The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Dominic LeBlanc Moves To The Front

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Auto theft was the issue for the national political leaders this week and it's worth asking why. So we do on Good Talk this week including focusing on the minister of public safety, Dominic LeBlanc and why we should keep an eye on him for the future. Also today, who's buying Jagmeet Singh's threat to pull the plug on the deal keeping the Liberals in power? And BCE's latest slash at journalism in Canada and what it means.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. It's a Good Talk Friday and there's lots to good talk about. We of course have to mark this important anniversary in pop culture and I know the two of you well no, you were probably still in your cribs when this happened 60 years ago today, February 9th, 1964 the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan

and it changed the world but that's not what we're here to talk about we could run a little Beatles music in the background, but not today. I can tell from the look on Chantel's face and Bruce sipping coffee, they're going, what is that old guy talking about? We need somebody. He's trying to say, listen to us, we're the golden oldies. Right, okay. Here's where we're the golden oldies. Right.

Okay. Here's where we're going to start today. This is also not a popular decision on my part, but I find it fascinating that at a time when we, you know, we pretty well most of our lives talked about auto theft, cars being stolen. It's sort of a, you know, a local issue that sometimes local issue that sometimes the police get involved with, and there's attempts to try and make sure people lock their cars at night.

Well, here now, suddenly, it's become a national issue. It's talked about by Pierre Polyev. He was going around the country in the last week or two weeks, having news conferences about it then they had an auto theft summit yesterday what am i missing here is this is this something that is a really big deal on uh you know in terms of the minds of canadians i mean i know there have been 12 000 cars stolen in toronto in the last year 9 000 or 11 000 i think stolen montreal elsewhere in the country numbers are up no doubt about it. But has this become such an important issue that the national political leaders are weighing in on auto theft? Chantal?

Well, if you didn't know that there was a bit of an epidemic in car thefts, you should know at the end of this week that that is the case. If you still talk, you know, have memories from those 1964 movies about the post-teenager wiring your car to steal it, to take it for a joyride and leave it on a parking lot, forget that. And about locking your car at night, it does help, but we are way past that. I'm not sure that it's the top of mind issue on people's minds, but I do think that the liberals have been using the issue to kind of have something to talk about that people can relate to, something that isn't, you know, some macro policy about who has the competence to do health care and something on which it is possible to come

up with some ideas to make things better. And I was listening to Montreal Radio this morning, and I thought, up to a point, this operation, it's a modest operation. It's not going to reverse the fortunes of the government. But it has managed to do at least one thing. I was listening to people from the SPVM, the Montreal Police Corps, who were singing the praises of this initiative and how useful it had been. By accident, I ran into Ontario's solicitor general yesterday who told me there are increasingly home invasions from people who want your car keys.

And he seemed to think it was a positive idea to have this. I thought, how long has it been since I've heard people who are not liberal to saying positive things about concrete matters and the Trudeau government. So on that score, it seems to have, I don't think it resolved the issue of car thefts, but it seems to have at least hit a few targets that the liberals need to hit more often. You know, you're right about the link between auto theft and home invasion, looking for car keys. Home invasions are way up in certain areas of greater Toronto. There's no doubt about that. And the cars seem in many cases to be linked to that.

Bruce, your thoughts on this? Yeah, I think it's definitely a good thing for the Liberals to have a policy issue or initiative like this that they can talk about. It's obviously an area where what has been in place in terms of the policy mechanisms haven't been sufficient. But I also feel like if you're asking me, will this be an issue that people who don't feel their car is at risk or don't live in one of those areas where home invasions have gone up will become preoccupied with this issue because some federal politicians are talking about it? No, that typically will not happen. I mean, there are some issues which can transcend that kind of personal self-interest, but this doesn't sound like one

of those to me. It isn't an argument to not do it. And it's kind of interesting to me that it drew out of the conservatives, not just a kind of a predictable criticism of the government for having car thefts rise on their watch, but actually ideas. So it's almost a little bit of a competition of who has the best ideas to address this problem, which obviously would be a source of some concern for many people. But I haven't researched as a pollster how people feel about car theft, but I have a suspicion that it's the kind of thing you only think about really after it happens to you, not before, even if you know other people for whom it has happened. So interesting, but hardly, in my view, likely to become that preoccupying, galvanizing,

thank God there's a national summit, maybe we can see a roadmap to solutions kind of thing. Anita and I. Sorry, go ahead. But better packaged than the previous. You can see that the liberals are trying to find initiatives and issues that make people say what the prime minister keeps saying, that they have your back. And I think the first operation, which I thought missed the mark totally, was the one about grocery prices.

And this lineup of grocery owners who were, you know, paraded on Parliament Hill, we're going to make them make sure that you don't pay as much for your pasta thing. That, I think, backfired. They looked foolish. The minister looked foolish. He looked like he was discovering that there are bargains every week. It's hard to measure what results come from them versus come from normal price fluctuations. So this one, the target was easier. It was better managed. The package was more ambitious, but they didn't come out of it looking like people struggling to find some issue to make themselves look like they take Canadians' needs to heart.

Okay, let me underline that in terms of the management of it by playing you a short clip from yesterday by, I guess, the ministers basically has come to the forefront on this. This comes at a time when the polls continue to show, again this week, 15 to 20 point gap between the Conservatives on top and the Liberals, and the Liberals seemingly losing what has been our basis for them in the big cities, especially Toronto and Vancouver. They've already clearly lost what was a stronghold in Atlantic Canada, at least by these indications from the polls.

Anyway, I'm talking about Dominic LeBlanc, who's the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister. And he had a way of dealing with this issue to explain what they're doing, but at the same time taking shots at pierre polliev and not in a you know it's just it was an interesting way to listen to this see what you think and keep communities safe also said that he would be spending millions that he would outfit the cbsa with new scanners essentially aren't you just repeating what he said he would do yesterday, today? Like, aren't you admitting he has good ideas? No, Mr. Polyev makes up all kinds of things all the time. He stood at the Port of Montreal and talked about investing in the Canada Border Services Agency

after his government cut a thousand officers that were doing this exact kind of work and planned to cut another 400. They gutted 50% of the officers working in the intelligence unit, the most effective way to work with local police, provincial police and the RCMP to identify the best way to interdict the stolen vehicles. So Mr. Polyev just doesn't have a monopoly on the idea that there's some technology that can help the Canadian Border Services Agency. We've been talking to CBSA officials for months about this. Pablo and I at the Port of Montreal three weeks ago had a demonstration of some of that stuff.

And they're going to continue to do the work with partners around the world to make sure that we have access to the leading technologies. Mr. Polyev can make something up in front of a gate. It actually doesn't solve the problem. What we're doing is working with these officials that have real expertise and making sure they have the tools to do the work that Canadians are doing. Just on the international... Okay, and the scrum continued. But I found it interesting for a couple of reasons,

and it's mainly because of LeBlanc, who, let's face it, has had some health challenges in the last few years, but claims those are in the background now. They're gone. He's dealing, you know, he's face it, has had some health challenges in the last few years but claims those are in the background now. They're gone. He's better, and he can handle things. And he was definitely handling things here in a way that made you look at him. I mean, it's a scrum that's going on. He's surrounded by caucus and cabinet ministers,

and they're all looking admiringly at him. I just thought it was an interesting take on a guy we don't talk about much certainly in terms of the future of the uh of the liberal party so i'm wondering now what you take out of that bruce first well and so i'll use a baseball metaphor he's a 300 hitter who hasn't uh because I think largely of health issues, hasn't had as much prominence on the front bench of the liberal government as would otherwise be the case. He's extremely experienced. He's got a nice way of speaking. I think his presentation style is fluent. He gets to the point, he talks like people talk. And he's got an effective way of

talking about the opposition leader, which is to say he can be critical without sounding over the top or overly personal, but just kind of on point. So I did think it was interesting the way in which his role in this issue was made more prominent. I think it was a deliberate choice by the government to have him be more visible, play a bigger role, be kind of a stronger part of the lineup. And it would be in their interest, in my view, for that to continue to be the case. The role that he's got in the cabinet doesn't always lend itself to that kind of profile. Pardon me. And so you almost have to kind of manufacture situations where,

where he stands at the center of a scrum and takes a mic, but good for the liberals that they chose to do that on this issue. And, and I think their fortunes will, will be well served if they do more of it. Chantal? So let's be clear. The reason why Dominique Leblanc was giving this scrum in that situation is because the car theft issue falls under his brief. He's the public safety minister. So that is who the points person on this particular summit was always going to be.

He may not have been front and center in question period every day, but that is in no small part because the opposition parties hate having him answer questions. That's how it works. If you've got a strong minister who is strong on his feet in the House and you're the opposition parties hate having him answer questions. That's how it works. If you've got a strong minister who is strong on his feet in the House and you're the opposition, you go around that minister. You do not start asking him questions and giving him chances to put you in your place with some effectiveness. You always go for the weaker performers in QP if you can help it when you're planning QP strategy.

That being said, just because you did not see Mr. Leblanc front and center in the House, he is probably one of the most influential ministers in the cabinet and one of the most active in the back rooms. Every prime minister has had a minister who fixes stuff. And at some point under Justin Trudeau, it was Ralph Goodale. These days, it's Dominique Leblanc.

Why is it Dominique Leblanc? He's one of the more experienced ministers, but he is also probably the minister who can most directly speak with Justin Trudeau. They've known each other forever. They do trust each other. in a way that few, if any, other ministers can do without ensuring that they are banished in some way for having done so. The other thing about this ministerial brief, it's not just public safety, which, by the way, allowed him to kind of manage the commission on international foreign interference and take that off the radar, at least temporarily. manage the Commission on International Foreign Interference and take that off the radar, at least temporarily.

But he is also the Minister of Federal-Provincial Relations, Intergovernmental Affairs. And he has built a really solid and nagging for Pierre Poirier relationship with Premier Ford. Who knew what cigar diplomacy could still achieve in this day and age. Today, as we speak, the prime minister is about to sign a big health care deal with Premier Ford.

Best friends. That's the kind of optics that Justin Trudeau needs. And behind those scenes, Dominique Leblanc has been kind of greasing the wheels of that relationship at the expense of the conservatives. He has also been doing the same thing with the François Legault's government, not a small task. So, yes, it was interesting. And the good news for Justin Trudeau is there are many things you can say about Dominique Leblanc. But if he ever was interested in the leadership, he would never be organizing a push against Justin Trudeau. Agreed. But should we add his name to the mix of those who could potentially be one day the leader of the Liberal Party?

I'll have you know that there are a number of people who watch politics who have already done that. Exactly. Yeah, I just wanted to underscore one thing, one other thing that Chantel touched on that I agree with everything she said about his relationship with the prime minister or his role as kind of a behind the scenes fixer. But also to the point about the relationship that he's built with Doug Ford, he's a reminder that a kind of a genial personality really can matter still in politics, that everything isn't always about the highest pitch attack on somebody else. He's somebody who doesn't really play politics that way, either in front of the camera most of the time and certainly behind the camera. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to in politics whose experience with him is always recounted in part by describing what a nice guy he is to deal with or how easy

it is to have a conversation with him. And in that sense, I think he's also a bit of a role model for a lot of the younger people in the Liberal caucus and around politics generally who come into contact with him and see how he accomplishes the thing that he does, which is a little bit different from what we see in the cut and thrust of politics most days. Okay. All right. We can safely say that Dominic LeBlanc has arrived at the forefront of the national political debate on at least this issue. We'll see where else it goes in the time ahead. I'm not sure how seriously to take this. So you tell me how seriously to take

it because we've had these threats before about how the NDP could pull the plug out of the deal with the Liberals to keep them in power. Jagmeet Singh saying this week that unless some form of national pharmacare program that he likes is introduced by the beginning of next month, they very well may pull the plug. So is this real or is this just the latest threat on this front? Chantal? I think Jack Mee-Tzing is at this point mostly playing to his own caucus, including some of his members who are increasingly worried about their prospects

and the battle that they have ahead of them against the conservatives. I also note that while, and many others have noted that while Mr. Singh says all these things about lines in the sand on pharmacare. He doesn't really place that line in the sand in any place. So if and when there is a deal or not a deal, we won't ever know what the real deal breaker was or what was that big gain that was achieved over the last two weeks. But I think regardless of how this ends up, how much bustering there is or not, I think it may be time for the NDP to reflect on a series of failures that have little to do with the liberals' will to negotiate. They have been in the spotlight and in a position to have their leader look like he was the co-prime minister for the past two years. They're going nowhere in the polls. That's a failure on their part to sell

themselves and on the part of their leader to sell himself as a prime minister and the leader of a government and waiting. That is not on the liberals. It's on their own performance. And it is not because they stand next to the liberals. It is because when they have been standing next to the Liberals, people have not been compelled to say, boy, these guys standing right next to the Liberals would be so much better if they were standing in the place of the Liberals. The other failure that I think they need to reflect on is their failure to sell pharmacare to Canadians. They've been talking about it for the past two years, saying we're going to get this for you. The last numbers I saw, only 18% of Canadians are saying that they want the pharmacare program that the NDP is pushing for and says would justify an election. So I'm thinking, if they're thinking of going in an election on this, they're going to have a real

hard time. They've had two years to sell pharmacare to Canadians and have failed with support from the liberals on the concept of pharmacare. And now they want to do an election that they will justify by saying the liberals won't give you pharmacare. Yeah, good luck to them. Bruce. Yeah, I guess I look at this from the standpoint of the polling first. I absolutely want to underscore Chantal's point that if you look at the history of the last year or so in terms of federal horse race polling, you can see the Liberals having lost six or seven points and the NDP improving by none. So that math is pretty clear in terms of describing the lack of upside growth, the lack of progress for the NDP, despite the fact that ostensibly they have quite a great deal of leverage on the agenda of the government. Now, it isn't necessarily the case

that you'd expect all of those votes that left the Liberals to go to the NDP or even a very significant portion of them, but you might expect some of them to have kind of moved in that direction as people grew tired of the incumbents, that sort of thing. So I think there should be properly a measure of anxiety within the NDP about whether or not their message is getting through, whether they're talking about things that sound resonant to people and that people feel like they're really fighting on their behalf. Totally agree, and we've talked about this before on Pharmacare, that they seem to have failed to adapt to the reality that Canadians don't care as much about this idea, the way that they're characterizing it by coming up with

something else. They keep on kind of alluding to Pharmacare as being the line in the sand that they're going to draw. I do think they're working on a different version of it, perhaps, than has been discussed a lot before. But it still sounds like a conversation about something for which most people don't have a particular need right now because they have coverage for their prescriptions through their insurance plans. As to the date, you know, you could look at this and say, well, it's kind of a bit panicky to say you've got 20 odd days to solve for this after having agreed to extend the deadlines.

Or you could look at it and say, he put that line in the sand out there yesterday because he knows that the announcement of the federal plan will come before that date. In other words, I don't think that he was really playing chicken here. I think he was describing an event that's going to happen within that timetable so that when it happens, people can look at his comments yesterday and say, he forced this. He forced say, he forced this. He forced this and he forced this timing and the government bent to his will. And part of the reason why I think that's a more likely scenario is, I think along the way, there has been a certain agreement between the Liberals and the NDP

that the NDP can say things publicly that are a little bit challenging to the government. But behind the scenes, they'll work, they'll try to work out an accommodation on the policy without without compromising their ability to do politics in front of the camera. Okay, let me let me be blunt. Is this is the issue here, pharmacare, or is the issue saving his job? Well, the saving his job part, as the same applies to Justin Trudeau, there is no longer a convention on the horizon between now and the election. So, and I don't think that the NDP caucus has not adopted that mechanism that allows caucus to tell the leader to go. So unless he talks himself out of that job, I think that and some new Democrats this week, I was in Ottawa, but it to me is they're stuck with him for the next campaign, which is not a really positive way to talk about the leader. But part of it is trying to keep some of whatever authority he still has on caucus.

And you get the sense that the dissent is increasing within that caucus. The NDP is fortunate we don't cover the NDP as closely traditionally as we cover the conservatives or the liberals. The same applies to the Bloc, so they can actually paper over a lot of the cracks and things that are happening. But you get the sense that a lot of caucus members this week have been free to talk off the record or anonymously to journalists to badmouth the liberals and the liberals' negotiations on pharmacare. And I believe that that is mostly happening because of internal pressure rather than the reality that life will be better on March 1st if they walk away from this agreement, which, by the way, would mean,

suppose we ended up in an election earlier rather than later. And for that, the bloc would have to vote with the NDP and not the liberals on confidence issues, because the bloc also has the capacity to keep the government going. It's not just the NDP pulling the plug on parliament. But the last time that the NDP did that to Paul Martin, they lost a lot of measures that they'd obtained in the Martin budget that died for more than a decade. If they do this now, they are going to lose that anti-scab legislation that they'd been pining for. And you can bet that the introduction of their beloved dental care program will grind to a slow end because all of the fundamentals of that program are not in place.

So it's a choice that the NDP has. They can say, we made gains, we're going to put them in the balance of an election that might well result in the election of a majority conservative government that will put them in the balance of an election that might well result in the election of a majority Conservative government that will put them in the bin, or we can bite our tongues and look at reality. There are new Democrats strategists, I've heard of those too this week, who seriously believe that when the election is called, Canadians are suddenly going to discover the NDP if If only they

take enough distance from the Liberals and a national orange wave will be upon us. I find that that is based on a hell of a lot of wishful thinking. It also means that that orange wave would happen big time in Ontario because it's not happening in Quebec under this current outlook. I think it was about share of voice, Peter. I think that obviously the NDP are struggling to find that share of voice in terms of the way that media covers politics. Doing things like what happened with this announcement of a line in the sand is one possible response to that. It's possible that the NDP could decide to

end the formal agreement so that they feel as though and do in effect have more leverage. To Chantal's point, they would have that leverage on an ad hoc basis rather than an understanding that they're not going to drop the government before the logical or the predicted election date doesn't mean that they would use it. And it doesn't mean that the BQ couldn't still keep the government in place, but it might give them a sense of greater power, greater importance. It might draw more attention to their consideration of different policies over time, but it might not. So it's kind of risky. It is the kind of thing that looks a little bit, not desperate exactly, but a little bit kind of uncertain in terms of what it is that they're trying to do, especially if a big part of it is the pharmacare thing,

and especially in light of, Chantal touched on the dental program. There was a report out, I think, yesterday that talked about some really significant problems, I think, in that dental program where, you know, to cut to the chase of them, it was meant to be a program that would apply to people who don't already have dental insurance. And so now you have people who are paying for dental insurance as part of a health insurance plan. And they're thinking, well, maybe we're

better off to cancel that plan so that we can get the government plan. It's sort of a logical thing for people to wonder about, but it's hard to understand why the government didn't think that through before they put this program in place and figure out how to manage that kind of pressure, let alone bring forward something that emulates it from a pharmacare standpoint could have even bigger fiscal implications than the dental program, which is not cheap. All right. We're going to move on. But first, we're going to take a break.

So we'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk right here with Chantelle Bruce. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast sec. We've had a vote in the House of Commons this week. The Conservatives did not support the new free trade agreement between Canada and Ukraine. It's all over the carbon tax issue. And it seemed like a bit of a gamble. We are the country with a huge number of people of Ukrainian descent,

more so than I think anywhere outside of Ukraine. So those are all, you know, potential voters. So what did this signal? Did it signal what some polls are suggesting, that Canadians are getting a little concerned about the amount of time, energy, and money that the country has been spending on Ukraine in these last couple of years. So what's happening here? Are we losing, is Canada losing its support for the Ukrainian position in its fight against

Russia? Bruce, you've seen numbers. What are they telling you? I think there is some softening. I don't think that it's softening because people have looked at the facts differently. I think it's softening in part because people stop looking at some of the facts or stop paying as much attention to the war in Ukraine or haven't been reminded constantly enough of what this really means in terms of the world order and

stability and in Europe going forward. I don't think that it's easy for governments to continue to put money and resources into this war, in part because it's not clear how it's going to end, when it would end. And these days, I think we see it in the United States, we see it in Canada as well. There's a significant number of people who say the fiscal situation isn't that great. In fact fact i even saw putin in that tucker carlson interview talk about the size of the u.s uh deficit or debt which i thought was quite interesting as a way of saying yeah why don't you guys don't you guys have bigger problems to fix uh so i think there is some softening and i think the challenge for incumbent governments that

support uh ukraine in this war is that they need to keep on talking about the reasons why it's important to do that, understanding that now that the media has developed some interest in the why is support flagging story, that too many of the stories are going to be about support is going down. The last thing I'll say is that there is an isolationist aspect of the MAGA voter cohort in the United States. It's got more share of voice now, and it's quite a powerful force. It exists in Canada, too, among that part of the conservative movement, which I'm not intending to describe as being the entire conservative movement, but there is a significant part of the conservative base now that would generally be isolationist. In other words, not harbor any ill will towards Ukrainians,

but generally not be in favor of Canada investing its resources in international areas of conflict, even with our allies. And that represents a real challenge within the Conservative Party, is how will this version of the Conservative Party deal with our military alliances, our defense alliances in the context of a cohort in their party that is more isolationist than it has been in the past? I don't know about you, Chantal, but Bruce never ceases to amaze me. And now we find out he's sitting there watching Tucker Carlson at night, you know, getting his angles. A late-night binge watch because it was long,

especially the part about the history of Russia and Ukraine, if anybody wants to skip forward through that. He went like 30, 35 minutes. That's why there was a blanket on that couch just before we taped the show. I get it now, napping through the interview. I think that's a sign of good mental health to have a blanket within reach when you're doing a two-hour Putin-Tucker-Carlson thing. A couple of points about Bruce and the isolationist current within the Conservative Party.

The deafening silence from the leadership of the party to the promotion by one member of the shadow cabinet of Mr. Poirier, MP Leslie Lewis, of a petition that would have Canada withdraw from the UN, kind of tells you that story. But if it does not, you can look. The poll we're talking about is an Angus Reid poll that came out this week. It does show that there are more people who believe that we are doing too much for Ukraine than there were a year or two years ago when all this started. But the more interesting feature when it comes to party management is that 43% of those who self-identify as conservatives believe that we are doing too much from Ukraine. Well, 43%, that's half your voters base,

is reluctant to see you push more on things for Ukraine. But let's add some larger context here. How many policies of Justin Trudeau enjoy support that cross party lines and that extend well beyond the 60% margin? And the answer is very, very few. And going all out for Ukraine, and as much as Canada can say it's going all out for Ukraine, does enjoy that level of support. I looked at that conservative vote. I believe that one of the reasons that everyone showed up to vote against the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, despite the flack that the party was going to get this, because the party is currently led by a leader who will do everything he can before he walks back anything. But I have also noticed that the conservative MPs have spent the week trying to showcase themselves as pushing on the government to send more weapons to Ukraine,

etc., unclear playing defense on their own Ukraine position. And I'm curious to see going forward, How that 43% cohabits within the same party as the 57% who, like a vast majority of Canadians, believe that we are not doing too much for Ukraine at this point. Aside from those with that Ukrainian background in some sense in their family, is this an issue people would vote on? Well, no, not necessarily. But I mean, I think this has been a problem with a lot of foreign policy issues over the years and an increasing problem in a world where the way that people consume news is through a process of selection of the things that they're most personally interested in, whether they do that deliberately and choose very specific channels that serve them up news on their pastimes or preoccupations,

or whether it's done through algorithms where the things that they show interest in end up shaping the content that is delivered to them. We have a population that is less likely to have its attention drawn through national media organizations, for example, or national news programs. Peter, like the one that you used to host, I forget its name. But so if people don't have that kind of coming together around the news items of the day, and within that context, if there aren't editors saying, we need to talk about China, we need to talk about Russia, then there's a much greater chance that people will not end up consuming this. And it won't always be a deliberate choice. I'm not suggesting that people are trying to ignore world

affairs, but the consumption of content is increasingly personalized. And what's happening in Ukraine isn't going to be that kind of choice that people make in a in a kind of a subtle or even an active way when there are that many other issues that they're going to be concerned about. So I think it's a challenge. I think politicians need to keep on talking about it. I wish that there was I wish there were more debates where you could have politicians exchange ideas and challenge each other's reoccupations. I wish there were longer press conferences where reporters had more opportunity to grill, especially the conservatives on this, because I think people do deserve to know what's underneath the hood of this vote by the conservatives, whether it's about this isolationism. And if so, what does that mean about our stance towards NATO and other alliances going forward, or whether it's something else. I just think that the democracy is suffering a little bit in terms of our ability to talk about foreign policy issues.

All right. I would just add, I do think foreign policy is becoming more important to voters than it has traditionally been. looks like it's a safe hand at handling foreign policy rather than someone who wants to topple or who leaves doubts as to whether he still believes Canada has a role to play in the UN or in supporting Ukraine. And I think conservative strategists are mindful that this is one area where Mr. Poitier needs to tread carefully. Yeah, we're going to move on to get into our final block of good talk for this week. But let me just say that the Ukraine war is about to enter its third year.

And in terms of staying power, in terms of a story, I think it's done much better than I would have thought at the beginning of this. I know it's dropped off of late because of Israel-Gaza, because of the election situation in the United States, but it's still there. And there's still some great journalism being done by a lot of brave people who are trying to cover that conflict. But still, you know, I think I tend to agree with Chantel. I mean, it's scary out there right now, not just Ukraine,

not just Israel and Hamas. It's scary out there, and it could very well become a more dominant national issue, and I'm talking about foreign policy, than we've seen in the past. Okay, we're going to take our final break. We've lost Chantel's picture for some reason, but hopefully we'll get that back. But we'll take our final break, and then we'll be right back. Okay.

You didn't lose me. It's nosebleed. It's a nosebleed break. Okay, you fix yourself up. All right. You're back for the final segment of Good Talk for this week, Chantel and Bruce. Yeah, take the camera off if you feel

better doing that. It's going to take about three minutes. Let's put your head back a little bit. But stay close to the microphone. We'll let Bruce start on this answer. BCE, Bell Canada,

went through a huge layoff uh process they announced it uh yesterday i think total it's going to impact about 4 800 jobs bc is a huge company has lots of interests um but our specific concern for this discussion is the impact it's going to have on journalism. BC owns CTV, the CTV News Channel, BNN, radio stations right across the country. I think they're selling off like 40 or 50 of them because they say news is losing money, especially local news. They're losing money. They've lost $40 million in the last year or so. Now, the government says, we gave you $40 million,

whether it's grants or the end of certain programs that impacted your bottom line. But they've gone ahead and done this, BCE, and there's no question it's going to have an impact on on journalism in their chain of stations um added to a time when there's a lot of impact on journalism print we know the problems of print they're not getting better and the debate about you know the funding of, you know, the funding of the CBC, the funding of news in general is, rages out there. What, what did you see in that announcement yesterday, Bruce? Yeah, there's a lot of things that I, that are there to unpack in this

announcement. I mean, for one thing, there's certainly, there are aspects of the communications marketplace that aren't going to work as well in the future as they have in the past. And so it's impossible to imagine a situation where even large corporations decide that they're going to continue to play in areas of media that they don't see the opportunity to make money in. Why is that? Not because they're evil, but because they have responsibilities to shareholders. They have pressures from shareholders who are always

saying, make my dividend as good as it can be, or else I'll take my investment dollar somewhere else. I'm not defending BCE's position on this. I'm just saying it is a reality of the world that if they look at their businesses and say there aren't as many people listening to terrestrial radio, for example, and we don't really want to be in that business anymore, then they're going to do something about that because to not do something about that has consequences for them that the managers of those organizations can't really tolerate. Second issue is, has there been a covenant between major corporations that benefit from government policy and subsidies, as you mentioned, in exchange for support for news

organizations? There has been a covenant. And so when the federal minister responsible, Pascal Sainoge, called out BCE for the decision, called it disappointing, raised the question of the fact that there had been this understanding between government and these media enterprises. She was doing a useful thing. I think she was making an important point.

But then the going forward question is, how is journalism going to be paid for? And I think that there isn't really a clear answer to that, in part because the average consumer still struggles to find a situation where they want to, some do, but a lot of people want to just consume content without paying for it. And so that has become a problem in terms of anybody being able to decide to invest significant sums of money in a new media enterprise, even in markets much larger than in Canada. We see a lot of organizations fail at trying to convince the public to pay for that news content. Asking companies that aren't in the news business to pay into funds that will fund journalism in Canada, I think that's kind of awkward. I don't know why that makes sense. It feels a little bit like it's a jury-rigged solution, not something that really has a kind of a logical long-term aspect to it. And then you've got the final idea that's been talked about and used in the past,

which is public money going into different avenues to support journalism, which I think is on balance from my standpoint, the best available idea, even though many in the journalism community and many journalists hate the idea. And the government, the federal government's political opponents, the conservatives rail against the idea of talking about, you know, journalism is compromised because it's bought and paid for by government. But I think unless we do have those kinds of innovative ideas, unless there is some funding that's made available to support the creation of news content,

we're going to have less of it than we need and less of it in the future than we have today. And that's not a good thing for our body. Okay. Chantal's back. Well, I'm back until I turn into Dracula. But I don't think that the federal government has the means to support an entire RECO system. And that is what we're talking about, an ecosystem that is going to be failing. And you can put 40 million this year, but what do you do next year?

And as one of those journalists who is not keen on public funding, I'm not sure that people out there who like this and who are not owners of media companies understand the level of leverage it gives to governments and parties in government when an entire media industry is dependent on public funding and the will of the government to continue that public funding for its very survival. And I'm not saying here that journalists who are individually covering politics or whatever would say, I need to be nice to the prime minister, whoever he may be, because he's going to continue to fund or not my job.

Those things happen way above our pay grades. And for all of the time that I've covered politics, there have been those phone calls between people in power and people who had power over my paycheck. And not always, even in an era when the people who were getting those calls, who are people who report to shareholders, even if they weren't dependent on government money, there were times when they caved and tried to put pressure on people who were reporting on politics to get a certain slant. Now I'm thinking they will get those same phone calls. No one in power doesn't want to try to get favorable coverage, but they will be dependent on the person at the

other end of the call to continue funding the business so that they can report to shareholders and say, look, I've got a good, you know, I've got good news for you. I'm thinking these are all people who are humans. And I don't believe that the A governments would resist the temptation of trying to see if they can get leverage or that everyone who will be getting those calls way up in those corner offices will have the fortitude to say no. That's not been my experience. So if I were Pierre Poilier, I would not cut public funding, because I think he would like to have control. Everyone else who's gone to office, it's not a conservative thing.

It's a, if we can get better coverage thing, we are certainly paying for it through the nose at this point. So let's, you know, do what we need to do. So I find that really, really dangerous, as dangerous as the failing ecosystem. You know, Peter, do you want to jump in? You'll have to make it very quick. Yeah, I think that there are two things I would say. I agree with Chantal that the government can't support an entire ecosystem. I don't think that the answer is for government to fund very

large enterprises, whether it's post media or others. I don't think that's a sensible thing. I think there does need to be second, a mechanism that is is probably not direct funding in the sense of money that the cessation of which would result in a failure, but rather access to tax status that allows new businesses to develop and thrive. It is a medium to longer term solution, but we were going to need something like that. I think.

Well, you know, the advice Victor Orban gave Donald Trump, buy your own network, run your own thing. Now he's already got his own network in a sense. Anyway, it'd be interesting to see what Pelliev does.

Chantal's right but it is all this underlines the kind of crisis in journalism right now in terms of the management of journalism, what the landscape looks like I just started a program at three Canadian

universities to try and fund future journalists, the fear is there's going to be no jobs for them when they get out. It's a tough situation. Okay, that's it for this week. For Good Talk, Chantel, Bruce, have a great weekend. We'll talk to everybody in a couple of days.

Take care. You too. Take care, you guys. Bye. Bye. Bye.