates slash polls in the past is things can change in the, in the days immediately following a debate because there are those who watched, there are those who sort of half

watched and there are a lot more who didn't watch at all, but all of whom are influenced at times by the post debate coverage and whether that is in journalistic coverage or whether it's in terms of the ads that are popping up on the air by the different parties and different organizations that are trying to involve themselves in some fashion with the election campaign. Got to take our final break. We'll come back and we'll kind of try to get a sense of what to look for in this week ahead. We'll do that right after this.

And welcome back Peter Mansford here along with Chantelle and Rob. Okay, so we're into the final 10-day stretch and Chantelle mentioned earlier the first few days of that 10 days is sort of we're all on holiday, right? And people are with their families and we hope we're having a nice pleasant weekend that there were, you know, it's hard to imagine sitting around a dinner table on something about the election not coming up or something about Trump and something about Trump versus Canada, etc., etc. However, when we look at that reduced time span now, it just seems like yesterday that this thing started.

Here we are in the final, literally heading into the final week. What should we watch for? What are you going to be watching for in these final days, Rob? Yeah, advanced polling voting starts today. I'm going to be watching for turnout. If the trend that we saw in terms of the ratings for the French debate continues, what I've seen in terms of talking to people and the engagement, as I've said, when I've gone out, I've done the equivalent of streeters and people want to talk. I think I spoke to almost 50 people in the last week when I was in BC and only two didn't

want to talk to me when I approached them. And I just walked up to them and said, I'm a reporter from a faraway town visiting your town. Who wants to talk? Almost everybody wanted to talk. And they all started by saying, what's Chantel really like? That's exactly right. Thank you. That's exactly right.

Yep. So I'll be watching for turnout at advance polls. I'll be watching to see if Mr. Poiliev continues to do what he's doing in terms of presenting a more human side, a more evolved side. It's clear that he is trying to make up a deficit primarily with women voters. And I believe, I think I've been told that he has been told he needs to do that if he's

going to close the gap. One thing I didn't see, and I looked for it, and there were a couple of moments when in the French debate in particular, and Mr. Blanchet's offer in particular spoke to this, when he said, elect a minority government and send us the block to make sure that we can keep a check on Mr. Carney, he basically said, so that we can get Quebecers' voices heard. That to me suggests that Mr. Blanchet is worried about a majority government. I didn't hear that from Mr. Singh. I'm wondering if that is the case, if the other parties see that. Are we going to hear Mr. Carney in effect say at this time in our history, given

the challenge we face in Donald Trump, we need a majority mandate? Give us a majority mandate, we will give you what Mr. Harper used to call a strong and stable majority government in the face of the threat. Always a challenge to make that request in those dying days. Chantal, you got a couple of minutes, two minutes to tell me what you're looking for. I'm not going to embrace any sense of participation on turnout at the advanced polls. Why? Because in previous elections over the past few years, turnout has gone up tremendously at the advanced polls. But at the end of the day, when all the votes were counted, the turnout wasn't very high. It's just that more and more

people are taking advantage of the advanced polls rather than wait for the day of the vote to cast their ballot. I do tend to think this year we'll see more people vote, but I don't know. But I know the parties will focus on this getting their vote out big time. You can't argue for a majority government easily because it looks two things. One, if you were Mark Carney and you started saying that, you would basically be telling those NDP and black switchers to go home. Because that is not necessarily what they want. They don't want a conservative government in most instances, and they want someone to deal with Trump and they believe Carney is better. But that doesn't mean they really want the liberals to have a majority. So if the liberals go down that road, I will feel that they are being arrogant at their own peril by doing so.

In the case of Kep Wadiyev, of course, he's not going to be asking for a strong mandate. People fear a strong Wadiye strong mandate. People fear a strong FATF mandate. So I'm curious to see how they frame his last week so that he can, you know, use this persona that he presented that the debates in a more productive way than he's been. But I'm also going to be looking to see if this is the week when conservative infighting stops breaking out in public. Because we've had more than a share of this over the past week with Premier Ford jumping into the fray to defend his campaign manager, Corey Tenaik,

who had said that this conservative campaign was terrible. We have seen what's been happening in BC with former well-respected conservative ministers backing independent candidates that were rejected, that one that was rejected by the Pogliev team, a former finance minister of BC. These things hurt and they've been happening a bit too much for the comfort of the conservative party. It feels like inside that movement,

there are people who are already wanting to go through the autopsy of the corpse of the leadership of Mr. Poilier. Okay. The other term we're going to hear a lot of in the next few days is ground game. Who's got the better ground game? Because that's how you get your vote out, whether it's advance polls or to the big poll on election day. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this week. A lot of good talk here with Chantel and Raw by Peter Mansbridge. Join me for the buzz tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. in your inbox if you've subscribed to nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. Have a great weekend. Have a great holiday. Talk to you next week