The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Does The "Belly Rub" Approach to Trump Work?

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Keir Starmer with help from the royals sucked up to Donald Trump this week in a big way. Does that work? Is there something for Canada to learn? Plus, you never want to lose a senior cabinet minister, unless.  Unless you think you are better off without that person. What is the case with Chrystia Freeland? And, Jimmy Kimmel. There's a lot in today's Good Talk with Chantal Hebert, and sitting in for Bruce Anderson this week, former Harper Communications Director, Andrew MacDougall, in London. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's your Friday Good Talk with Chantelle-Bear. And joining us today, Andrew McDougal, from London, England, Andrew, a familiar voice on the bridge and on other programming in Canada. Andrew's the former communications director in the Stephen Harper government.

He now is a partner in the consulting firm strategy or Trafalgar strategy in London, England. And it's good to have you with us, Andrew. We've got a lot to talk about today. And let's start with something you got to witness close up this week. Because what I'm trying to get at is the difference in the way Kier Starrmer is dealing with Donald Trump. and Mark Carney is dealing with Donald Trump.

I mean, what we witnessed this week by Starrmer and the Royals was quite something in terms of welcoming Donald Trump for his second state visit to Britain. What do you make of the differences between the two and the impact that those differences are having? Yeah, I mean, Operation Belly Rub was in full effect for Donald Trump when you rocked into London this week. You're right. And I think, you know, Mark Carney must look at the cards that Kier Starrmer has to play. And he's probably maybe the only leader that's envious of Kier Starrmer's position right now. But Starrmer has cards to play that Canada and Carney just don't have. And the most important one, Peter, is the president's inherent love of the United Kingdom. And I think that's a love born from the fact that his mother's a Scott, that he loves the pageantry of a royal family,

that he loves the kind of pomp and ceremony that a country. like Britain can give. And then there's also the other advantage he has is that our, the two economies, the UK and the US aren't as tightly intertwined as Canada's are. So you don't have this tremendous trade deficit in goods that Canada has with the United States that we know is really something that sets the president off. So Starmer has a good hand and he's played it well in bringing all the force and the soft power that the United Kingdom has. Canada just doesn't have those advantages. Played it well, this belly rub, as you call it, or sucking up, as others called it? What, you know, has it actually meant anything to him? Has it done him any good?

Yeah, Starmor, so if you look at the first initial whacking of the nations with tariffs, Britain certainly escaped with a lower tariff than the European Union, say, in other countries. And while there was still tougher ones on steel and other segments of the economy, by and large, the British economy was spared the worst. So Starmor went in early with the appease Trump strategy and got a trade deal that was somewhat, well, not as punitive as others. And that's a win in this environment. And certainly this round, there was a series of investments in AI and other technology sectors. You know, you had people like Jensen Hwang from NVIDIA coming over as part of the delegation. There was some substance to it.

But, you know, you talk to people in the tech industry here, and it is very much America's seconds that are coming over to the UK. But if America is going to be doling out some capital that isn't going to the states, it might as well come to your country. And so Kirstarmer, after the beating he's taken domestically for, God, a year now, was a good news week for him in a calendar that's been desperately sure. short of them. What do you make of this, Chantel? Well, to go to the belly rub issue, we can't offer that. I don't think Mary Simon is in the business of offering belly rubs to the Governor General.

That's one. Your question about, has it helped Keith Sturmer? I defer to someone who is on site for that. But would it help Mark Carney to go for this belly rub approach in Canada? I don't think. So on the contrary, every time that Mark Carney has tried to nuance his response to the Trump administration, think about the taking away the counter tariffs, the digital tax, it has actually hurt him with the very people who voted for him. So the notion that hosting an event like that, even if you found someone to belly rub with Donald Trump in Canada, that would be of interest to Donald Trump, would enhance rather than increase skepticism towards what Mark Carney is ready to do to get a better deal out

of the U.S. would backfire in public opinion. And the conservatives, rightly so, would probably pounce on the notion that the elbows up, a liberal leader, has become the belly-rubbing prime minister. It's a much more difficult balance to achieve. for Mark Carney and the current environment. He also has to deal with a minority government that will need support from the left side of the spectrum and from Quebec MPs of the Bloch-Kerbekebecue persuasion to survive. If you look at polls, not only do they show

that Canadians are still very much on the elbows up mentality, sorry, U.S. ambassador to Canada, but this is not going away. but you will find that resistance to the notion of Donald Trump being a friend in any way, shape, or form is particularly high in Quebec amongst NDP or left of center supporters and women. Those three groups are responsible for Mark Carney being prime minister today. I just saw a poll that asked, do you think Donald Trump is doing a good job? And with the exception of the conservative-affiliated respondents who are split, the majority saying no, but still a good 40% saying yes, it runs over 90% amongst every single political family, liberal, new Democrat, Bloch, Quebec. So when you look at all that, you think that approach wouldn't work here, on the contrary.

how do you think or why do you think that there seems and you kind of hinted out there that the prime minister carney is out of sync with Canadians right now on this issue on the on on the United States and I'm not sure it's specifically trade I think it's they got so angry Canadians at Trump for some of the things he'd been saying you know six months ago and they haven't let it go as you really you know travel still weighed way down. Exports to the United States are down. Imports from other parts of the world are up and trade with other parts of the world is up. How did he get out of sync? I mean, he's dialed it back. Clearly in the campaign he was doing one thing. Now he seems to be doing another.

I'm not sure he's out of sync. I think at this point, it's people are watching to see where it leads. I don't find that there is a huge disconnect between the voter base that elected Mark Carney and the current government as much as a wait-and-see attitude. And as you can tell from the polls, there is no buyer's remorse, as in, why didn't we pick Pierre Puehliv? Everything would have been so rosy. I think where the prime minister is in sync with Canadians is in this notion that we are trying to take our distance economically from the United States.

The landing of those projects, whatever you may think of the list that we saw last week and the upcoming list was very positive for the government. It was a good day. The criticism that some of those projects were well advanced or that others will see did not really land with a thud, with normal people who go on every day with their lives and aren't looking for every single little move. So I think on that score, he is in sync with Canadians.

I think many voters figure that he's got to do what he's doing because we are very much alone in very many ways. But that doesn't change or deter from the fact that everything that they see every day that is happening in the U.S. is not going to make them want to travel to the U.S. Do you really want to visit Washington so you can review the military or take a chance that you are going to be mistaken for some illegal alien and end up having to spend days maybe trying to sort it out so that you can get home?

There is nothing that you see that invites you to say, oh, well, you know, our relationship is so strong. And the best line I took from the U.S. ambassador to Canada yesterday, who said he didn't like elbows up, was a line where he's basically saying it looks like Canadians do not cherish their relationship with the U.S. in the same way that we Americans cherish our relationship with Canada. You read that and you think in what possible universe, except in the universe of battered women, would you read the line like?

that and think he's really onto something here. He's totally conscious of the reality. I think the kids call that gas-ledding, Sean Talid. And it is. And I think just to pick up on the conversation, I think what Carney did during the campaign is what he knew he had to do. You know, he had to talk that game because the ballot question had become which of these two men least reminds you of Donald Trump. And he knew, he's a smart man, he knew full well that carrying that through into government, whilst it might be popular with where Canadians are feeling, could at some points be antithetical to the needs of the country economically?

And he's trying to square that circle. And so these kind of steps forward and steps back are part of a dance. The risk I see for Carney is that he risks becoming just another politician pretty quickly. And when the meta mood in kind of the advanced Western democracies is lack of trust in government and the ability to get of governments to get things done, Having someone who is kind of sold as the economic messiah coming in and having to engage in these kind of things that anybody who's been in politics knows you have to make these trade-offs might risk tarnishing his brand, although you see no evidence of that in the poll. And I think he's got a lot of leeway in that he doesn't, unlike Kirstarmer, he doesn't have arrest of caucus. He doesn't have somebody to the left snapping at him.

Chantal makes their point that in provinces like Quebec, you know, there will be potential challenges down the road there. But the NDP is nowhere. His caucus, you know, for all intents and purposes, lemmings, he's ejecting previous regime figures out to kind of posts around the world. We see David Lamede going down to the UN, et cetera, et cetera. So I think he's still putting his stamp on the government and what it will do and getting more like-minded people, hopefully, in position to kind of do what he wants to do. But I think Chantal's right.

People are waiting to see what the ultimate decision from him will be as to how do we solve this problem with the states? And Mark Carney doesn't know that answer yet. Okay, I want to get to some of this issue in terms of the departures from the liberal cabinet one this week and some departures from the caucus expected in the next few days. I want to get to that in a minute, but I just want to tie the nod on the Starmer stuff

because, as you say, Andrew, Starmer's in trouble. I mean, he was only elected, what, year ago, year and a half ago, with a massive majority government, although not in terms of the popular vote. It was pretty low, actually. 34%. But nevertheless, he had this majority government. And now, a year and a half in, there's talk of him being dumped. Or somehow the party going after him, like they've gone after so many leaders in the conservative party over the last decade.

How did he get in such trouble so quickly? And how serious is it? Yeah, I think, Peter, the short answer is Keir Starmer doesn't know why Keir Starmer's in politics. And I think Keir Starmer was elected by virtue of not being the psychodrama that was the conservative party. And as you said, they were kind of coming and going with prime ministers every few months for a while there

between Johnson Trust and Sunak. And I think he portrayed himself as very much the boring lawyer and the adult in the room who would end that. But you have to have something to do when you get into government. And when you're elected with as many MPs as he has, albeit on 34% of the votes, and then you turn up and you don't really have a plan for government. You know, he binned off his first chief of staff and she was a senior Mandarin and was supposed to bring a professionalization to the operation.

But Sue Gray lost the battle with a man named Morgan McSweeney, who, to translate this for Canadian people, would have been like a Jerry Butts type figure for Trudeau, you know, the kind of political whisperer and the strategist who, who very much made the Labor Party safe for Kier-Starmer in that it purged the more Corbinite Jeremy Corbin-like elements the far left and made the party tacked back to the center. So you already there have a dynamic within the party that is a suppression of quite a bit of its latent support

and saying, okay, we'll see how this guy gets on. And what they've seen, Peter, to start answering your question, is a pledge to whack seniors with higher home heating costs over last winter. You've seen pledges to really crack down on some of the benefits people are receiving. And Starmers had to reverse himself on all of those things now. So he's pleased nobody. So he's come in trying to reassure markets, trying to be more of a center kind of Blair-type figure in politics without any of the charisma whilst not being able to manage his party. And now you're seeing those chunks of the party take shots of him, at him. And this

figure, this Morgan McSweeney figure will feature, that's the person that the people in the Labor Party who are unhappy want to see go because they view him as very much a center right, not labor, purged all the Corbinites. Now it's our chance to get him. And he's just lost Angela Rainer, his deputy prime minister, who was the kind of bridge between those two cohorts in the party. She had to go because she didn't pay the right amount of tax on a home purchase. And she was the housing minister, it's not really a good look. And when you're trying to make people pay more for less government service, having a government minister skip out on 40 grand's worth of tax, not tenable. So basically all the drama and scandal from the Conservative Party over 12 years

is manifested itself in a labor government that's only 15 months old. And it's incredible to see. But I think it's just what politics is these days. You know, you come into office in an advanced Western economy, you're looking at an in-tray of disastrous issue after disastrous issue with no simple solution. And you're working in an information in a media environment that does not engender any sort of thoughtful or helpful debate. It just becomes a shrieking match of who can motivate people to get angry the most about things that you don't have answers for. And so if you're Nigel Farage or Pierre Pahlia, be careful what you wish for because it might be your mess soon. And if you can't solve it, you're going to be in the bin pretty soon after as well.

What's the lesson in all this, Chantel, for Canadians? I mean, it's ironic, really, because here, you know, voters have been saying in a number of places in the world, we need a non-politician as a politician. So they've got one in Britain. It hasn't worked out. We've got one in Canada. It's still working out.

But there's, you know, it's a minority government. Anything could happen. I mean, the second a non-politician enters politics, he becomes a politician in the mind of the public. I'm reminded that my friend Jean-A-Pierre was the Quebec lieutenant to Paul Martin for a while, and he introduced a candidate in the Eastern Townships, who was a university president, very well-respected. He said, I entered with a well-respected person and entered with a crook to be. that over the course of a one-hour news conference where this person announced that he was running for Paul Martin

and that stuck with me. But to go back to the point about governments are elected these days and they face a tray of unresorvable issues, that was true before Donald Trump, but Donald Trump has added a next job, very thick, layer to that. You know, every September, and you probably do this, So after the summer, you kind of write out for yourself a kind of lay-of-the-land thing, which I did a week ago, I came to the conclusion that this is a really, really, really bad time,

possibly the worst time in decades to be in government, much worse than when Paul Martin and Jean-Critzain were tackling the deficit. Because at that point, our trade relationship despite what would happen later down the road with 9-11, was fairly stable. We were dealing with a relatively stable world environment, so our solutions could come from inside based on fundamentals that we knew about. We're not there now. I mean, you make the point that you don't know,

if that Mark Carney doesn't know how the U.S. Canada's relationship will resolve itself. Well, last night on that issue, the three of us agreed that we didn't. have a clue what the budget would do for the Canadian economy or where the Canadian economy would land in six months. We have never lived in times where it has been as difficult from month to month to month. If you write the budget in June, if we have, it would probably be over, have been overtaken by events by the time we come to the house coming back this

week. And maybe having the budget on November 4th will make it slightly different than it would have been on October 8, and you're trying to govern through this. Yes, Mr. Polyev should be very careful, but the test on him is that people are asking him increasingly. So what would you do that is so much better and so much easier? And what results could you show for that? And that answer is still forthcoming. You know, it is the peril of being opposite. leader, you get asked that question a fair amount of the time. And you've really got to tread carefully, no matter what conditions are like, you got to tread carefully among how you answer that question. So before we take our break, Andrew, here's your opportunity as a former communications

director for the Conservative Party and for Prime Minister Harper. What would your advice to be on how to answer that question now in terms of what would you do? Yeah, and I think it'd probably be an unsatisfying one. I think the best thing Pierre Pollyev can do for himself, the party in the country, is to be the most effective opposition leader he can be. And I don't mean by being histrionic in the House or bogging down committees. I mean, we are facing serious issues. If you want to show people that you're serious, dig into the meat of it. And you've seen, look, the immigration ministers had a horrible week trying to understand and unpick the mess that has become the system. That is your service to Canada. The government are the solutions, people. We are the people

that can point out where what you're doing is not working and here's why. And here's the problem you ought to be solving instead of solving this thing you're trying to solve. And if you look at what they've just kind of unwrapped with Fraser and, you know, looking potentially into the notwithstanding clause, you're going to have these opportunities to make a very constructive contribution to political debate. And you can hand the solutions to the other guy. And if they take your solutions and they work great, you say that was our job. We did that. On we go. But that's the single best thing he can do is he is not the government. There will not be an election anytime soon. When the election is coming, I will tell you what my solutions are going to be. Right now, my job and my

responsibility to Canada and to Canadians is to hold this government, this government with a rookie prime minister and a lot of cabinet ministers who have never really shown an ability to get something done to hold their feet to the fire. That's what I can do as a Democrat. And that's what I will do as a Canadian. I'd say something like that. And hopefully that's what the conservatives do, because our system of government does not work unless you have an effective opposition. And as much as the past 10, 15 years have been horrible, it's because the opposition has not done its job, along with the government not doing its job. And we all work better when we have someone watching us, judging us, criticizing us, holding our feet to the fire. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. You know,

if you're a journalist, if you have a top editor that can challenge you, that's the point of the editor is to say, have we thought this through? We need a bit more here. This isn't going to really solve the issue. You haven't really quite cracked this. And that's the service Pierre Polyev in the Conservative Caucus and, you know, the Black Quebecois and the handful of NDP people that are in the House and, you know, even a green. That's what you should be doing if you're in the House of Commons right now. Shantel. Remember that the reason that the reform Canadian Alliance Conservative Party eventually came to government under Stephen Harper, It was in no small part because the Reform Party defended balancing the books when it was unpopular on the liberal side of the House.

They defended the notion of what became the Clarity Act on Quebec's secession when it was unpopular on the liberal side of the House. Those two things became major liberal accomplishments when Jean-Fittsaint and Paul Martin were in office. But they also established a foundation of seriousness for the Conservative Party, would emerge from all the divisions of that decade on the right in Canada. And if they'd only spent that decade kind of playing tricks in the house and advancing wild affirmations about issues that are way off the mark, you know, the foreign workers issue is one. It's an interesting issue to get your teeth in if you're the opposition.

But you need to do it from the basis of building a consensus with small, business. And others who actually depend on foreign workers, that's not happening. Instead, you get the simplistic, if we want to resolve housing, we need to get rid of temporary foreign workers. That is not a great way to show seriousness that tells voters, I can trust or take a chance on trusting these guys in government, because they've shown maturity on the opposition side that leads me to believe as a voter that they would grow into the job and be okay in government. Okay. Yeah, I think an important part of the, Shanta, what you said is absolutely right,

but also the reform politicians in that era had to go through a filter called the mainstream media to get their purchase with their arguments and to get them out to Canadians. And I think where we see politicians, whether their opposition or not letting themselves down, is they can now play to a crowd that does not have the knowledge, judgment, historical kind of perspective to gainsay what they're saying. And what gets traction is the short form, simplistic, sloganistic, sloganeering and memes that you see. And I think that that form that politics sits in, that media stew now has changed so much. And the immediate rewards are for how badly you can embarrass or zing someone and not how substantively can you critique

something that needs to be critiqued to build that consensus. That's an adult job, but it requires an adult canvas and I think we're kind of two decades into destroying that canvas and that's why I in particular get exercised about this issue. If you don't have a properly functioning information economy you're not going to solve these problems. You're just

not going to do it. The incentives are not there to have a literate, constructive bipartisan debate on any of this and these solutions will not come from any one genius whether that's Mark Carney or anyone else. It's too big for any one person. Okay. We're going to take a break. I mean,

Thank God we're not simplistic here, a good talk that we just get right into. Listen, let's take a break. We come back. There's lots more to talk about right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to your Friday Good Talk, is Chantelle-A-Bare. And this week, subbing for Bruce Anderson, who's caught in some travel stuff, is Andrew McDougal, who joins us from London, Andrew, the former communications director for Stephen Harper back in the Harper Prime Ministerial Days.

You're listening on Sirius X-M Channel 167 Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. We're glad to have you with us wherever you're joining us from. Okay, the biggest, I guess one of the biggest domestic stories of this week was the departure from the Cabinet of the former finance minister in the final Trudeau years and currently the transport minister in the Kearney months, and that is Christia Freeland. Not totally unexpected.

She's going to be a special envoy on the Ukraine situation. But nevertheless, it is a significant departure of somebody who was a mainstay of the Liberal Cabinet since 2015 in a variety of different portfolios, controversial at times, no doubt about it, basically accused by many of being the one who plunged the knife into Justin Trudeau in the final days of his administration

and always seemed a bit awkward in the opening months here of the Carney government. What do we make of the Freeland departure? Tell first, and then Andrew, who I know is watching from a distance in London, but is still very much plugged into the Canadian story. So I'll be looking forward to hearing what you've got to say on this as well. But Shantel, why don't you start us on this? Andrew, from all accounts, will soon get to break bread with a new Canadian envoy to London

as rumors, and very strong rumors have it, that Bill Blair, who is dropped from cabinet it is apparently headed for London as the ambassador. So have fun with that. Stop waiting by my phone. I guess I think the phone will ring. It's going to go the other way. So for me, Christia Freeland leaving is the definitive sign that we have closed the chapter on the Trudeau era.

And why do I say that? Because it goes back to beyond or to before 2015. Christopher Land was probably Justin Trudeau's very first star recruit when he was in opposition. People forget that this is someone who had a good rep, brought something to the party when the party was in third place. And no one, not even the most prescient commentators, expected this third place party with Justin Trudeau as his leader against Thomas Mulcair and Stephen Harper to vault to a majority government in the election that would come in 2015. And it was one of the few signs that Justin Trudeau was going to bring serious but new people to the fore when that election came. And we all know the rest of that history. The two were in the optics kind of joined at the hip deputy prime minister.

I don't think I've seen a deputy prime minister in the past that has spent so much time next to the prime minister in various news conference. It's a big, big job during the first Trump administration, kept that coalition together. It's quite a feat people forget to put in the same tent, labor leaders, Brian Mulroney, and liberals who used to fight against the free trade initiatives and NAFTA to resolve the issue of the future of NAFTA in the first Trump administration. And of course, if you're tied at the hip with someone who's going down, you're going down too. That knife that is talked about was quite real and quite painful. It is what happened. I'm not sure that Justin Trudeau would have survived if that knife had not been put in his heart by Christia Freeland.

But in the end, she actually did a service, I guess, from the perspective of the party to all. But that being said, that new role is a better use of our services. than transport. She is someone who is totally qualified to lead the file on Ukraine. She knows the file. She's got the context. She speaks the language.

I'm not sure you could ask for more. And she knows the government inside out on this side of the pond. So looking at all that, I expect her to not be in the House of Commons shortly after the budget vote. because you keep people for the budget vote because the government needs every single vote that it has. And I think it's part of a pattern that will become larger over time. I think Mark Carney did not have time to build his own team

to present the Canadians in the election. So we're kind of doing a cart before the horse thing. So at this point, he's trying to build that team now. I think we will see a number of others leave and it will lead to by elections, unless the government doesn't survive the budget, in relatively safe ridings with hand-picked people by Mark Carney. So if I were a Trudeau-era minister sitting around that cabinet table these days, I would look at what it looks like, which seat on the back bench I might like to occupy after January.

Andrew. Yeah, and I think what Chantal hit on there, If you look at how Justin Trudeau treated the liberal party in the last year of his being prime minister and leader of the party, the greatest disservice he did to them was not going when it became clear that the party in the mood of the country would not support him. By that, he was just delaying the inevitable. I think Chantal's right. That knife would have come from somewhere, somebody at some time.

And the biggest sin was to not let the purported successor identify some people ahead of time that could then go through the nominating. process and run in the general election and come in with all systems firing. And, you know, there are a few Carney, like natural resources, et cetera. There are some people that he knows. But, you know, the strength of a Carney, in theory, is his contact book. And it is the fact that he is as plugged into some big serious brains and whether that's an industry, academia, et cetera, and to bring that talent and that network to bear.

and Canada could use a bit more of that in getting some firepower in there, especially at this time. And so, Ken, you know, is it, will it rubbed some people the wrong way that these people that kind of failed upwards in a cabinet now get, and I don't put Christopher Flynn in that bucket,

but if you look at a Bill Blair, if he does come over to replace Ralph Goodale here in Canada House, that's a pretty nice gig for not really distinguishing yourselves. and that, but I don't think people will get too upset about that for too long. But I think we are, as Chantal says, in the process of seeing renewal by other means that Justin Trudeau didn't afford Mark Carney the opportunity to do ahead of time as you would do in under normal circumstances. You know, you've probably heard this story as well, but, you know, I'm sure it's not just me

who's heard it, but that the Carney really wanted to announce that cabinet in May without any Trudeau ministers in it because he knew this was going to give Polly have an attack line or the Conservatives an attack line that nothing's really changed, it's still the same old crowd, you know, a few new ones.

But he was talked out of it for a number of reasons. You see now the opportunity seems to be there that he may end up doing what he had wanted to do months ago. if he can find the new quality potential ministers, either in his caucus or to run in by-elections.

But there are some that aren't going anywhere, I'm sure. I'm sure LeBlanc is not going anywhere. I mean, he seems to be handling more things than anybody next to the prime minister. He's the Christian Freeland of this government so far. Pardon me? It's the Christian Freeland of this government in terms of all the tough files wearing all the hats. Right. Yeah, well, there's this notion of not throwing the baby out with the bathwork.

her. It's not as if the entire Trudeau cabinet was a catastrophe and made up of mediocre ministers. There are people in there, and there were people in there that were worth keeping. Not only that. So suppose that the day after the election, Mark Carney gets rid of anyone who was a minister under Justin Trudeau, would we have had from this backbench a stronger cabinet? Because maybe there are hidden talents on that bench, but if you haven't discovered them and they've been in Parliament for two terms, then possibly they deserve to remain hidden. So I think bringing new blood from the outside makes sense. I think once you've been in cabinet 10 years and you handled senior jobs, Christian freelance case, you've had a good run. but you are certainly ready to move on to something other, be it only because you're going to bring your perspective more productively somewhere else.

There are others who may leave because that Ontario liberal leadership opened. And I'm thinking Karina Gould, for instance, who ran, who was a minister for the entire Trudeau era, considered the talent, ran for the leadership, did not win and was left out of cabinet. Natorskin spit who was in cabinet for the length of a summer holiday just for the election campaign. So at some point, if I wore my cranny and I am not, I would want to get the budget passed. And then anyone who wants to look at other challenges, please tell me so that I can have, while I'm still riding high, a bunch of by-elections, not start having them one after the other. forever because that at some point you kind of say these are people who ran the spring who are now moving on you need to get that out of the way early for if only for optics reason but also

functioning you talk about dominique leblanc everyone noted and you all noted because it's a strong sign that there is not a new transport minister now that christia freeland is gone her responsibilities were piled on to dominique leblanc and uh... Steve McKinnon, the House Leader. That kind of tells you that they are keeping those portfolios open for incoming members and not for someone on the back bench. Let me bring the topic of the budget up, because you're both hinted at it. It's now supposedly going to happen in November.

It's officially that that is the government's date. Right. Yeah, for now. you know, we keep varying dates and they end up changing. No, but that was announced in the House of Commons. Okay. Has it been in the Canada Gazette or whatever it is where they officially make these things? I don't think you give up the budget date, just for the record. All right.

Corrected once again. Let me, you know, listen, talk about echoes of history. It was a November budget in a very difficult economic time that sank the Clark conservative minority government back in 1979. This is a minority government, roughly the same kind of minority that Clark had, you know, only a couple of seats needed to swing it into majority territory. But a difficult, one assumes the conditions are much more difficult today than they were back then, even in that era's time period, how are they going to manage this? I mean,

what do we know at this point about this much delayed budget? It's going to be, what, more than a year since the last budget? What should we, what should we be thinking here? Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, I just was going to make a point that you had made earlier, Chantal, and that the one variable that Mark Carney desperately wants to have for a budget, i.e., what is our relationship with the United States look like, is the one variable that maybe he'll get to there before the fourth. But until you have that snapped into some sort of place, it's a fool's errand to kind of make plans on that.

And I think he's going to, you know, there's obviously the build homes Canada and there's the defense spending and some stuff we know are going to be in there and he'll lean on that. But I don't think, you know, if you go back to my time, I don't think he's going to drop a little poison pill about reforming party finance in there and taking away the subsidy and running the risk that the axis of evil, as I would say from that time, conspires against him. I think he'll put a responsible budget that addresses these problems and he'll bring back all the hits from the last six months, such as they are. But that missing piece will be the bit that Canadians are most interested in. And when he comes in, having promised to be Mr. Economy, and Canadians are looking at a record deficit all these years later past COVID and Ukraine and all that disruption.

And they go, well, is this Trudeau-esque or is this Carney-esque? And I think that'll be a pretty difficult moment for him to explain, although other than by pointing at the circumstance and going, look, it's nuts out there. What do you expect me to do? So I think there is zero chance that the BQ will ever conspire with the Conservatives to install Pierre Paulyev as Prime Minister. Of all of the scenarios, unless Mr. Blanchet wants to ask for political asylum in Alberta, such a thing will not happen.

But I think the opposition parties, because one of them or some of them will have to step up if the budget is going to pass and we'll avoid an election, I have two decisions to make. The first decision is possibly the easy one. Am I going to support the budget? I don't expect Pierre Poillier, who is campaigning for his job,

to support Mark Carney's roadmap in the budget. That would be hard to explain to members. So that first decision, suppose the answer from all four, not counting the Green Party, is no, we don't want to support the budget. But there is a second decision. The second decision is, do we want to go in an election?

And if the answer from any of them is no, then a pressing nature call would keep members out of the house. Bad flu. Four or five. The problem with bad flu, Andrew, is what changed from your era is that now, except when they're actually in the place, the bathroom, members can vote virtually. They can do so from your deathbed if you want. We're all having surgery then. They're all having surgery.

Yes, exactly. You need to press the healthcare system into service. No, that would be known. The party that would do that would actually, obviously, it wouldn't go unnoticed, but would explain can't support the budget, but do not believe this is a time for an election. So those two decisions, and I believe that in the case of the bloc and the NDP, that decision will come more easily if the budget doesn't land like a huge bomb on public opinion. And we don't know how the budget will land because how could we know.

Did anybody see this Stephen Harper fiscal update with the cuts to political financing for parties create a parliamentary crisis that could have led to a coalition? government, no, we couldn't imagine that would happen. I also have come to believe that there is a plan A and a plan B in the government, and plan A is to get the budget passed and move on to all that the stuff we talked about. I'm starting to think that plan B is, if you want an election, let's go, because there are strategists in the government that believe that the government could cross the bridge to a majority in a swift election. That's a dicey call, but I do not expect that there is a plan C that says,

let's beg someone to support us. I think that's out the window. And I know the election plan B has people going, well, come on. We just had an election. It's much too scary. But I don't know about Andrew. If I were sitting in the room with Prime Minister Carney and his brain trust, I would be remiss not to put it on the table.

Yeah, and I think under the provisor that here's a responsible budget that addresses as best we can at this moment what we think the needs of the country are. And then, yeah, you put the dare. Go, if you don't like it, let's dance. We'll see. Why Canadians aren't benefiting from this plan we put together. And the last time the strategist around the liberal prime minister thought that it would be a good thing to pull the plug early,

and move a minority to a majority was 2021, right? COVID, everything else didn't work. But that's a different proposition because St. Trudeau could never explain why he pulled the plug. Mark Carney, this platform would be that budget and the time for a tough love because that's what we have to do and I need a mandate to do it. It's a completely different setup. It's definitely a different setup, but it's still the same risk. There is no guarantee in electoral politics that you're going to improve your luck. Bill Davis tried that in 77, and manufacture this defeat to get a majority, ended up with the same minority government that he had going in.

So the history of that is that there is no guarantee. Okay, got to take our final break. Be right back after this. All right, final segment of good talk for this week. I'm Peter Gansbridge with Chantal Abert and Andrew McDougall joining us from London this week, filling in for Bruce Anderson. I wasn't sure whether to bring this up. I've been back and forth on it the last couple of days.

But I wouldn't mind hearing in the few minutes we have left, and we only have a few, and it's a hard out. But it is the Jimmy Kimmel thing. of course he pulls that rabbit out of the hat that's the time when he does these things yes give you ample warning two seconds I guess the issue that I'm struggling with is how relevant is all the chaos surrounding the Kimmel cancellation or departure firing or whatever you want to call it how relevant should it be to Canadians in this this time where we're kind of really trying to look at the way the media operates, whether

it's journalism or entertainment, what have you, and the relationship with government. Andrew, give us your take on this first. I think it's relevant in two ways. I think what we share as Democrats is an idea and a commitment to speech. And the fact that we get into dark places where we crack down on speech in ways that are unfair. And whatever you think about what Jimmy Kimmel said, but worries me is you have the head of the regulator, the FCC, Brendan Carr in the states, you know, hinting that, look, if you don't do something, we're going to have a lot more work to do on this proposed merger that you want to do.

And that, and that's just the dark place. We can't get to that kind of jawboning kind of, you know, we'll use the instrument of the government against you. And this is where I think what we're losing in politics is, well, principles in that there are only principles of their inconvenient to hold every once in a while. And if you're only for the speech that you approve of, you're not for speech. And I think if the West loses that concept, and we're in an environment very much that encourages that kind of sentiment, whether online or elsewhere, that then we're in trouble. So I think we shouldn't overreact, but we cannot be calm about what's happening there, I don't think. Shantown. I've always believed that if you have an idea that you believe is worth

that it should be an idea that it's worth debating with people with contrary views, whether it's a popular opinion or not. Those of us who watch politics and parliament know that the best legislations come from contrary views hitting at each other and shaping policy. As for the political influence, it's no secret that politicians like to try to influence the coverage that they get. But this is way out of the normal trying to get a better hearing and getting rid of critics. When you start threatening the economic interests of the people who actually run media organizations,

you are in an entirely new ballgame. But over time, if this continues in the U.S., I also believe that it's going to make it more difficult for Pierre Poillier to explain how the country would be better off without the CBC and Radio Canada. Because the diversity of media is kind of more of a guarantee of the free circulation of ideas than restricting a market that is already shrinking. And we did talk about that shrinkage. So I think any Canadian politician who is now going to take, tell Canadians, I'm going to make sure that the media shapes up towards certain ideas versus

others is probably going to buy more trouble than support. Do you want a closing thought on that, Andrew? Yeah, just to kind of pick up on something I said earlier, this is why governments need to look at the information economy and how it operates now, the impact of these platforms and, you know, we've covered the impact on the business models of the media, but just making everything. I just think, you know, politics and government requires a more deliberative media environment than the one we have now, which is quick fire, rapid thought, instant reaction. And we have to find some way to preserve that. And I think that requires a conversation

about the business models of these companies. When they're rapidly pursuing our attention and monetizing it, you get a very different outcome from a published there that is seeking to put a compelling product in front of someone and convincing them to read it because it's worthwhile. And I think, you know, we focused in Canada on trying to regulate the outputs of these platforms, online harms bill. That's, you cannot win that game. There's too much and it's too emotive. We'll never agree. But why do these companies get to operate in the way they do to cause the harms they do?

And one of them being the death of the media. The media has helped itself in some cases, don't get me wrong. But media cannot survive in this stew that now lives online. It just is it is not a hospitable place for what is often explained. You know, last night, I'm in Scotland right now, as you two know, and some of the audience knows, in a small town, up in the highlands, maybe 1,000 people. There was a kind of a community thing last night in the historic thousand-year-old cathedral, and they asked me to speak, why they asked me, I don't know, nobody here knows me, which is good.

but anyway I spoke and they were very attentive and it was about the media and it was about this whole issue and there were a lot of good questions afterwards and then just talking with some of the people afterwards it's just ordinary common folk and this is up

you know uppermost on their mind right now this whole issue of you know social media how's it fit in the impact it's having on governments and business and who's really running the show and free speech all of that it was a it was quite something to hear it all.

Listen, thank you both, as always, and thank you, especially, Andrew, filling in a short notice here. It's great to hear you again, and I know we'll have you back at some point because either Chantelle or Bruce every once in a while gets the week off or takes the week off, and we'll be asking for your time once again. So thank you, Andrew, for joining us. And as always, Chantel, thank you. The bus is out tomorrow morning. 7 a.m. in your inbox. If you've subscribed, it doesn't cost anything. It's free.

Sort of my thoughts about the week and some of the stories that impressed me that I saw over the seven days. We'll be back on Monday, Dr. Janice Stein, with her regular Our Changing World segment on the Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again on Monday. Thank you.