The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Did The Right Person Get Shuffled?

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

The dust has settled on one of the largest shuffles in Canadian political history but at the end of the day what really changed?  If anything.  Bruce and Chantal are here for a special mid-summer Good Talk and they don't hold back.   Also updates on Pierre Poilievre and some thoughts about that recent swarming and what it says about us.

Are you ready for a little summer good talk? And hello again, Peter Mansbridge here, joined by Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. And welcome to the middle of summer. Here we are nearing the end of July. It's been a month since we've been on the air. And as a result, you know, we picked the right week. We said a month ago, surely they'll, you know, maybe have a cabinet shuffle in time for our midsummer event.

And sure enough, there it was a couple of days ago. Now, the thing about cabinet shuffles that I've always found is that they're the classic inside Ottawa story. You know, everybody in Ottawa, whether it's MPs or bureaucrats or members of the media, they love to talk about cabinet shuffles. Just how much everybody else is talking about them, well, I don't think they talk about them too much. But this was a peculiar week in the sense that this was a huge cabinet shuffle. Almost everybody had a movement of some kind on this shuffle.

They were either out or in a new portfolio. Very few, I think it was, what, eight or nine, stayed within the same area, same responsibility that they had before. But at the end of the day, what difference does it make? That becomes the question. So let's get at it. Chantal, your take on this shuffle, you know, the – well, I won't say anything yet.

You start. Tell me what you think. Okay, you're right. It was huge, but it was huge by the numbers. And I'm not sure that shifting around a lot of second tier players, because by and large,uffled in or out, but this shuffle will be remembered for the quantity of moves more so than for something that caught the imagination. And on that score, I was kind of the government that it means to do something significantly different by having this massive shift and shuffling of chairs on the deck. And many questions remained. For one, the one that I heard most was why was was David Lumetti, the Minister of Justice, dropped? The Prime Minister's explanation, frankly, was totally lame.

He's a great guy and he's done a great job and he will continue to do a great job in the future. Well, then, why did you fire him? I don't want to focus on Mr. Lumetti's case. I can think of reasons why he would be shuffled out. But when this is one of the dominant questions on the day after, you have to say the message of change was not at this point received in a significant way. Okay. Bruce, your initial take on this? Yeah, Peter, I think it was a lot of disruption without really addressing for the government the central point that's evident all the time in the public opinion data now and for the last year or so, which is that they're way behind the Conservatives when it comes

to Canadians' confidence around the economy. Maybe it shouldn't be that way. One can make the case that they've had a reasonably decent economic record and policies that, by and large, voters support, but it's not getting through. And, you know, I think there are a couple of ministers, Minister Champagne and Jonathan Wilkinson, who are doing a pretty good job of communicating the economic activities that they're involved in. long time that the finance minister has been really struggling to have that kind of compelling impact with Canadian voters. So I think the government needed to reset and it didn't do it with this disruption. It didn't land a message that was clear about the economy. It didn't really land a message that was clear about what kind of change. It was almost as though that somebody thought that the prime minister needed to be seen as ruthless. And so dropping some people that, you know, otherwise were contributing, maybe not to everybody's satisfaction, was going to make some sort of important point that I never saw any data that said people need to think that Justin Trudeau is more ruthless with

his cabinet. So it was, I think it was a bit of a tone deaf exercise. If I can, just a couple of specific cases, and I want to hear Chantal on some of these names as well. I think there were some good moves. I like the idea of Mark Holland at health. I think he has a chance to be an effective communicator on an important file. I think Sean Fraser obviously is somebody who's impressed his boss with the way that he's handled his responsibilities. I think there were some missed opportunities. I probably would have been given a little bit more share of voice to Karina Gould and Seamus O'Regan.

That didn't happen. There were some hard to understand moves. Anita Anand, for example, Lamedi, for sure. Mueller, who has done such an effective job, I think, in creating a narrative about reconciliation. And now moving him out into another portfolio kind of means that nobody's going to tell that story on behalf of the government. I mean, somebody will try, but I think it's been a much more important story that the government has invested hugely in politically, economically. And I think they run the risk. And I think that was one really poor choice.

And other people will have a different view of this, perhaps. But I think removing Marco Mendocino completely from cabinet is losing somebody who's got a lot of talent, a lot of political acumen. And I think it kind of stood out as, for me, a measure of this, I want to look like I'm ruthless rather than terribly mischoice, I guess is what I would say. A couple of points on this. I think by the time the shuffle happened, Marco Mendocino had become the face of a government that is not functioning in the way you expect. And to keep him on would have branded the entire exercise as a cosmetic exercise. Whether that's fair or not, I think by now, he had been and was a dead man walking. I don't think there was a choice there. I don't see that as a sign of ruthlessness, but a sign of admitting the reality as it is. But I was listening to Bruce and I was thinking it's not great for a government when you're talking about a shuffle two days after it's happened in terms of net losses on files. And you can say that about national defense and the fact that Anita Anand is not there anymore.

And with all due respect, the last time I checked, no treasury Board president has been much of a major player, publicly at least, in anything that is driving the economic agenda of a government. The loss of Mark Miller to the aboriginal file. I think it's fair to say, and if you guys disagree, let me know, because you've seen a lot of people handling that file. But for me, this was the first minister who really had his heart in it, totally, and who earned trust in a way that I can't think of other ministers in the same file handling it. So to move him now is kind of weird. Mark Holland goes to health. Well, most people do not know much about Mark Holland. And the health file, in theory, has been, from the federal standpoint, largely settled in the sense that money has flown out and the provinces are on the front line of making that

money achieve results. But Mark Holland was the House leader in a very difficult House of Commons. This is a minority parliament. Even more perplexing, he has been replaced by Carina Gould, who is a good communicator and a strong minister, but who happens to be on the verge of leaving on maternity leave. It's kind of a non-choice when you have a minority house to run to appoint a house leader who will be absent as of the end of this year, unless there is an election that we don't know about. When you put all this, and there is one other factor, you think we're perplexed trying to find meaning into this. All the echoes I got

since the shuffle from caucus is that caucus is more than up in arms over this. That this has not only not increased probably the sense in voters that change is in the offing and the government has the energy for it, but it seems to have undermined caucus morale rather than raised it. And I'm hearing this from people in caucus who normally don't rock the boat, don't send emails to journalists who are not these people and who were not sitting by their phone waiting to be appointed to this cabinet. But when you take all of that together, you think not a big win for the government on the public front and probably a hit on the prime minister's moral authority on his caucus on the internal front. And the conclusion is this really was a bullet that you can only use once at this point, a major shuffle that was wasted. All right. Let me jump in here for a bit because we've covered a lot of ground there. And I think part of the problem here is in some ways, we're not really talking about the elephant in the room, although Chantal kind of touched on it there in the last few moments. And the elephant in the room, of course, is Trudeau himself, right? And you

heard it often this week, and not just from conservatives, but I heard it from some liberals as well, not liberal members as Chantelle has been talking to, but liberals kind of out there who are saying, listen, there's only one thing that's going to change the equation here in the way people look at this government, rightly or wrongly, that equation is hinged around Trudeau himself. And if there's going to be a shuffle, why wasn't he included in it? Well, because he's doing the shuffle. So we know why he didn't pull the plug and this issue about whether or not he's going to stick around as being around for the last couple of years. One would assume that a shuffler's size

would indicate that he's staying. But not if things get, you know, as tense within the party as they seem to be from the couple of things we've just said here. What it says about his own future, I mean, I could go through the list of names too, and I absolutely agree with both of you on Mark Miller. Didn't the last time there was a shuffle, didn't the prime minister want to shuffle him? And he said, no, no, no, I've got work to do here. I want to stay here. I think I can really contribute. And I doubt very much whether he feels differently at this point in terms that he was ready to go. I think, you know, he was locked in on that. And I agree with both of you. You've got to go back a long way, perhaps as far back as Kraytchian, even though he wasn't there very long,

but he was well-respected within that community, which at that time was called Indian Affairs and Northern Development or something. But it's a long time. That's been sort of a pass-through for so many ministers over so many years. They were in and couldn't get out fast enough, not in the case of Mark Miller. Anyway, I'm rambling here. The elephant in the room, Trudeau and his position now, stronger or weaker than it was just a couple of days ago? I mean, if you go by the polls, Bruce, it's pretty weak, 10 points spread. And that's kind of uniform now by all the major polling companies, seven, eight, nine, 10 points, the latest one being Abacus. Trudeau, stronger or weaker than he was a couple of days ago as a result of what he was trying to do with this shuffle? Oh, I think weaker. I think Chantel

made a number of really important points there. I wouldn't overstate the degree of risk that he faces within his caucus. A lot of people support him. A lot of people, you know, like him, I think the, there is, and has been a growing uneasiness about whether or not his staff, his team around him is burnt out, refreshed enough, focused on the right issues. There's been this tension for some time among that portion of the Liberal Cabinet and caucus that says we really need to look more like an economically oriented government and party. And those who tend to think that fighting the culture war and rallying NDP voters is the best way forward. I think that this shuffle didn't satisfy that, probably didn't satisfy that part of the caucus and cabinet that say we need to strengthen

our economic flank. We need to have a sense of how the economy is going to thrive under our watch and going forward. I think instead, it would probably make them feel as though this is still a party that's reflex is to kind of look to the left and to sound like a party that wants to look to the

left. And I think that probably leave them more unsettled in the sense that this was, as Chantal put it, maybe the last big opportunity to hit that reset button. There might be another one there inevitably has to be if a party is that far behind as they head towards an election. But this was a moment where the PM could have said, I'm going to take all of that energy that I hear bubbling around in the background of people saying government feels a little tired, feels a little lackluster, feels a little bit unfocused on the economy and the cost of living and the cost of housing in particular. And I'm going to answer that. And he didn't do that. And I think that in that sense, it won't make people dislike him or feel like he has to go necessarily, but it will definitely make people wonder whether he's got the kind of the curiosity about how to fight the next election better and the energy to put in behind it.

And part of that is his team looks like they've been in that place for a long time and they have by any historical standards. And that usually does become a bit of a focal point at this stage in the life of a government of this age. So this was an opportunity for distracted Canadians, rightly distracted by summer, to take stock of the prime minister. And because it is a major event, suddenly something big enough to maybe pay attention for 30 seconds is happening. That post-cabinet Shuffle newser that Justin Trudeau gave was probably one of his weakest ever news conference. And he wasn't even having a news conference on an issue on which he should be on the defensive. But it was not only empty, it failed to provide a positive narrative for the shuffle. It failed to provide a positive narrative for the shuffle. It failed to show grace. And I'll

give you one example that people like me will notice. At some point, he is obviously asked about Minister Anand and the fact that she's leaving national defense, where she has managed to bring at least some order to the file and remember the misery that our predecessor, Arjit Sajjan, left behind. And there is the prime minister saying, well, yes, Minister Anand and Minister Sajjan did a great sterling job at national defense. And you're thinking, how cheap can you go that you're saying this in public with a straight face. Me, I mean, I have friends and colleagues who believe that if the government loses, cannot find a way to reset in a more convincing way and loses the next election, you will be able to trace it back as the biggest symptom to this shuffle.

Me, I think that if Justin Trudeau does not lead the party in the next election, you will be tracing it back to this shuffle. I don't believe the internal tensions in caucus and in cabinet have finished playing out in the wake of this shuffle. That's not to say that I think something huge is about to happen or that in a month the new Jody Wilson-Raybould will rise out of this mess. But the kind of signals I'm getting are signals I have never gotten from inside this government since Justin Trudeau became liberal leader. And that's a big change, and it's a ominous change for his leadership. What are we saying here, that a shuffle of this size wasn't needed? Because on the one hand, a shuffle of this size is saying clearly, an admission on the part of the government, that it's failing, that it has not been performing.

And so we're going to change the dynamic, and we're going to change it big time. So that's kind of like... That's what they didn't do. That's the part that they didn't do. But they didn't. They just changed it in numbers, not in real, in the body of the cabinet itself and the way that it's going to operate?

I don't think they needed to say that we've failed. I think that they needed to say that we're done talking about yesterday and here's what we need to focus on going forward. And that wasn't really there, right? And the reason that wasn't there is that incumbent governments really have trouble getting their eyes out of the rearview mirror and talking about their accomplishments and talking about what they've been doing and how much people should appreciate it and everything else. And voters, they don't really care about that. They don't want to hear about it. It's old news. It's the past. to the extent that the Liberals have a threat, it's not that people are so fed up with their policy mix or even with the prime minister. It's that there is no sense of what they're going to do about problems that still exist, what they're going to do about housing. And I think that I

don't know that Pierre Palliev has an answer to that, but he has one that sounds more like an answer than the one that this government has had. So I think for the Prime Minister, the opportunity was to say, we see the three or four big things that we need to tackle going forward, and we will have the best ideas, and we will have the best people focused on them, and this is the lineup that I'm putting together to do this. Instead, it was really a bit of everything's going great, but here's a bunch of new people and I fired some others. And I don't think that was a wise use of the reset button opportunity that he decided to use this summer.

So I'll give you two choices, neither of which were made in the case of the shuffle. The first was to take Dominique Leblanc and give him the responsibility for Marco Mendicino's portfolio and the going forward on Chinese interference file as he already was de facto leaving that file and then leaving everything else as is. The other option would have been, and it was suggested to the government by some strategists, and they lead up to this shuffle, to bring in new blood, to go for a wow factor. I'll give you an example of a wow factor that we've all witnessed. I'm not speaking about how it turned out five years later. I'm speaking about how it turned out in an election six months later.

We were all at Rideau Hall when Lucien Bouchard, then the Canadian ambassador to Paris, stepped out of his limousine to become a cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney's government. Brian Mulroney had been plagued by scandals, mostly involving his Quebec members. And the message was that he had brought a big but weird team to office. This is the spring of 1988. The election is coming. It's going to take place in the fall. Free trade is in the balance.

And Lucien Bouchard changes the narrative on the government in the places where it needs most changing, and that is Quebec. And what happens six months later, Brian Mulroney secures a second majority mandate. I would argue that this shuffle with Lucien Bouchard coming in created the winning conditions for that majority government, big time. But there was a wow factor. What did we talk about after that shuffle? Do you remember anything about that shuffle, except that Lucien Bouchard stepped out of that car to be sworn in? You don't, because that is what the government wants. It wants you to say, boy, they brought in, let me pull a name out of nowhere. They brought in Mark Carney to shore up his economic team.

What would we be talking about today? We would be talking about a stronger economic team because Mark Carney has come in and don't tell me that he lacks a seat to run in because I have noticed that my old writing of St. Paul's in Toronto is going to be vacant. And it's a great fit for someone like Mark Carley. I don't think the demographics have changed that much in St. Paul's. It's that kind of writing. So he declined to go the, let's bring new blood and let's be bold route and send a strong signal. And he declined to do the we must absolutely address this and let's just leave everything else alone. And went for this mishmash.

That's what my kids used to call it when I found every leftover in the fridge, put it all together in some mass that you couldn't tell what it was about and said, this is your meal this week because this is where we are. It's good. Oh, dear. Of course, if the wow factor had been Carney, then the stories wouldn't have just been about can Carney win in St. Paul's.

They would have been, is Carney one step closer to knocking Trudeau out of the box? You know, can I just follow up on what Chantel said? I'm reminded of the movie Moneyball, the book Moneyball, which proceeded, and I don't know if Peter and Chantel, if you've been familiar with that story, but Moneyball grew out of a theory of how you win baseball games that was developed out of a massive amount of data. And the data basically allowed you to kind of say, well, the most important thing to winning games is the number of runs you score. And subsequent to that, here are the most important things that deliver a higher number of runs. And of course course that flew in the face of all the kind of

old line experts who said yeah but you need to have some superstars and you need to have some wow factor and you need to have you know people who look like baseball players um it's a very very interesting uh story um and as i was watching this budget play out, I was thinking part of the argument that you'll hear for this shuffle is picking people who can win in certain ridings that otherwise might be vulnerable. And the presumption is that the way that those ridings turn, the outcome turns, is on the basis of on the ground contacts and local candidates with some visibility. Well, I don't mean to suggest for a minute that that isn't important. But what Chantal is talking about is also important, that at the brand level, the Liberal Party brand needs to look like it's something that people want to pay attention to. It's something that has something on offer. And that can't really be done

just by playing the version of political money ball that says, if you promote this relatively low profile person to a relatively low profile cabinet position, that that will somehow secure these vulnerable ridings, when the reality is, it's the liberal brand that is facing a real challenge from the conservative brand and the energy of Pierre Poliev versus the way in which Justin Trudeau has been coming across. Those are the challenges that need to be addressed. I think I wouldn't diminish the other, but I would say it's not the only thing for sure. Okay, we got to take a break. But we've got lots more to talk about on this midsummer special edition of Good Talk.

We'll be right back. And hello once again. You're listening to Good Talk on Sirius XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. And however you're listening or watching us, we're glad to have you with us. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson are with me. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Okay, you know, there used to be a theory in Canadian politics, and this goes back a while,

that when campaigns were two months long, the theory used to be, you're 10 points down going into the election, you can't make that space up. No, that was in the old days, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Things seem to turn on a dime in today's world of politics. Ten points, though, is a lot of points.

Is this recoverable, Bruce, you're the pollster, where there's no campaign in the next month or two months, it may be two years away. But 10 points is a lot of points. Oh, yeah. No, I don't think that anybody should assume that this election is over. I think it has been for some time. The best thing that happened to the Liberals in office is for them to seem as though they're going to lose the election

to a conservative leader that might use more questions and doubts and skepticism. It's hard to rally all of the potential NAP liberal switchers if it doesn't look as though a conservative government might result from the election. So some will say, well, you know, that's like making, if you're the liberals, that's like making lemonade because you got lemons, and there's a certain amount of truth to that. But at 10 points, it's unmistakable to progressive voters that there is a very real, if they're paying attention at all, that there's a very real risk

of a conservative government led by Pierre Polyev. And I think that it is definitely true that the lower the profile of Mr. Polyev as the central character in the Canadian political drama, the better it is for him. The more the focus is on Justin Trudeau, the better it is for Pierre Polyev. Now, I'm pretty sure that Justin Trudeau doesn't see it that for Pierre Polyev. Now, I'm pretty sure that Justin Trudeau doesn't see it that way. Maybe he does. But I have the sense that Pierre Polyev understands that for him, a lower profile sometimes is the best way to allow the support for the Conservative Party to grow as people kind of grow a little bit more detached from the Liberals. But I'm sure that both of those parties at the leadership level know that it's all to play for and that 10 points, the Liberals have been behind going into elections and won those elections before.

They know they can do it again. I think the question that they'll be asking themselves is whether they have the formula to prevail again and whether Pierre Pauliev will be an easier opponent to take advantage of in terms of rallying those NDP liberal switchers or a harder opponent to take advantage of because he is effectively a better communicator than his predecessors. Howard Bauchner Yes. Just a reminder about summer polls, that there was one summer, was it 88, when Ed Broadbent was briefly the leading candidate for prime minister, which actually never panned out in the ballot box in any election. So there is something to be said about waiting for September and October to see how the numbers pan out by then. But for sure, if Mr. Poiliev and his strategists did not understand that until the House, they

must understand it now. The fortunes of the Conservative Party have improved. Now that Mr. Poiliev is no longer in the news every day in his capacity as an attack dog in the House of Commons, and he does have a lower profile, he is doing rallies, but it's not the same as being on the news every night being seen to attack the prime minister. He does have a lower profile. He is doing rallies, but it's not the same as being on the news every night, being seen to attack the prime minister. He does have a lower profile since the House rose. And that seems to be helping the Conservative Party. So that is an interesting conclusion, which may suggest that a bit less of Pierre Poiliev leading the march in the House of Commons next fall

and a bit more of Pierre Poiliev in other settings that are less adversarial will probably or would probably help the party. And no, I'm not going to go into the glasses and no glasses thing, because I believe that's kind of a July thing more than a serious issue to talk about. But if you look at the numbers, it was a bit surreal. I've been off. So I was watching the coverage more like a normal person or as much like a normal person as I can this week. And I was listening to analysis about whether Justin Trudeau is getting ready to call an election, I was thinking, you've got polls that show your party seven to 10 points behind. The question is, how do I keep my

party and government long enough to recover from this? Not, how can I call an election in October or have my government fall as the result of an engineered defeat in the House of Commons. I think Trudeau and his party now have a vested interest in making parliament and making the government work for a while. And that, in theory, strengthens the NDP's hand in its agreement with the liberals. Because I don't think the NDP wants to go in an election, but I do think that bottom line, they have less to lose by having an election than the liberals, considering that the liberals tend to lose government, while the NDP would probably not even lose its, one, two, three,

fourth place in the House of Commons. Okay, let's talk about polya for a minute um first of all i remember that summer of 88 and the phrase used to be the broadband and the ndp were measuring the the curtains at 24 sussex drive right that they were so convinced they they were going to end up on in the prime minister's residence anyway pierre polyev week, it did exactly what you were suggesting that might be working for him, Chantel, is that he was out on the hustings and he was in Northern Ontario

and covering the four or five ridings in that area, going and giving, as he has been doing consistently over the last year, playing to rather packed houses. He's a good speaker in those kind of situations. I dropped in to watch him on one not that long ago, and it was pretty impressive. He certainly knows how to move a room. Now, having said that, he didn't have a flaw-free week.

He had his own issues to try and handle, although he kind of batted them away. He had to admit, after some work with Access to Information came out, he had to admit that his leadership campaign last year had paid for the legal fees of a conservative who was challenging the legality of the way Patrick Brown's campaign was operating. And in so doing, it basically forced Patrick Brown out of the race, who wasn't going to defeat Pierre Polyev, didn't look like it anyway, but was going to cause him problems. So at the time, the Polyev people had said they had nothing to do with anything in that. This week, he had to admit, in fact, they paid the legal fees. At the end of the day, does that matter?

Does anybody care about that? Is that a problem, or does it say something about the way Polyev operates or his people operate? Is it something that will come back to haunt him, or is it sort of a pass in the night situation? Bruce? I don't think it comes as any surprise to people who've been watching him that he can run a very ruthless political operation and that this, you know, is probably

the kind of thing that there was a time it would have shocked more people and that there are probably other political leaders who, if they did it, would shock more people. And that there are probably other political leaders who if they did it, would shock more people. But I think this is not that time. And this leader has already demonstrated that he is willing to put himself in situations that don't, don't fit the lens of the kind of the code of conduct that might have existed before and this is another one of those so i don't think it will uh damage him although obviously i'm not um trying to suggest that i think it was a laudable moment and i do think that the dynamic that was in play in that leadership where patrick brown and jean charre were at least looking at some sort of cooperation um deserved a chance to play out.

And it was denied that by this tactic. And so I think that was unfortunate for the Conservative Party. Where he goes from here, I think that the images that I see of him, and they're similar to what you referred to, Peter, He's in situations where he's with regular voters who have regular sounding aspirations. More and more of those images and fewer and fewer of the images of him with the angry, snarling, threatening violence, you know, talking about Canada being a dictatorship. He needs more of the former and less of the latter.

And I think his campaign has been going in that direction. It seems to me anyway, that it's been going in that direction. For my taste, he could do a lot more and should do a lot more to shout down, to call out, to say that he doesn't want the support of people and he doesn't want to see those events like the ones that we've seen recently where people show up at the prime minister's rallies and appear very threatening. He should do more of that, but at least he seems to be doing less of kind of hanging about those situations and allowing his own brand to be a part of that level of anger. Chantal? I'm like Bruce on the paying the legal fees.

I think this is really important to people who really dislike Pierre Poiliev and who would never vote for him. And just that's just one more reason not to vote for him. But I don't think it has a lot of traction with voters who are preoccupied with larger issues. But I was struck this week and I figured, let's hang on to this news conference of Mr. Poiliev saying he will always support whistleblowers. I can't wait to see him as prime minister support whistleblowers because they whistleblow usually on people in government more so than on opposition leaders.

So I can't wait to see the quality of that iron, solid support for whoever wants to be brave enough to be a whistleblower. On the tours that he has been having, I agree that they play well to his brand and they improve his brand. But on the micropolitics issue, I was talking about the NDP maybe having a stronger hand. There are members of the NDP probably who also have a stronger incentive to want this parliament to last. I'm struck by how much time Mr. Poitier is spending in the area of Timmins in Northern Ontario, which happens to be Charlie Angus, a prominent veteran NDP member's seat. And you can see the kind of play that the Conservatives are going to make for NDP voters in non-big city ridings, such as Northern Ontario ridings. So I thought that

was really interesting. And the fact that Kev Roliath keeps coming back to Timmins and to that area seems to me like a red flag to Charlie Angus. I dare you to run again. We're coming for your seat. I'm curious to see how Mr. Angus will react and what decision he will come to as to his political future and the next election. Peter, just on that, because you sort of touched on the polls, and I know that you have mixed feelings about polls. You always tell us that you don't like polls just before you talk about them.

Just before he asks about them. That's right. So let's just assume that that point is made. Well, having said that, I think that this is definitely a recoverable situation for the Liberals. There's no doubt whatsoever that if they're looking at the split inrisome parts of the polling data. From my standpoint, if I were thinking as a liberal, what's gone wrong and what do I need to fix? They can't afford to have those splits in Atlantic Canada and in BC. In fact, when you go through the abacus poll, I think, I don't think there's a place in the region in the country where the liberals are ahead. They're behind in every region.

I think marginally, I'm not sure about abacus, but I think marginally in Quebec, but it's meaningless in the sense that a liberal lead in Quebec, a small liberal lead, is not a winning lead because their battle outside of Montreal against the Bloc Québécois requires them to have a really solid lead outside of Montreal, where they are wasting votes in the way that the Conservatives waste votes in Calgary or Edmonton. Okay, I'll take our final break and we come back and we talk about something that Bruce mentioned a few moments ago that is quite a disturbing trend in elements of Canadian politics these days. Back in a moment.

And welcome back. This is the final segment of our summer good talk for this day, this last Friday in July, 2023. Sean Talley-Bear, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here with you. Okay. We saw this situation, Bruce kind of referred to it last week or 10 days ago in Belleville, Ontario, where the prime minister was swarmed by a pretty ugly group of protesters.

I think there was suggestions of 80 to 100 of them. And if you watch the video, no matter how you may feel about Trudeau, and I know feelings run high, but it was pretty ugly, and there have been, you know, the mayor of Belleville eventually had to come out two days later and apologize on behalf of his city for what had happened. But I guess what bothers me is, you know, Trudeau's not the first liberal or the first politician

to face this kind of thing in the last while. But it's reached a point here where it's more than ugly. It's threatening. And, you know, feelings, as I said, are running high, especially within that kind of a group. And you don't know exactly what's going to happen. Now, there have been theories thrown out here in the last 10 days about how this was staged. It was all planned and it was, you know, trying to make draw sympathy for the prime minister.

I don't believe that. I haven't seen any indication of that's real uh lots of indications that the opposite is real um but i you know as i said we've seen these kind of things before in the last especially in the last couple of years kind of post covid um and during covert what um what should we make of it? What is it saying about us, about politics, about kind of where we are, polarization, all that kind of stuff? Where are we? Chantal?

We are in the third term of a prime minister who has become a lightning rod. I think Brian Malroney and Stephen Harper at the same stage, eight years in, were not doing a lot of public events in the sense of going into a market or events of that nature. Maybe the level of violence was lower, verbal violence, and some of it was less disturbing. There are things that were said that were really disturbing during the course of that demonstration. But I do think it speaks to fatigue with the prime minister and to the fact that post-pandemic, yes, people have become more vocal and more aggressive in a physical sense.

And I don't think the security services around politicians want to talk about that. But I think that also applies to leaders of the opposition. They're all becoming lightning rods. Bruce? I have a little bit different view, I think. First thing I would say is that what we're seeing in these situations isn't just happening here. It's happening in a lot of places.

We see it a lot in the United States. The level of vitriol, the level of anger, the willingness to utter threats towards politicians is definitely on the increase in my view, and not just here in Canada, but here in Canada, it seems to be more of an echo of the phenomena that we're seeing in other political markets too. I think it's not like the past. I think I agree that there have been periods of intense anger towards other politicians in the past, but there is something that to me is qualitatively different with what we're seeing now. And the qualitative difference for me comes down to people who are angry with the leadership that's in place, believing that their anger is so justified that it needs to be completely disrupted, blown up, that anything that they choose to do, including violence, including insurrection in the United States, is legitimized

because the strength of their argument in their heads is so powerful. I think that we're looking at a situation where the media who cover politics historically would have been able to kind of help manage that process, reminding people that there are elections and the elections, you know, have these outcomes. We need to kind of recognize that we live in a democracy where these outcomes need to persist until there's another opportunity. But I feel that the media have lost the ability to have that influence and in some cases have chosen not to try to have that influence for fear of angering the people who are who are who are part of this kind of what I see as being a relatively new era of I'm entitled to my anger voters. And and I don't like to see any part of the media kind of playing to that or at least kind of ignoring some responsibility to push back on that. I do think that's part of this phenomena that we see now,

and it is different, I think, from what we'd seen in the past. So to pick up on Bruce's point about the media, I've covered a lot of election campaigns and not just sitting in a chair talking with you guys about how the campaign is going, but on the ground. And I've also worked for a period in my life as a TV reporter. So I remember how visible one is when one is lugging around a camera person in a situation like that. And I can safely report that the level of violence, verbal but also physical, that has attended rallies like that

is one that ends up making the media that is covering worried about personal safety. I don't think the media is refraining from reminding voters that these issues should be resolved in an election. But I do think that there is a wariness about being exposed to these events and wondering if you're going to get hit next. And my conclusion to that wouldn't be that the media needs to forever say this isn't the way to behave. I think most Canadians find that this is not an acceptable behavior. But for political leaders to dissociate themselves from any such protest that goes down this kind of avenue, this isn't the right to demonstrate. It's over and above, and it's unacceptable, regardless of who is being targeted by this. And I think the onus is on the right, to point at the media

as part of the people's problems, instead of saying these are people who are doing their jobs, are a kind of courting disaster. And that disaster will not just be that there will be a demonstration that is unseemly against the prime minister. They're playing a dangerous game, and they're playing it with the physical safety of people who report on politics. And that has been happening. I wonder how far, though, the media needs to pursue a story like that one that happened

last week. And I, you know, once again, I go back in time. History tells us a lot of things. But it was either the late 80s or early 90s during a period of much confrontation around, usually around the Constitution and plans for it. But remember, there was a flag burning in Cornwall, Ontario. That was Meach. That was Meach Lake.

Okay. Well, the important thing about here is what Mark Starovich at the Journal decided to do was to spend money and time and resources on going to the root of that moment. How did that happen? Who was behind it? And they spent a considerable amount of time and ended up doing a sort of a one-hour show on how that happened, how that unfolded. And you wonder whether that's what, you know, obviously protection of your colleagues is really important. So is trying to understand why something happened and who was behind it and how it unfolded.

But we don't seem to be doing that anymore, like the media in general. Perhaps we are, perhaps I just haven't noticed it. But is that also what you're talking about, Bruce? And I hate to do this to you, but I've only got a minute or so left. Just on Brockville, it was flag stomping in front of David Peterson to protest Quebec and distinct society. And for all those valiant efforts by the journal,

the impact of those images in Quebec was not diminished by that one hour English only documentary. Okay. Peter. Well, very short version of it is I do think that this is a different time. And I think that politicians who've experienced the hate on social platforms, Twitter in particular, any of us who occasionally put an opinion on Twitter, and we can now see, I think, in real time what's happened to that platform,

the degree to which the responses that it can generate are threatening, sound violent, are without the kind of social conditioning that used to be part of the dialogue. I used to be involved in campaigns, and I remember people coming out to rallies and not being happy, and there were chants, and there was occasionally boos. But that was different from what we're seeing now, in my opinion. So I take a little bit of a different view, I think, than Chantal on that. And I don't think that it's up to the media to resolve it. But I do think it's such an important social phenomena that they need to do everything that they can without putting reporters in harm's way,

because that's another phenomena that we've seen with increasing frequency. They need to do as much as they possibly can to say, we're going down a difficult road here, and we need to pull back from that direction because what's happening in the United States is a pretty clear signal of the direction that we could find ourselves in because of the way the Internet and communication works these days, in my opinion. Okay, we're going to have to leave it at that. of the way the internet and communication works these days, in my opinion. Okay.

We're going to have to leave it at that. A interesting, as always, discussion and certainly one of value for the middle of summer of 2023. Thanks to Chantel and Bruce for their thoughts today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. However you've been listening, we'll be again on august 25th for our final summer good talk before we start rolling again right after labor day thanks again talk to you in a month or so from thanks you guys good to see you again yeah Thank you.