The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk Encore Presentation - Did The Public Follow The Convoy Inquiry?

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on November 25th. Journalists spent a lot of the past weeks covering the convoy commission but was the public actually following the story?  Chantal and Bruce have a lot to say about the commission as it wraps up its major witness phase this week.  What did we learn?  What difference will it make? And the World Cup -- is the real story being glossed over?

The following is an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge, originally broadcast on November 25th. Are you ready for good talk? And of course you're ready. That's what Fridays are for. Good talk, Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Stratford, Ontario on this day. Well, we've seen weeks now of the inquiry into the convoy, the convoy commission inquiry that's been going on in Ottawa.

We've heard witnesses from all sides, culminating on this Friday with the Prime Minister talking. Now, here's my opening question. Chantelle, why don't you handle it? Because the thing about Chantelle that we all know is that she is a person of the people. She's a journalist of the people. She loves to talk to just people, whether that's in the grocery store or on the metro or wherever it may be. That's sometimes how she gets a sense of how the public is feeling about issues or not feeling about issues. my question in your soundings around the Montreal area over these past weeks or month, um, have there been a lot of people say,

must they bear? Tell us what is really happening at that inquiry. Or was Justin Trudeau is Justin Trudeau going to get out of this one, which is the kind of question they used to ask about Paul Martin during the comory commission on, uh, inquiry on the Sponsorship issue. Seriously, buses, trains, teachers, cross-guard people, and I don't go

to them and ask, so what do you think? They usually come to me. Not a single person over the past two months has raised this commission of inquiry or even wanted to have a chat about whether the Emergencies Act was appropriate. This is nothing scientific about it, but usually you know when an issue is becoming hot. I was in the parliamentary crisis in 2008. So it's not just, you know, the obvious issues. I was harangued by the person who was selling me vegetables every Saturday over the fact that Stephen Harper didn't believe that Stéphane Zéon should become the prime minister and that people who backed that scenario were all separatists. I still see him.

An Italian man is telling me, me, a separatist. He's saying nothing like that. Nothing that even comes close. Nothing. Pierre Poitier's leadership campaign. Fish store. Market.

Wouldn't Jean Chagall be great to beat Justin Trudeau? Or what about this Ployap guy? Radio silence on the Hulot Commission. I hope that the judge does not take it too personally. He is not achieving rock star status in the sense that Justice John Gomery outside of Ottawa became, at least in this province. What does that tell you, though? It tells me that this commission is important for the process

and for policy going forward. And I have heard things this week that make it, to me, even more important than what I had assumed, because it lays the foundation for the future use of a law that is really an all-powerful piece of legislation. And I think Bruce can confirm that based on his numbers, which are real and scientific. I think the public came to a decision as to whether it was appropriate to do what the federal government did back last winter, and that they, he, she, all have not heard anything that has made them inclined to revisit their opinion that the federal government

was probably right to do this. All right, well, let's ask Bruce, what is your sense of the public's interest in this story and in this inquiry? Well, you know, when I first started doing television interviews and panels and that sort of thing on politics goes back a number of years, even before I started doing the at-issue panel with you. I used to worry a little bit that I was going to be the world's worst panelist.

And maybe I am. Some people probably think I am. But the reason I used to worry about that is that all of the years of polling that I had done before I started doing those interviews taught me that not everything that's important becomes a subject of public attention and not everything that is a matter of great public attention is important. And a lot of interviewers didn't want to hear that. They just wanted to hear, I want to know how transfixed and, uh, and, uh, how people are reacting to whatever it is that I need to ask you about.

And I would be like, well, nobody's paying any attention to that. I think Evan Solomon in particular used to find that really unhelpful. And our relationship survived that happily. But I agree with Chantal that this is important, this process. And I think it's being conducted in a reasonable way. There's obviously always going to be situations where we can look at it and say it could be improved, but an important process. I don't think it's attracting a lot of public attention. I think political

enthusiasts, sometimes I say nerds or junkies, and I don't like either of those words really, but let's call ourselves political enthusiasts. We're paying a lot of attention because this subject matter is of interest to us. I think for the public, though, people pay attention to things that are either uniquely salacious or hugely important and relate to their lives in some kind of dramatic way where they can feel like if this goes badly, it will affect me badly. And if it goes well, I'll be better off. And this doesn't really meet that test for most people. And that's probably a good thing, because it means that we live in a country where the use and the and the apparent need to use measures like this really doesn't happen very often. I think for

most people, last thing I would say is that the journalism is doing what it should do in this situation, which is sort of trying to draw a bead on the technical or legal question at the heart of did the government have the necessary argument that passes the test established by the words in their law to use this. I don't think that's the test that the public uses. I think the test that the public uses is, was this an act of tyranny? Was it an act that was embraced by the government without thinking through the consequences because they just loved the idea of it? Is this a precedent that we should look at and say it's going to happen all the time now because the government was able to do it and get away with it and the hearing process didn't derail

that? And I think the answer that most people come to on those questions is no, that the government didn't really want to use it in the process of the inquiry. It's a forensic examination that no government will really want to go through in the future, even if they come out of it the other end without any political scarring. All right. Just a couple of things on this. One of the reasons, I believe, that it is also not generating the kind of public attention or public reaction that some other issues are, is that the House of Commons has not acted as a communicating vessel for what happens at the Commission. Remember, Gomery, something would be said on the stand in the morning. It would be the bread and butter of question period in the afternoon with the government

forever under attack. In this case, it is as if the opposition parties live on a planet very distant from the across the street inquiry. And that starts with the official opposition. No testimony has resonated in the political arena. There are good reasons for that. The NDP not only did support this move, but has also stated via its leader that regardless of the conclusion, they will not withdraw their support to the government on the basis of this report. I think the Bloc Québécois understands that there is majority support. Some of Bruce's own numbers from back at the end of October show that Quebec is the province where there is the most support for having used the act, considering the history of 1970 and the War Measures Act. That is quite something. And I think the conservatives know that, A, they're divided on it, and B, they can only lose points over it. But the absence of that resonance and partisan way in the House of Commons also leads to people looking at the news reports and saying,

oh, okay, let's move on. You're not going to get people really, really excited over the fact that the Minister of Justice has invoked fine solicitor privilege to not give some of the legal advice that he and the government received, although that is interesting and it's a big piece in the puzzle that Justice Hulot is handling. No one is going to be demonstrating over this tomorrow in any Canadian city. Can I just add, I love Chantal's point about the lack of a kind of a resonant echo chamber

for, you know, that the opposition, in particular the Conservatives, would be lighting up. There's another way to look at that is to say that if the Conservatives would be lighting up. There's another way to look at that is to say that if the Conservatives felt that they had been on the right side of the convoy issue back in February, and if they continued to feel that and felt even more empowered in that position as a result of the testimony, the convoy lawyer and participants would be having dinner at Stornoway this week. The Mr. and Mrs. Polyev would be making a show of the fact that they were with the patriots who challenged the tyranny, who stood down the face of tyranny in Justin Trudeau. There's nothing even close to that happening. This whole space has been vacated like there's some sort of

biohazard by conservatives around it. And that has to tell us something about whether they think they're on the right. They have been on the right side of this or whether they simply don't want to be drawn into further association with the with the manifestation of the convoy. So I do think that's important. And I think that the other thing Chantal touched on is the provision of legal advice to the government. And this question sort of felt like some stakeholders were saying this is an aha moment, that we're not getting to see the legal advice that the government got from the Justice Department or through the Justice Department, I guess in some instances might be the case. I don't know. You know, I think that Chantel's right that people aren't going to be transfixed by that

or be particularly perturbed by the sense that not seeing that advice doesn't give them the transparency that they're looking for. I come at it more from the standpoint of any of us who've looked at legal advice in situations of any sort of similar nature can understand that the advice is going to be ambivalent. It's going to say, if this, then that, or if you look at this this way, if you turn it on its side, you might come to this conclusion. And I can understand why, for any number of reasons, government isn't kind of feeling like they want to share all of that so that people don't then sort of bend it out of proportion. I certainly feel as though the government's willing, from what it's done,

to take the hit for not revealing that that advice and to and I expect that the prime minister will say whatever the combination of inputs from law enforcement, from the RCMP police commissioner, from CSIS, from the Justice Department in the end, it's a political decision to do it. I took the political decision to do it and I'm being being held responsible for it, and I'm okay with that. And I think most people will agree. That's an okay thing to do. Let me try to focus this down a little bit here. First of all, as Chantal had mentioned, how Quebec had this overwhelming support for the actions that the federal government took. It's worth noting, because that was from your data, Bruce, that in every province there was a majority support, more support than against in terms of the government,

which is interesting, including in the West. Now, to focus down on one part here, and I hate doing this, and I know you hate me when I do ask it this way. It's a strong word. I don't think so. I don't think I can hate you, but I'm bracing for it, whatever it is. Well, here's the question. Throughout this inquiry, through the weeks of testimony from all sides, if there was one question that you were looking to hear answered, what was it? And

did you get an answer for it? So it's sort of the one area that you were most interested and you hadn't formed in your own mind what the answer was already, and you wanted to hear it from someone. What was that question? And did you hear an answer? Chantal? I don't think I approached it like that, and I think the questions that I still have are questions that Justice Hulot will answer. And I do have one that I had not been thinking about until this week, but watching the government's arguments this week, because this was what

the week was about, but also the Deputy Minister of Finance, Michael Savio, last week, I kind of understood that the government is trying to convince Justice Rouleau that the definition of a threat to national security should be broadened to include economic interests. And I have a quote here from Christia Freeland, which I think spells it out quite clearly. She said, a very serious threat to Canada's economic security can constitute a threat to national security. Such a threat would need to be very great, and in this instance it was. That seems to me an invitation to open the door that for now and the law is closed. And closed, there are two arguments on this. Some will argue that's because when the law was crafted,

circumstances were different, and it is time to review the language to broaden the definition of a threat to national security. But the other perspective, which I tend to share, is that there is a slippery slope there, that it is in the eye of the beholder how serious a threat to Canada's economy and national security, quote-unquote, is constituted by, for instance, indigenous railroad blockades, an environmental protest that shuts down pipelines or a pipeline project. And I am curious to see what, if anything, Justice Hulot will do about this, because it opens doors that some of the very people who are opening it this week might believe or should stay shut.

I'm going to say this very bluntly. Listening to Chrystia Freeland, I felt like asking her, would you be comfortable with the broadening of a definition that would give Pierre Poiliev more power and more capacity to use this law. Because I understand why the government is going there, but it is a slippery slope. And for people who have forgotten, one, this law is a nuclear weapon in the government's toolbox. a nuclear weapon in the government's toolbox, to the notion that the public, and I'm not optimistic like Bruce that this will not open the door to this being used again.

I tend to be of the other persuasion. And why I say that? In 1970, civil liberties were clearly breached to the face of the world. People were jailed for no reason. This time, public opinion, as we've noted, is massively of the world. People were jailed for no reason. This time, public opinion, as we've noted, is massively behind the government. I don't believe it will shift against the government, no matter what the conclusions of the exercise. What is the message there? That it doesn't really matter that you're not living up to the terms of the law, because the public will back you.

And at the end of the day day that is what the government seeks so imagine that we have rail blockades and it's used for that reason in the broad and in the circumstances that christia freeland articulated not just her but others do you seriously believe a majority of canadians are going to say that's wrong rather than say about time to do something about this. I'm just asking. And I will see that answer, I believe, only when I see the report. All right. Bruce, your one question and whether or not it was answered.

Well, I am going to want to talk a little bit about what Chantal just said, which I agreed with roughly 90% this week on that point. I think the question that I wanted to see the answer to, it wasn't really something I was terribly perplexed with, but it was sort of in the focus of the public debate was what to make of the situation where the public safety minister had said on advice from police, I think is what he said. This is, you know, that precipitated our decision and, and a lot of, uh, critics, uh, and observers have said, well, he didn't exactly get that advice from the police. And so was he lying when he said that? Was he trying to misrepresent the kind of advice that he was getting? I think it's possible that the specific construct of that sentence

wasn't everything that he would do if he were saying it again. But I also think that over the course of the evidence provided, it was pretty clear that the cumulative effect of hearing what different police forces or people were saying and what the CSIS director was saying certainly would lead you to the conclusion that the police were saying we don't have the tools or the plans or the wherewithal to get this done and the CSIS director said things that might have sounded like I'm not sure what the legal definition means in part because it hasn't been tested and whether or not it stands up to the use of the act in this case, but I think you should use the act. So I think there was an answer to that question.

And I don't feel that the effort by that minister was to mislead people, but rather to say the cumulative effect of the information he was getting led to something. But which brings me to the whole question of, we're talking about the use of something called the Emergencies Act. And I sort of my one of my takeaways, I guess, is if there was something that wasn't called the Emergencies Act and didn't have all of the attenuated trappings associated with the definition of national security crisis, but something called a very serious problem for which the existing tools don't work act, then that would be the act that people would want to have in

politics to use in this situation. But we don't have that. We have something called the Emergencies Act that was written with language intended to define something as being pretty darn serious and for which there is no other alternative course of action and so we're having a good debate about it and the part that that i was really intrigued by that chantal brought up is i was uh there's you know 50 years ago uh when uh rights were um abrogated i saw uh tanks and armored military vehicles come into the kind of the outskirts of the town of Valleyfield, where I was living at the time. And I believe that it's a slope, but I don't know that I believe that it's that slippery. And maybe that's just my natural optimism. Maybe it's me saying, well, if it was 50 years ago and it hasn't happened again since then, maybe that's the reason for

optimism. But I'm also aware of the fact that we don't have the guardrails in society that we used to. The fact that we were talking at the beginning of this conversation about people aren't really transfixed by this is part of that. What we watched with Donald Trump is part of the realization or should be that what we thought were barriers to governments doing really unexpected and inappropriate things, those barriers don't, they're not as strong as they used to be. So maybe, maybe it can be a slippery slope going forward, in which case all the more reason why we should be happy that we have this kind of forensic process as imperfect as it may be, it's still pretty good. Okay. I got to take a break, but Chantel, did you want to say something in there? No, I think it covers pretty much where I am. About the slippery slope, well, it's not hard to see it, but you've got,

and I'm sorry for people who watch this, I have a nosebleed, which is why I'm doing this. You have a conservative party that when we did have those indigenous rail blockades, wanted to send the police to clear them and pushed on the government to do that. You have a government that is arguing in front of a commission that one of the criteria for using this act and being able to command serious police powers, extraordinary ones, is the economic interest of Canada, which can be something that you define depending on situations. And if you put the two together, you kind of can see a bit of a slippery slope with

no public opinion really standing firm in the way. All right. We're going to take a quick break and maybe Chantal will be able to stem the flow there from her for bleeding those. And I've got another question on the convoy and it's about strategy and the strategy used by one of the participants. But we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll deal with that. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk for this Friday on The Bridge. You're listening on Sirius XM, channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. Or, because it's Friday, like Wednesday, you can also see it on our youtube channel you can find the link and it's free to subscribe uh at my bio on either twitter

or instagram all right getting back to the uh the convoy questions and and here's my question here the because every possible side i think in this um issue of what happened earlier this year in ottawa and coots alberta and the ambassador bridge in windsor and elsewhere because every possible side had the opportunity to uh submit a testimony to challenge some of the witnesses um there was you know were decisions made by these different entities. One of them was the protesters. And you've got to assume that the protesters were given an incredible opportunity

to make their case before the commission and the Canadian people and to ask questions of everybody right up to the prime minister now a question is about the strategy the protesters used mainly through the lawyer they hired uh who at times has seemed somewhat i don't know he seemed somewhat unhinged even chased somebody down the hallway yesterday claiming they were the person who had been carrying the Nazi flag, and he wanted them in the witness chair. As it turned out, this person had nothing to do with that.

It's not the first time this week he's made charges, and he's about various people, and as a result, he's facing a libel notice, I believe, on that. But his performance seems at times, seemed to me at times, to be a wasted opportunity that the protesters had. They had the chair. They had the spotlight. They had the camera. They could have made or tried to make a convincing argument

with some of the witnesses and challenging. Was that an opportunity lost or am I overstating what I was witnessing? Bruce, you start. You know, I think that the observation I have of the different lawyers and how they've been participating is it's been a bit of a mixed bag. I think there are some participants who are asking questions that I think are pertinent and interesting and kind of explore questions that will have a lingering value in terms of how we learn about the use of this act and the choices that were made in it. And then there are others who are doing rather kind of performative or defensive things. They're trying to establish a political argument or to make a point about whether they were as culpable for whatever was going on, that it was going badly, that sort

of thing. In the case of the convoy, you know, it's almost surprising that there is a lawyer representing the convoy. I mean, there should be somebody representing the interests of the people rights were imperiled. But I don't know if most of that energy should really reside with the convoy people. The convoy, as we've heard, had multiple leaders, multiple agendas. Not everybody was there with a view to insurrection

and not everybody was there with a potential for violence. But. You know, I don't know when I'm listening to the convoy lawyer, whether I'm listening to somebody who's trying to represent people who were coming with a legitimate kind of sense of frustration with COVID or whether he was coming representing people who didn't understand that the vaccine mandate that affected truckers going into the United States was a U.S. law, not a Canadian situation, or whether he's trying to represent people who have a political agenda and don't like this government. That's obviously a big part of the flavoring of what the convoy was about. And when I'm trying to kind of follow the, you know, the Perry Mason-esque kind of approach of the convoy lawyer, I'm left a little bit confounded, to be honest. I don't think it's very well thought through or structured. And I find that the tone is more indicative of somebody who's

in a protest rather than in a tribunal hearing. And so it's a little bit annoying for me to watch, but I'm glad that we live in a country where it happens. Raymond Burr would be upset with your Perry Mason analogy on that. But that's okay. It's a very dated analogy, and probably most of the people that we hope will be listening down the road anyway will have no idea what I'm talking about. Otherwise, you're condemning yourself to a very short term future. Why do these shows come back, though? Let's be honest. They're remakes.

Yeah, well, I hope they're remade because I don't think the previous, the original installments would have survived the test of time very well. And that dates me, too, since I can remember those shows. First, I think Justice Rouleau was right to give the convoy the representation

that it sought. I think the best way to do away with conspiracy theories about people being under a tent conspiring against you is to be invited in the tent and then being told, well, do your best, or in this case do your worst. I think it's also obvious that the representation or the lawyer in question does not have a very deep knowledge of governance and governments. And that has been obvious in some of the questioning. But I think that certainly,

when you talk about lost opportunities, I think one of the things that the style of representation has accomplished has been a gift to the government and to the opposing side, because it has provided a quasi-daily illustration of why, even if there had been negotiations between the government and the convoy organizers to try to end this, it would almost certainly have ended in failure, that there was not common ground based on facts or reality. And when I say this, I talk about, for instance, the faction that believed that the governor general and others could get together to overturn the government and try Justin Trudeau for treason. Well, to have a discussion or a negotiation, you need to start from the same reality. And what we have seen is that that was not the case on just about anything

that came up over the past two months, including the fact that if you'd been walking in that place yesterday, Peter, you might have been asked by that lawyer whether you wanted to testify because you have some of the physical attributes of the person that he thinks he's looking for. But that tells you a lot about where all this is going when the lawyer will run after anyone who has a mustache and is of that age to say, do you want to testify? I can arrange it. Oh, there might be an age gap there. I don't know about that, but I want to go back to that. But the way the way this this scene unfolded, it kind of says so.

Yes, it was a lost opportunity, but not for the commission, for the convoy people. Exactly. Just before we leave it, there was actually a remake of the Perry Mason show. There was, and it wasn't very good, I don't think. It wasn't very good. Even though it had some good actors in, and it wasn't very good, I don't think. It wasn't very good. Even though it had some good actors in it, it wasn't very good.

Can I just add something? I know you want to, we're going to move on in a minute, but I did think, and what Chantal was saying made me think about this. I was watching the testimony by three people from the prime minister's office yesterday. Katie Telford, the prime minister's chief of Staff, John Broadhead, the Policy Director, and Brian Clough, who's also a very senior person in the office. And,

you know, it was a reminder that, you know, these are obviously people who work in political jobs, and there are lots of critics of political staffers, but these are very professional people. And and we've seen Kate Telford in in a situation where she's being questioned as part of a hearing before. I think it was the we scandal. I hate to call it the we scandal because I don't actually think it was a scandal. But I know that you're going to get a lot of letters,eter and you're going to ask me why do i provoke people that way but anyway the we conversation and i remember thinking when she did testify in that context she was very effective she's very well prepared she's very well spoken um she doesn't get rattled. And yesterday with the convoy lawyer, I was kind of reminded of, of, you know, just how professional that response by the PMO was. Now it remains to be seen what

the prime minister does today, but well, folks can look at this text and that text and say, well, they were being political. And, you know, the truth is they're there because they have a political antenna. They're there to help ministers and the prime minister kind of accomplish their agenda. But they're essentially going to be political analysts to some degree. And it shouldn't be forgotten in the mix that during the convoy, the amount of pressure on the government to stop and end the convoy was like this. And the amount of pressure not to was really low. And now, of course, the situation is sort of it's not reversed in the sense that but all of the focus is on should they have done that? Whereas back and I think Minister Freeland was referring to some of this as well. not reversed in the sense that but all of the focus is on should they have done that whereas back uh and i think minister freeland was referring to to some of this as well in the moment it wasn't

that the government was just sitting there and the public was kind of ambivalent about it there were a lot of people who were uh more directly affected perhaps than in other parts of the country in ottawa and on the on some of the border crossings, but they wanted action. There were a lot of economic players that wanted action. And that pressure was felt. And it wasn't therefore just a political calculation of how many votes will we get if we invoke the Emergencies Act. It was what do people expect us to do? How how bad, how significant, how mounting is that pressure? And so I was interested in that exchange, but I didn't think that the convoy lawyer handled it in a very enlightening way. Let me just, okay, go ahead, Chantal.

Because I suspect you may be about to change topics. I am. I have one more question. Okay, but I want to just mention two things that are unrelated to the convoy lawyer or the PMO staffers, but it's more to the exercise in general. I have to say that this inquiry has convinced me of two things. One, it would be useful to have the same kind of exercise regarding the management of the pandemic. Not to put a government on trial, but to give all the players a chance to explain their perspective and figure out what we learned from the experience, rather than have a government leave. And one day something like this will visit us again. And whatever they will have left in those boxes, all that will be left. I think the Canadian public would benefit from having a discussion outside the partisan frame of a parliamentary committee forward, always have public inquiries work under an imposed, job and then do not get to,

and you've seen some of those inquiries that were so extended that they ended up being closed down, so that they can't forever go to the government and get so many extensions, which sometimes pleases the government of today, that they become irrelevant. And yeah, I understand that the holiday season is not going to be great for Justice Hulot and for the people who work for the inquiry because they have to report by mid-February. But I think that is the way that you keep the issue fresh, topical, and relevant.

And so far, he's been running a tight ship. You know, he's moved along. There haven't been any delays of any consequence that I've witnessed, which was pretty impressive. On your point, it's funny because I remember in the first week, I think it was Bruce first made the point about how remarkable this was because we were actually seeing documentation and we were seeing notes. We were seeing stuff that usually takes 20 years before we see it,

coming out of, in some cases, cabinet discussions and clearly senior meetings of different sorts. But I remember asking at the time, do you think it will be used elsewhere? And I think the response that I got from both of you and including you, Chantal, was that, no, this ain't going to happen anywhere else. Because, you know, I agree with you. It would be nice to see a rational look at COVID and how the whole thing played out. But have you changed your mind at all about the possibility that something like that could happen? Not necessarily. Just because I think, like you, that it would be good. And I thought, for instance, that this week the government put on a decent show.

Overall, they came across more as a reassuring presence than as a disjointed set of players, despite the discomfort of having some of their internal texts brought forward. And yes, when you write them, you don't expect to have them shown to you and to the public. But I think that discomfort means that by and large, there will not be a lot of political will for having these kinds of exercises on other fronts, such as the pandemic. That's right. But I also think that the, you know, what's interesting about the text is, you know, it's kind of human nature to be interested in other people's private communication. But if we step back from,

from that and I'm not critical of that, I just think that is human nature and and i you know have a measure of it myself but um if you were there thinking that the revelation of these private pieces of communication was going to show that you were right in saying that this government is made up of tyrants who couldn't wait to use this tool to crush resistance um i don't think there was any collection of clips or quotes or text messages that sort of laddered up to that that doesn't mean that they all look good under the under this kind of sunshine but it doesn't feel like the tyranny was exposed by the revelations that we saw in those exchanges. Of course, some of them were blocked out, right?

Yes, there you go. Parts of them were blocked out. Let's get that conspiracy theory going. They have the Bill Gates chip inside them, the people who were doing the redactions. And the chip told them that they needed to redact. One day he's going to end up on social media with just that sentence. And he will regret ever saying it. That's right.

There you go, Bruce. We'll mark that down. 41 minutes, 10 seconds into this conversation, Bruce. All right. Let's stop the tape and go back and let's redo it. I'll just tell you one quick story before we move on. And I know that some of you like to hear these stories, but it's a CBC story. And things can get pretty paranoid inside the CBC at times.

I don't know what it's like there now. I've been gone six years. I can't account for anything there now. But I can remember having been a person in a senior position at one particular crazy point in terms of the CBC story and the way people were investigating this, that, and the other thing about the CBC. I remember being in the office of one of my fellow senior players

who looked at me and said, Jesus, Lansbridge, don't write anything down. You want to say something, come in here and talk to me about it. Don't write it down. That was because, of course, everything is out there and can be called upon to be produced. Anyway, it wasn't anything nefarious. It was pretty simple, actually. But nevertheless.

If I can add, my dad was a supervisor in Toronto when I started in this business. And one of the few pieces of advice he ever gave me was don't write anything down. And there was no social media. The year is 1976. And I have kept that advice. He said, if you have something nasty that you feel you must say, don't write it. Say it. It's a little hard, though, to tell a journalist don't write anything down.

Yeah, well, but these things never go away, right? So I write emails sometimes to respond to people and then i look at i say do you really need to do this and i trash them i don't send them right well that's why i noticed that your emails uh are usually quite short and i know that that's that training. But it also explains the emergence over these last couple of years of, you know, the systems like Signal and WhatsApp and other things like that, that don't seem to be suddenly appearing in terms of various commissions. Now, I'm not suggesting that any of those ministers or players or prime ministers or anybody would use anything like that, but who knows? Okay, we're almost out of time for the day. This has been a fascinating conversation.

Let's put it at that. And take our final break and come right back. Here we go. And we're back for our final segment on Good Talk for this Friday's edition of The Bridge. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your your favorite podcast platform or you're watching on our YouTube channel. Okay. I could go in either direction, but given the fact we only got about five minutes left,

I'm going to go in this direction. The world is watching the World Cup. You know, it is the beautiful game. It is what people in every corner of the world, in every different kind of country, and every different level of class are watching if they're able, the World Cup. They're watching soccer. But this year it's coming. The World Cup is coming from Qatar, depending on how you want to pronounce it. And that in itself has caused a degree of controversy.

Some countries are using their opportunity in Doha or one of the other communities in Qatar that is hosting the Games to use their moment on television to show their dissatisfaction with any number of different things, including the kind of government that exists in Qatar. Canada has been, for the most part, silent about this, and so has its players. I'm not sure whether you depend on players to to carry the flag on something like this if you're going to protest but the government hasn't

said anything and I'm wondering whether either of you have strong feelings one way or the other about what Canada Shooter could be doing in this triumphant moment for Canada in terms of actually getting back to the World Cup and playing extremely well in their first game the other day against Belgium. But beyond that, Bruce, you got anything to say on this? Yeah, in my mind, I'm trying really hard to separate the role of the game and the players from the politics of FIFA and Qatar. And to respect the fact that this event only comes along every once in a while and that it is a showcase of a sport and the talents of these players that many, many, many people around the world look forward to and want to enjoy and that and that they should be able to enjoy it without the surrounding politics. Isn't a question of whether they lack the moral fiber to protest what's going on in Qatar.

It's a function of the fact that the leadership of fifa the organizing entity is horrible um the speech that the president of fifa made the other day was one of the most shockingly inept and objectionable uh speeches that i could ever imagine a leader of an organization that puts on an event of this scale could do deliberately. Like if he had been drunk at a dinner table somewhere and said these things, you might go, people say really ridiculous things when they're drunk. But he said this at a press conference. I have very strong feelings today. I feel Qatari, I feel Arab, I feel African, I feel gay, I feel disabled, I feel like a migrant worker. He talked about being at school bullied because he had red hair and freckles and because he was Italian and didn't

speak good German. It defies belief that an organization with this much money and time and effort to put into planning this kind of event could have done such a horrific job of it. And that's even before you get to, they signed on Budweiser among many sponsors, a major beer producer that has shipped over all kinds of beer, put up tents. And then a couple of days before, it was announced that there wasn't going to be any beer sales at this event. It's so shockingly poorly thought through and organized. The only conclusion that people can come to is that the people running this organization were blinded by the money involved and

inconsiderate about even the most basic decisions about how to run it and more than inconsiderate when it comes to the human rights and other social issues that are raised. Two minutes, Chantal. I agree with Bruce on FIFA. Obviously, couldn't care less about human rights, be it that of the workers who were used literally as slaves to put this together or LGBTQ communities across the world. We're now seeing a country try to use the World Cup as a showcase for itself.

The good news is that didn't work. It backfired badly. If you didn't know anything about Qatar two weeks ago, what you know now is not something that is positive for that country. It's the opposite. As for the Canadian government, I know that there was a unanimous motion passed in the House of Commons this week, so the Liberals voted for it, basically, to denounce the approach to LGBTQ rights and to people who want to express support as part of attending the games in person. I'm not sure I understand why we sent the minister there. It looks like an odd call. And I do not believe that Minister Sajan really advanced the cause of human rights as he says he did by having discussions with Cathay-Rieu authorities, the same authorities that basically issue fiats over the selling of beer overnight.

We're not waiting for a Canadian minister to come and show them the error of their ways on human rights. Yeah. I, you know, I have some sympathy for the way of, well, both you said, but from what Bruce said at the beginning, it's hard to separate the sport from the controversy. And I mean, the controversy is happening because of the sport, right? But at the same time, you know, Canadians want to rally behind these players who are representing this country for the first time

and only the second time in the World Cup. One of the other egregious things, Peter, I know you probably kind of have a particular reaction to this. You're a very strong sports fan, including you like the Leafs, which is a mystery. But you have 30 seconds to make this point. across what for me was another line among the many, not the most egregious, but still very strange, that they would say to a player, if you wear a particular symbol, that we are going to these events depend on the support of hugely global corporations who they have to know cannot go along with that or can't ever put themselves in that situation again, at least. It's really shocking the things that FIFA has allowed itself to be drawn into doing on behalf of its Qatari hosts. All right.

And I have to wrap it up at that point. Great conversation today. I appreciate your patience. We didn't get to all the topics we wanted to get to, but I think we gave what we did have to talk about. Chantal and I are going to stay on the line and talk about the other ones after you. Sure.

Well, you go ahead and do that. Actually, Chantal wanted to run out on some of the other ones after you. Sure. Well, you go ahead and do that. Actually, Chantal wanted to run out on some of the other ones. We will get to them at some point. Thank you both, Chantal, Bruce. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. you've been listening to an encore presentation of the bridge with peter mansbridge originally broadcast on november 25th