The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Does It Matter If Trudeau Goes To The Coronation?

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

It was supposed to be a throwaway two-minute chat, but we ended up talking about PM Trudeau and the Coronation for 12 minutes.  Why? You might want to listen!  Chantal and filling in for Bruce, our friend Rob Russo.  Also some substantial talk about the biggest strike in Canadian history and why its taking so long to settle.  Plus the Liberals meet in convention next week where among other things, lowering the voting age is on the agenda.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, welcome to Friday, it's a Good Talk day. Bruce Anderson's away this week, Rob Russo is sitting in for Bruce. Rob, the former Bureau Chief of CBC in Ottawa, former Bureau Chief for Canadian Press in Ottawa, former bureau chief for Canadian Press in Ottawa, former Washington correspondent, former Quebec City correspondent. You know, he's got it all. He's the guy. He knows everything.

Sort of. And my future is behind me. Lots of formers there. Formerly well-informed. That's right. Okay, here's how we're going to start, because I'm still in the UK, leave tomorrow, so they're really getting close to the coronation. It's a week tomorrow,

and when I say they're really getting ready, it just doesn't feel like it. I mean, I've been to a lot of royal events over the last 50 years, so this one doesn't feel exciting in any fashion yet. Now, there's still a week to go. Maybe they'll start dancing. One thing, though, the Telegraph broke the news last night that Justin Trudeau will be at the coronation. Now, it's not like they banner-headlined it,

but they did make mention of it. And, of course, they had to make mention at the same time of, this is the guy who sang the Bohemian Rhapsody in the lobby of the hotel when he was here for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth last summer. And they're still talking, Canada, about the cost of the hotel rooms. Wherever he stays is going to cost a lot of money because that's just the fact of life in London these days. So that story will probably bounce back again.

Is there any reason for us to care one way or the other whether Trudeau is out of the coronation? Chantal? Well, I don't know if you care, but if you think that it's not like past royal events, I'm not going to say coronation. Were you there for the last coronation? I have to pause.

Okay, I figured. I was four or five at the time living in Malaya, but we heard all about it. It was like a big deal. Okay, past coronation events. If you were in this country, you would be saying what coronation, basically. Maybe in Ottawa, where my friend is, it's different. But obviously in Montreal, it's a matter of total indifference. I think in the end, I don't understand why it took

so long and why the Telegraph had to suddenly have a scoop that Justin Trudeau was going to show up, because all week, everyone who's on or around Parliament Hill or covering politics had already been whispered to that the Prime Minister was going to go, that there was a liberal national convention happening the same weekend, that he was going to be there for one speech, but he would not be delivering the closing address because he was going to be going to the coronation. So that's kind of weird. But bottom line, I think the thinking here is it's more par for the course for the prime minister to show up than not show up.

And I don't think the liberals want to have a debate on Canada's links to the monarchy and all of the issues that come with it. So by going, basically, the message is nothing to see here. It's business as usual on the front of this discussion. Do you want to add to that, Rob? I do. A couple of things I would say. It's a big deal only because every time the prime minister seems to leave the 613 area code area space, there's a chance of no end of scandal or some sort of problem besetting the Prime Minister. Every time he gets on an airplane now, there are people around him who are worried,

and they should be, because whenever he gets out of the country, he tends to get into trouble going back to India. So there's that. There's always a potential for a pratfall. The other thing that's real, and I think that we need to have a discussion as is a country, is our relationship to the monarchy. I think that the best way to put our reflections

about what's about to happen in London is that we are, at best, slack-jawed with indifference. And at worst, I think that we are having a serious reflection as to whether or not we want to continue this relationship, even if we cannot change it. Everybody knows that we have a constitution that makes it virtually impossible for us to change our relationship with the monarchy. But we have, and this government does have some decisions it's going to have to make, and it has already, it seems, begun to make them by default. For instance, there's no love for this new monarch. There's no love for King Charles.

Do we invite him to Canada? He would like to come to Canada, I'm told. He would like to have an invitation. That invitation is not exactly forthcoming in any kind of hurry. The other thing that is a tradition in Canada is we traditionally put the image of the monarch on our currency. LeMint was asked about this last week by a reporter from CTV and was told there are no plans to have the image of the monarch on our currency. And if that decision was made, it was going to

be made by the government, the liberal government, and they have not indicated that they're inclined in that direction. So we're getting a sense that we are agog with apathy. We're also reflecting about our relationship with them and slowly moving away, particularly from this monarch. What was that figure just last week or two weeks ago? 60% of Canadians say it's time to move away? Yeah. very small percentage who understand how much political energy would have to go into making the necessary changes to the constitution to arrive at that result and how much more political energy would have to go into replacing the monarchy in our legislative system, for instance,

royal assent, etc. Do we want to have a head of state or should our head of government, i.e. the prime minister, be the de facto head of state? If we want a head of state, do we want a figure that is symbolic, like the governor general that stands for the king or the queen? Or do we want an active president? And what then happens to the parliamentary system that we are in? All those questions are part and parcel of having a discussion about doing away with the monarchy. Now, to give you a sense from where you are of how we are divorced or how we don't want this discussion, the Bloc Québécois went through the budget omnibus bill. As you know, we just had a budget.

There's implementation through a bill. It's a massive piece of legislation. It's become a tradition for minority governments in this country to throw in stuff that has little to do with the budget. Well, everything has to do with the budget as long as a dollar is spent so that they can get rid of this. The official recognition of the new king is buried in the omnibus budget bill, to which Yves-François Blanchet, of course, raised his hand and said, well, I would like this to be voted separately. I would want this to be

a matter of debate. Of course, that's not going to happen. But that tells you two things. They don't want to have this debate. And they are as indifferent to this entire notion of the monarchy as those 60% of Canadians who say they are. So there's nobody really has it on their to-do list right? I mean I know certain parties and certain politicians have made their case personally but in terms of today 2023 it's not on anyone's to-do list. No look what we see in Canada, I think, is a recognition that the system has worked. This notion of having an authority who is not politically inclined in any way and who is distant and over a sea, in some ways, has worked and has kept politics. Indigenous people in particular are very, very attached to the notion of having the crown as an ultimate arbiter of some of our thornier constitutional questions. But boy, it's almost like, yeah, that crazy uncle's over there. We're going to leave

him up in the attic. And that's really the sense that you get with this monarch. If there wasn't reverence for Queen Elizabeth, there certainly was respect. And there seems to even be a lack of respect when you look at some of the polling numbers for the current king. And I don't know that it's exactly, that the feelings aren't entirely mutual. Look at where Charles went for his first trip. He tried to go to France, couldn't go there because of the strikes there and the protests there. He went to Germany instead. Right now, the UK's priorities are with trying to salvage some of its trade ties with its European partners, you would have thought that it might be to try and keep the Commonwealth together. And you would have thought that the oldest member of the Commonwealth and one of the most mature democracies, Canada, would be number one on their

list. But he's going to Europe because they have a compelling economic imperative there that they've got to try and rescue trade. It's interesting that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sees Charles as a salesman, but that's the power of the monarchy and still in some quarters in Europe. It also says something about the state of the current UK government that it needs to turn to. A relatively unknown king as a salesperson. Maybe Canada wasn't first for the reasons that you elicited earlier, i.e. no invitation was forthcoming. I just want to add on the logistical side of the prime minister going to the coronation.

I'm not sure that that plan wouldn't be reviewed if the civil service strike takes a turn for the worse over the next week. The notion of the prime minister going to something that most Canadians are indifferent to while 155,000 civil servants are on the street maybe doesn't go down well. And it may be that the government expected to have resolved that issue before it announced that Justin Trudeau would be going. Also interesting, it's late in the game and the government has not yet said who else is going with Justin Trudeau. And that's always interesting. One assumes rightly that the governor general will be on hand. But beyond that, did he invite the leaders of the opposition? Did he again invite other prime ministers?

Not all of them are in good health. I'm thinking Brian Mulroney here, who's been having a spell of ill health. So I'm not, I will be convinced that he's going when he gets on the plane is basically what I'm trying to say. Okay. Good point. And, you know, first of all, I'm stunned that we spent 12 minutes on the coronation. Hey.

I thought I was going to be, we'd blow this off in like two minutes and move on. However, you've pushed us towards the topic, really, that probably, I don't know, it's hard from a distance to tell, but I was wondering loud the other day whether, you know, here we have a massive strike, right? Biggest in Canadian history, 155,000 people out on strike, and things getting dicey.

It's been 10 days already. There doesn't seem to be the kind of big public discourse on this strike that we used to see in Canada in terms of labor situations in the country. Now, I know everything's changed. Times are different. Concerns are different. But this seems to be heading towards some very difficult potential days on this. Rob? Yeah, I'm actually with you on the first point. I know you keep saying I'm old, Peter, and I did not cover the general strike in 1919. However, I did cover some strikes 40 years ago.

And when you look at the history of labor relations in the last few decades, this is nothing like the common front strikes in Quebec that brought together several of the biggest unions, the woodworkers strike in B.C. in the 80s, even the common sense revolution strikes prompted by the Conservatives in Ontario. I do not sense that impact. There is certainly local impact in Canada. If you go to places like like Chediac, if you go to Shawinigan, if you go to Somerset, where those towns really depend on public service in my own community here in Ottawa, you see it. But is it having an impact yet on people?

No, it's not. So it seems pretty tame compared to those strikes. The postal union strikes, you can think of those. The rhetoric kind of ramped up a little bit. A Labour leader called the minister, Mona Forte, incompetent. Well, that to me is almost like they're just beginning to take their white gloves off one finger at a time. That's not exactly a bare knuckle brawl.

In terms of the impact as well, there are threats to ramp it up. I haven't seen it done yet. It is having an impact in areas like immigration outside of the country, like passports, people who are who are traveling. But actual economic impact, we don't see it yet outside of those areas where government has a high, high profile. I actually think they're pretty close. If you look at the language, they're supposed to be far apart on wages. They're not. They're really about 1% apart each year. And now Minister Fortier is talking about cash bonuses to try and make up some of that difference.

The real sticking point seems to be remote work, work from home. And that's an issue. Both wages and the remote work issue are sentinel issues in that they're going to have a cascading effect across the rest of the economy and the government has has that to worry about but i think the most intriguing thing for us because we're all interested in politics is the political calculus in all of this if you look at the way union voters uh cast ballots in the last election in 2021 28 28% voted for the Liberals.

No, about 33% voted for the Liberals, 28% for Conservatives, and about 24% for the NDP. So they're all scrambling for union votes. This government does not want to legislate these people back to work because it does not want to be seen as anti-labour. Pierre Poiliev is trying to win the workers' votes, not these guys necessarily. He's not interested in white-collar votes, but he is interested in the votes of the lunch bucket union voters, and he is trying to follow the map provided by Doug Borden in Ontario. Pierre Poiliev is spending a lot of time in

southwestern Ontario, northern Ontario, places like that, trying to win those votes. And it appears that he is having some success. That political calculus is the one to watch as this unfolds over the next few days. Chantal. The government does not want to legislate the public servants back to work. I'm going to the political calculus that we're currently talking about, in part because when that 28% of union members that vote for the liberals is broken down, you will find that a large part of it, a critical part of it, is white-collar unions. As to the calculus of the conservatives, i.e. I'm not calling for back-to-work legislation, etc., because I want some

blue-collar or lunch-bucket union votes. I don't think that works. I think there is a lot of, there's an adversarial relationship, it's not new, between the trade unions and the white-collar unions, such as the public servants union. And bottom line, I believe that auto workers in Southern Ontario, for instance, will give Justin Trudeau more credit for that Volkswagen plant than they will for him respecting the picket lines of public servants on Parliament Hill. And why I say that is based on an experience I had that was really interesting just in the lead up to the 2011 election. We had had this fiscal, this financial crisis. The Conservatives, Stephen Harper, bailed out the big car manufacturers

to ensure that they survived what was happening to them in the US and in Canada. And I went to the University of Windsor. Now, let's be clear, Windsor is an auto industry center, but universities are not Stephen Harper territory usually. And the NDP and the liberals have tended to do better in the Windsor area than the Conservatives ever did. But sitting at that round table and listening to what people were saying about the Harper government, basically their message was Stephen Harper had our backs during the fiscal crisis. And it was my first big hint that Southern Ontario was going to reward Stephen Harper, even in places where normally the Conservatives don't do as well, because of this perception that he had been tending to

business. Now, Premier Ford and Prime Minister Trudeau are doing exactly that together in Southern Ontario. And I think the calculus, which explains why, by the way, Pierre Poilievre and his conservatives have not been all over the liberals over $13 billion for Volkswagen, because they know that. And I think if I'm not saying that the calculations that the conservatives have, that they would like the ordinary trade union, what they call average Canadians, hardworking Canadians, go describe them as you want. They want that vote, but I don't believe that they will reap it necessarily as a collateral result of the public servant strike

and its eventual resolution. What should we make of the way the unions are strategizing their strike? What they're trying to do to gain attention, impact the government, slow things down? What do we make of their strategy so far? That they've stolen a page from the convoy and the indigenous blockades and that now they think that the most effective way to do what they're doing is to actually blockade infrastructures. That's kind of new in the public service environment that you would

be yesterday it was the border crossing at Lacolle, the port of Montreal. I'm just speaking about my area. With the deliberate aim of paralyzing infrastructures. They've also been learning from the convoy and calling for Prime Minister Trudeau to intervene to meet with them. Remember that debate during the convoy? I have found the tone of the strike to worsen more quickly than in other labor conflicts. The calling the minister incompetent just a few days in and calling for the prime minister to step in right away sounds to me like it's early. But then I went and looked and previous strikes by the public service were not allowed to last more than a week and weren't to date then.

Rob? Yeah, I'm not sure I agree. They are turning up at places where there is infrastructure, but they're not impeding. They might be slowing it down. They are borrowing from the convoy, certainly, in that this is how they're going to get attention. They are borrowing from the convoy, certainly, in that this is how they're going to get attention. I noticed they were also in front of the Langevin block yesterday flipping burgers. But when I see a bouncy castle, then I'll know for sure they're borrowing from those guys.

But I do not see the kind of crippling impact yet on the economy. I ask economists about it as well, and you listen to what they say. We don't yet see any impact on the economy that is significant outside of those centres where government activity is a huge part of the economy. Could that change? It could. But all of those other indicators that I was talking about, how close they really are on wages. And if you look at the language of both sides on remote work, the union leader, Mr. Aylward, is saying, yes, he wants remote work to be codified in collective bargaining. But at the same time, he realizes that it's a manager's right to manage.

It sounds to me like they're inching towards an agreement. And that's why, like, where's the mediator? There's no mediator. Nobody seems to be calling for a mediator yet. By now, we would have seen those kinds of calls of talks that really kind of stalled or broken down. The one thing, and this may explain why it is going on maybe longer than some people who were looking from the inside expected, is that the last thing Justin Trudeau wants is for people to say that he bought peace.

And so he needs, both sides need it to look like a win. And a win for Justin Trudeau is not just ending the strike. If it comes at the cost of this ripple down effect on all those negotiations that are coming. You've got premiers looking at the strike thinking, we're about to have those negotiations with our public servants, with nurses' unions, with teachers' unions. And, you know, someone last week who's not at all involved in the strike, who's not part of that union, said, I kind of am happy about this strike because whatever they get, we will ask.

And I thought that goes a long way to explain why that small difference, that one point difference is bigger psychologically than possibly financially. Okay, we're going to take a quick pause and then we're going to come back and pick up on a point that I think you both made a little earlier on. It's also on the Prime Minister's agenda next week because there's some interesting things on it, and I want to have a chat about that. But first, this break. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk, the Friday episode of The Bridge, right here on SiriusXM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Or, because it's Friday, we're on our YouTube channel, and you can watch the exciting visual elements of a Good Talk episode. Who's here? Rob Russo's here, filling in for Bruce Anderson, who was away this week, but will join us again next week. And Chantelle Hebert.

I just realized, you know, Chantelle, I never even introduced you at the beginning of the program, which apparently I don't really need to do because everybody associates you with good talk anyway. I mean, all the mail I get, they talk about, oh, and Friday, Chantelle, you know. And besides, as I'm often told, the voice gives me away. Yeah, it's funny how that works, eh?

Yes. Sit in a restaurant and you don't know anyone, and suddenly someone says, I know your voice. Okay. Okay. Next week is the biennial convention of the Liberal Party. That doesn't mean it's like once every 200 years. It means it's once every two years.

That's what biennial stands for. I had to look that up just to make sure because I was getting confused with centennial. It's an age thing, I guess. It is an age thing. Anyway, next week, so it's the party gets together and they talk about things and they put forward resolutions Anyway, next week, so it's the party gets together, and they talk about things, and they put forward resolutions,

and they debate them, and they pass them, or they defeat them. It's all parties do the same thing. And they are kind of, in a way, well, it's a little bit ridiculous because the leader of the party is not held to any of these resolutions. You know, even if they're passed, doesn't mean they're going to end up if you're in the government as part of government policy it's party policy and then it's up to the leader to decide what he or she wants to do with it if anything anyway when you look i see a Aaron Wary of CBC wrote a good piece today where he kind of looks forward to this, forward speaking towards this conference next week and some of the resolutions that are up for debate. There's 34 of them, and he points towards four.

And I'll just mention them briefly. There's one on electoral reform. Remember that in 2015? There's one on mandatory voting, which I find interesting. I look forward to hearing the discussion there and the debate there. And there's one on truth in political advertising. That's clearly something that a lot of people worry about these days, especially with the introduction of AI.

And then there's a lower voting age resolution. Now, once again, it doesn't mean anything other than there could be some interesting discussion. Or does it mean something? Well, it means that they fulfilled, and I'm basing this on Aaron's reporting, but I totally trust his judgment on this. He called these resolutions the more interesting ones. So the liberals have already fulfilled one mission, which is try not to embarrass your party, whether it's in opposition or in government, with cumbersome resolutions that, although the leader does not have to act on, end up giving a lot of poor coverage.

I'll give you an example. Suppose the conservatives have such a convention and they pass a resolution. Well, why am I saying this? Or they defeat a resolution that says that climate and climate change is a serious issue. Think of what happens to the leader who is stuck with the majority of his members denying that climate change is serious. Oh, is it hypothetical? No, that's exactly what happened to Aaron O'Toole in the lead up to the last election. And look how much trouble that gave him.

So these resolutions, not going to embarrass Justin Trudeau. And before I get to these very interesting questions, let me make a prediction as to what journalists will actually be covering at that convention. It's called taking the temperature on the leadership of the prime minister. Are there people who are organizing? Do they have hospitality suites? Are we hearing in the hallways that maybe Justin Trudeau has had a great run? Maybe it's time for fresh blood.

That is what will be happening at the Liberal Convention. And not these great debates of the four that you named. I don't think Justin Trudeau is about to call a citizens assembly on electoral reform. It always brings it back to his broken promise. Why would he do that? Truth in political advertising, spare me because I want to know who will be the judge of that. And I don't believe that anyone is really qualified to determine where truth is in political advertising. So I fear the cure is worse than the illness. The other two, mandatory voting and lower voting age, interesting debate. I would be amazed if the liberals go in the next election

promising one or the other. Boy, she's hard to make happy, yeah? Yeah, but the liberal organizers are happy. Think of all these great resolutions. To a certain extent. I think this is a really important convention for the Liberal Party, no matter who the leader is. I was talking about 10 days ago to somebody who is in the prime minister's entourage. And I asked them about the biggest challenge between now and the next election.

And this person said it is to try to convey a sense of the future while they are bogged down governing. They're now eight years in and they are governing and they're dealing every day with some sort of crisis. So they have to try and convey a sense of future. And elections are often often about who can convey that sense of future, a little bit of optimism, as Trudeau did in 2015. And they're, quite frankly, having trouble with that. They did manage that in 2013 before the election that brought them their first and only majority government. And in one way that they did that was marijuana, you know, getting rid of legal sanctions against marijuana. that might not sound like a lot, but it did trigger something in younger voters and maybe voters of a certain vintage who might have come of age in the 60s and 70s to come out to vote. So you want people who don't normally come out to vote to vote for you.

And that was one of those issues that did that. Now, is there something on the roster in terms of those resolutions that can convey some of this, that can convey a sense of future? And the one that intrigues me and the one that has had some field testing is lowering the voting age to 16. I think it's very unlikely that's going to happen in Canada, particularly at the federal stage or at the federal level. But it has happened in Scotland. It has happened in Wales. It has happened in some German provinces as well, with the resulting effect of increasing voter turnout among younger voters. And again, these are not large samples, but more of them did turn out to vote. Is that necessarily a bad thing for all parties? No, but I would say it would disproportionately favor parties like the NDP and the Liberal Party. So is that something that they might want to consider? Yeah, I think that they would. And how often do people

of our vintage say, you know, the country belongs to the youth and we've kind of screwed it up in some ways? And do they not have a right to have a say in what's going on? Yeah, I think there's something to that. I wouldn't be surprised if they at least studied that in a serious way coming out of the convention. What about mandatory voting? Actually, if the government wanted to do it, it would be really easy because the Bloc Québécois and the NDP are already on site, except that the liberals just voted against the motion that suggested lowering the age to 16. This resolution puts the line at 17. I'm not sure there is a huge difference between 16 and 17, frankly.

But still, interestingly, a number of liberals, 20, it was a free vote, did vote for that motion. So there is interest within the party and within caucus for lowering the voting age. You would have to expect the conservatives to fight that tooth and nail. And the reason for that is, despite all those op-ed stories about how Pierre Poilievre is more attractive to young voters than Erin O'Toole, you are still looking at a significant gap between the younger cohorts, attraction to the Conservatives and parties like the NDP or the Green Party,

or even the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois. And in theory, you're also, if you are the party leader, having not been embarrassed, you usually thank your members by saying you will take some of the recommendations under consideration. I agree with Rob. If I had to pick one that would be easy to say we're going to look into that, I would pick the lowering of the voting age. It will have much less vocal enemies than mandatory voting. And I'm sorry my friend Andrew Coyne isn't here to plead for mandatory voting. But the fact is that there are many things you can say about mandatory voting.

Pro, turnout would improve. But Con, do you really want to pay a fine because you don't go to vote? Who's going to police it? It's kind of playing to Pierre Poiliev's gatekeeping message, that they're going to be gatekeeping you on the way to the ballot box. And the next question is, if you're not interested at all in politics, do you really deserve to be using your voice to do just about anything with your vote? Isn't there some duty on the part of the voter to at least have some basic interest in what's going on before going out to make a choice that is minimally informed? Mandatory voting is the

opposite of that. All right.. Mandatory voting is the opposite of that. All right. I'm already bored at the resolution. So let me get back to the good stuff that you talked about. See, I told you. Let me get back to the good stuff you talked about at the beginning. Keeping an eye on the hotel lobbies, the hallways, who's having, you know, sweets to serve drinks to potential party delegates. Do you really think anybody's got the courage to do that right now, to take one of these early kind of outward signs that they're thinking about running for leadership? It's happening already, Peter. It's not happening in an overt way,

but certainly there are lots of people buzzing around Mélanie Jolien, let's say, and talking up the growth that she's had as foreign affairs minister and how well she did in the last election in the province of Quebec. Lots of people are talking up François-Colombien Champagne as well

and looking at the run that he's had in terms of bringing investment here and encouraging his efforts, let's say, to increase his profile, particularly as it brings jobs to Canada. That buzz is already out there. But as you said, in an overt way and having, you know, sweets for drinks and, you know, bringing people in, that's pretty overt. It doesn't even have to happen that way. Okay. What happens is people begin to group around certain candidates. People begin to talk to them. People begin to form loose associations.

People begin to have Zoom meetings where they say that this particular candidate is cause for their concern. And these people are people who are organizers, effectively, who can raise money, who can sell memberships, who can do all those sorts of things. Well, in the Liberal Party, they don't sell memberships anymore, but people who can assemble muscle and sinew and put it on the bones of a campaign. We might be just seeing the bones right now, but the muscle and sinew will follow. And those kinds of discussions are already having nobody no there's no regicide out there that's not going to happen um but i don't know that there's anybody who is is taking the prime minister at his word that he's absolutely going to run again um and you'd be a fool if you were

a leadership candidate if you did because you've got to be ready if he changes his mind and he has two years to change his mind. So those things are already happening. It doesn't have to happen in the hospitality suite. Just watch the candidates. Just and I call them candidates already. Just watch Anita and then just watch Christy Freeland. Just just watch the way they operate at this convention. There's a great word for it in French, un bandit fou. They go into the crowds willingly. There are lots of MPs and cabinet ministers who don't necessarily like to do this. Stephen Harper was a guy who hated campaigning.

For six weeks every few years, he would try to show those lifelike tendencies where he pretended to connect with people. But they'll do it during this convention. It'll be interesting to see if Mark Carney's walking down any of those hallways next weekend. Yeah, I tend to think, one, that Mark Carney should have run in the last election if he wanted to be a serious candidate. And two, that if the leadership opens up in some circumstances, it will be for the job of leader of the opposition, and he's not terribly interested in serving as leader of the official opposition. But if you look at the calendar, it tells you a

lot about why everything that Rob said is true. And like him, we're not in the Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien era. I don't expect people to be going in the hallways whispering in our ears that the prime minister has done his time and we should get rid of him. That's what happened with the Paul Martin coup. Why? Because none of the people that Rob named is actually considered by many liberals is likely to do immensely better than Justin Trudeau in the next election. But this is, as you pointed out, a convention that happens every two years. Chances are it won't happen every two years in this case because two years would put it in the spring of 2025. At that point, we will either be on the verge

of an election or an election will already have happened. And it will be or not, depending on the outcome, something that will morph into a leadership convention. If Justin Trudeau loses, he will probably not be staying on beyond the last election. Why do I say probably? Because what if the government is conservative, but with a one or two seat advantage on the liberals? And how long will it last, etc? We'll go into that some other day. But if you're one of those who believes that maybe Justin Trudeau will wake up one day and say, I've had it. Finally, I'm reconsidering. I don't really want to run, lead the party in the next election.

We're really talking months here. Within reason, he would have to tell the party before the end of this year. And then there would be a quick leadership convention because an election would be coming. So me, I see what is happening. Mélanie Joly is a case in point. She's not the only one. You are better to be ready than unready. But that doesn't mean that you will be pushing the let's go button anytime soon. But if you do need to, you will have at least laid the groundwork to launch. I noticed that at first Rob did not mention Christia Freeland.

I'm picking up a lot less organizing on her part than on the part of Mélanie Joly, for instance. And Anita Anand. I've heard some stuff on that front too um yeah but then there are people who will also tell you these things without the person knowing right we've seen that before i i really want this and that but that doesn't mean that it comes from the topic it's's ground up. There are liberals who are looking for someone who would be a compelling replacement to Justin Trudeau tomorrow. I'm not going to hide that.

But they are mostly a crew unto themselves. They are the same people who had a conference call prior to the last election discussing how they could replace Justin Trudeau with Mark Carney. Talk is cheap. And if you're a liberal whose phone calls are not being answered and you're a veteran member of the party and you feel slighted by Justin Trudeau and his theme, you're going to be going out of your way to say how great someone else would be

because that's what you do when you feel you're not in the loop enough to make yourself feel still important. Okay. I'll tell you, the other thing that's what you do when you feel you're not in the loop enough to make yourself feel still important. Okay. I'll tell you, the other thing that's interesting here is when you – You've got to make it quick because we've got one more topic. Make it quick. Yeah, when you talk to party people who recognize Mr. Trudeau's weaknesses, they still want him to run because they figure that even if he loses,

he wins 100 seats and leaves them with a lot of money in the bank and the party can fight another day. A new leader might see them go back to like the 70 seat level or something like that. So even if Justin Trudeau loses, he leaves the party in better shape. All right. We're going to leave it at that. We're going to take our last break, come back with our last topic right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal.

Rob Russo, filling in for Bruce Anderson, is in Ottawa. Okay, a couple of summers ago, the Canadian government took a lot of heat for its performance in getting people out of Afghanistan. And those discussions still carry on to this day about what went wrong in that. So this week, we're watching them trying to get people out of Sudan.

There have been a number of flights out already. But was it too late? Well, it wasn't too late. They got them out, but did it take too long to get that organized? Should they have seen this situation coming much sooner? Did they botch the initial exit from Sudan? Thoughts on that? And we've only got a few minutes, but Rob first.

Yeah. I don't think this is akin to Afghanistan, more akin to Lebanon about 10 years ago. And I think it's probably unfair to criticize the government for what's happened here. Nobody saw this coming. Let's look at our allies, the Americans, okay? They have the biggest air fleet in the world, have not been able to get their civilians out.

And as far as I know, there is no plan so far that's been made public to get them out. So so the fact that we got two out and there are more coming out, not so bad. I think that the question that we have to ask ourselves as a country and this question will become, I think, a louder one as more and more Canadians are foreign born. Are we prepared to do this every single time a country gets in trouble? And what is our responsibility to do this, in particular with those who hold citizenship and passports, but don't really have the intention of residing in Canada. They go back to their countries of birth and stay there and in effect use that passport as a get out of jail card. And if so, if our responsibility is still, as the prime minister has said, a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

Do we charge them some money to get them out of there? That's happening in some of these cases now, and there are some loud complaints about that. But I think these are questions that are going to be asked more frequently as these things happen often and as more and more Canadians are foreign born. You're right about the comparison with Lebanon, because that's exactly what happened with that situation, right? In many, in many of the cases, they were Canadians in name only, they were residing in Lebanon, had been and had never resided in Canada, or when they did, it was for only a brief time. Chantal? Why is it different from Afghanistan? Because in Afghanistan, the people left behind were not Canadians who happened to have gone to a wedding or a funeral or some family event. They were people who had been our allies, who had worked with us throughout the years that we were there and that we left in great danger. They were not necessarily or most for the most, Canadian citizens, but we left them. And there were a lot more of them than there are people that we need to bring out of Sudan.

I agree with Rob. It's not that there was an unrest in Sudan, but there has been unrest there for years. So to say you should have seen it coming because this is an unstable country is kind of a shortcut to reality that makes no sense. As for the argument about who you bring back, if you bring people back, seriously, I can't see how we walk away from a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. Are we in a war situation going to be asking people, how many months were you in Canada last year? Or, hey, you weren't born in Canada, so you're not a real Canadian citizen. We're going to bring back your friend called Hébert because that person was born and bred in Canada. I can't see how you do that. You just do what we've basically been doing.

You cannot start doing a residency test on the grounds of a civil war or some natural disaster. Do you do you then charge them some of the costs required to get them out of this situation, particularly if they've been living in the country for 25 years? I would bet that if some government wants to do that, it will go all the way to the Supreme Court and that government will end up being found in error because you cannot start defining degrees of citizenship, even if you would like to. You can do it for health care. You've been away six months. That applies to everyone. But beyond that, I cannot see that any court would say there are second tier Canadian citizens with different rights and different costs and issues like that. I think it's being done already. One family from Ottawa was airlifted to Cyprus and has been told that they're going to get a $10,000 bill to come home.

Yes, but that's not because they weren't born in Canada. It's because at this point the policy is we drop you somewhere safe and you make your way back. Yeah. That's a different proposition. Yeah, But if they apply it across the board and say, look, we'll save you, but you need to help us in terms of the cost of this. Yes. And they apply it across the board. Yes. But anything across the board is fine. But to distinguish between where people were born, to decide who gets what, sounds to me like something that cannot and should not stand up in court.

That particular example you quoted, the Cyprus evacuation, they came out on a British plane, right? Right. Where it dropped in Cyprus, and then the question became, how do they get to Canada from Cyprus? You know, perhaps that was the lesson from Lebanon. And Chantal would be right in this case, is that, you know, there was much talk about who should pay for all this stuff. And, you know, this issue about, you know, when you're a Canadian,

when you're not a Canadian, nothing changed. Because I guess governments looked at it and said, we can't touch this. Right. It's going to be, it'll end up in court and we're going to lose. No. So let me be clear. I'm not saying that the bill should be applied depending on residency. But if I'm dropped and I have to get back home after I've been airlifted,

I'm going to be thankful that I'm going to be airlifted. And I'm going to want to get home. And if I have Air Canada tickets from Khartoum, I'm going to go back to Air Canada later and say, you got to give me a refund for these tickets. But I'm not sure it's unreasonable to get our government, to give our government a bit of a helping hand for plucking us out of a life and death situation. Okay. Going to have to leave it at that.

Fascinating conversations as always. Thanks, Rob, have to leave it at that. Fascinating conversations, as always. Thanks, Rob, for sitting in for Bruce this week. And I know Rob will be back at different times in the year, I'm sure. And Chantel, have a great weekend, as always. I should let you know that on Monday we get special guests. We like Mondays with special guests. And Monday this week is Rick Mercer. You haven't seen much of Rick in the last couple of years,

ever since he quit the Mercer Report and 22 minutes before that. He's been off writing a book, but I've convinced him to come on the program and I said, give us the rants that you would have given if you were still doing the rants. And so, you know, I'm sure he's going to have something to say on a few topics. Also, we kick off on Monday our week-long coverage of the coronation. Only kidding.

But I have a great story, a great Charles story to tell you that I learned here in Scotland. Anyway, thanks for this, you two, and thank you for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk to you again on Monday.