The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk for A Third Wild Week

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

You'll never guess what the topic is for this week with Bruce and Chantal.  Has the government justified its use of the Emergencies Act -- a full show's back and forth on this one.

Are you ready for Good Talk? Another Good Talk Friday and we certainly have no problem finding things to talk about these days. Once again on this day, kind of week three of another wild week in Ottawa, so much of it focused on the protests, the occupation, the insurrection, call it what you want, that's been going on on Parliament Hill. It's been a week of all kinds of developments, not the least of which was the government introducing its Emergencies Act in the face of the protests going on. So what we're going to do now is try and evaluate things with Chantelle Hebert in Montreal,

Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa, and I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. So what do we have? We have a situation that will unfold throughout this day on the hill where police have moved in, they said yesterday their moves were imminent and they kind of acted right away off that. They arrested a couple of the protest leaders over the night. They're both going to appear, I think, in court today. And they're staying in custody, at least uh for the day will there be more arrests today almost certainly will there be some kind of you know violent reaction to arrests more arrests

being made every indication so far is no based on the first arrests of the two protest leaders. But we'll see as the day works on and as the weekend works on. Here's what I want to throw out there first. You know, for the last three weeks, the federal government has been under attack by a lot of different people, including the opposition parties, that they've done nothing to prevent what was going on on the Hill. Now they're being attacked for being too ambitious with what they've put forward, giving themselves extra powers

beyond the police powers that already exist. So I'm not sure who's right, which one of these things is right. Whatever the case is, have they made the case to get the powers that they now have chantal why don't you start not necessarily uh and the reason i say that is you could uh if you were looking at it from the

lens of the government i guess i well since the prime minister earlier on in the week invoked the Emergencies Act, which came into force as soon as he invoked it. The bridge, the ambassador bridge is clear. Coots, the blockade is gone. The Emerson protesters have gone. And quite possibly by the end of the weekend, the occupiers on Parliament Hill will also be history one way or another. We'll see and say, well, you know, didn't reaction follow action. The problem is that in all of those instances so far and subject to what happens this weekend, the powers that were used to clear bridges, open border points, and so far the Parliament Hill blockade,

are all powers that the police either already have, and it was a matter of coordinating a serious police operation, which in the case of Ottawa was sorely lacking, or a result of Ontario's use of its own emergency order. What about the freezing of money? Well, we don't at this point have any sign that the freezing of money necessarily is contributing to the end of any of these things, for one. And for two, this is a rather novel approach,

and I think it's one of the more worrisome aspects for many people of the use of the Emergencies Act. The Emergencies Act is kind of a painting. Bruce knows more about painting than I do. That once you've been booked, you call her in depending on the situation. And this government has colored in the financial aspects of it, which may or may not, in some instances, be worthy of becoming permanent legislation. But that's for another day. At this point, it's a blunt instrument. And it does open the door to future governments

with other ideas and other policies to find reasons to go into that. And if you think that I'm being, I don't know, conspiracy minded by saying that, I'll remind you that in this country, a senior government, namely the government of Alberta under Jason Kenney, came to power and launched what can only be described as an official witch hunt against the environmental movement and its funding, which came up with none of the many allegations that it operated on. But I am just saying there is a door that was open there that I'm not sure is really contributing to alleviating the current crisis,

but that the rest of what Canadians want to see, which is open borders, obviously, and the blockade on Parliament Hill result, are being resolved without any of the measures in the Emergencies Act. I know that there is an argument to be made that it's preventive in nature, but if in this country we are going to be preventing possible events by using the hammer of the Emergencies Act, I seriously worry. Bruce? Well, I always like to hear Chantal's argument, and I agree with a number of things that she said, I see a number of things differently myself. I think that the, I do take the point and I agree with it that we always have to be concerned when governments arrogate powers to themselves or choose instruments that have not been chosen before and have the potential for abuse. That i think what jason kenney did he did without doing that and so the fact of using a different law to do something that's nefarious does you know if that law didn't

exist or wasn't used you could still do nefarious things and we still need to be vigilant that governments don't do that but here's why i see the response of the of the government in terms of this legislation a little bit differently. I think it was clear that because of a number of failures in policing at the front end of the convoy coming to Ottawa, that there wasn't really going to be a solution to this crisis of occupation of the heart of our capital unless two things happened one was the better policing um and the second i believe was adding financial pressure uh to this situation now i chantelle says there's no evidence that that's helped i'm not sure that uh i think it's

early to say there's no evidence that it has done any good. I think it may well have done some good. I think that it's hard for me to believe that people are having their bank accounts frozen and not feeling some pressure alongside the arrests. So I separate out the use of a particular piece of legislation which has not been used before and which can be a trojan horse from did the government need to do more um in both of those areas and i think it it clearly did and people can debate whether or not it allowed itself to be in a situation through

some collapse of policing in ottawa and some reticence in Queens Park and whatever other facts may have contributed to that. I think that's a fair debate, but we ended up where we were and more measures needed to be taken. Now, I hope that if today goes well, maybe the government will find itself in a situation where it feels like it can withdraw the measure. I don't know that it should withdraw the financial powers that it has used. I do think they need to be used judiciously and there needs to be scrutiny and kind of constant challenging of how far people can go with that.

But the reason I believe that is that I don't think that this problem that we've seen in the last month is simply about vaccine mandates. I don't think it's simply about peaceful protests or Canadians voicing their concerns about public policy. I think there's a bigger, more nefarious problem of the flow of funds into protests in Canada. And I don't think that what we're seeing is really that analogous to Kenny's concern about a relatively small amount of foundation money coming in to fight environmental issues in Canada, although reasonable people may take a different view on that. I get that. I think this is more worrisome in terms of the amount of money that comes in, the willingness of that money to be put behind things that have a violent or an anti-democratic aspect to them. And I kind of

worry that the Conservative Party and some Conservative politicians don't seem to be taking that as seriously as would be in their interest and in the country's interest too well can i just can i just say that everybody might take those claims more seriously if there was some evidence of what they're talking about i mean marco mendocino has been asked public safety minister at least three times that i've seen so i imagine it's more than that okay that's what you say that the the money's coming in it's being funded by you know deep right groups in the in the united states um show me prove it to me what or what is the basis of that allegation and every time every time he just say every time he ducks the question he doesn't even try to answer it. He goes off, diverts to some other issue. If you want people to believe you on the nefarious part of this, and we heard this last week from Steve Schmidt, this is why we're doing what we're doing. This is why we're introducing this act

for one of the reasons why we're introducing this act. And the question becomes, show me, show me the money. Like, give us some indication of that. Chantelle, you want to add on this? You can agree with everything that Bruce said about this and still come to the conclusion that we requires more serious government action than the 30-day use of the Emergencies Act. If that is the case, and I don't deny that there's plenty of evidence in the larger picture, not necessarily just the blockade here, that we need better tools, then this should be done in the context of legislation with proper debate in both houses of parliament and not under the guise of I'm

using the Emergencies Act and I need these powers tomorrow to resolve what has been happening on Parliament Hill. Because until further notice, I believe that those means are meant over the long term to stem something that could be dangerous for democracy and for Canada's peace and order. Well, Jason Kenney didn't need the Emergencies Act to do whatever he did to look into the environmental movement sets or is kind of rounding a corner on the notion that when you start normalizing mechanisms by using them, them. The experience in this country is that every government that has pushed envelopes on issues like that further has been able to point to some predecessor having done it and used whatever was done and said then to say, well, you know, we're no worse or we're doing exactly what they've been doing. And that should be worrisome. I would caution those who have been defending the use of the Emergencies Act, and so far they've been fairly restrained, I have to say, to use restraint, because all of the arguments that they will use in support of it will be used possibly against them one day by a government that uses it for purposes that they cannot agree with. But still, the test of using the Emergencies Act should be strenuous. And at this point, to your point about asking amendments, you know, well, show us, you know, show us, or to asking the government, show us that this is really an organized insurrection attempt. Whether past experience on the federal government using an apprehended insurrection to justify the use of fairly strenuous measures,

and I'm going back to 1970 and the War Measures Act, have shown us that those kinds of theses do not usually resist the morning after analysis. And so on that basis, I saw people this week saying, well, isn't that terrible? The Bloc Québécois and the Conservatives won't just unite behind the government on this. And Jack Mead saying is really being conditional. And where is the unity of our leadership on this? Seriously, I'm happy that there is a healthy debate in Parliament and in the country over whether it's right to use this Emergencies Act, as opposed to, and you remember it, the falling in line of most of the country's leadership over the War Measures Act in 1970. To me, that shows that we've grown up and become more able to, even in a crisis, sit back and say, seriously, does this do what it should do? And is this appropriate?

I don't have the answer to that. But I am happy that people are asking the question. The irony of 1970, of course, is that at that time, it was the conservatives who fell in line with the liberals, and the NDP were offside, not 100%, but enough of a majority of their caucus. And this time around, you've got the opposite happening. Bruce, you wanted in on this. Yeah, I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts on this. I definitely agree with Chantal that there should be a strenuous test of whether or not this is the right law to use.

And I don't really know whether there were other legal tools that could have been used. I do imagine that behind closed doors, people were debating this with a sense of urgency and frustration at the end of the pandemic. And a belief that there were and are larger forces to be concerned about in terms of interventions that happen below the surface into our political system. Whether they made the right choice in using this piece of legislation, I'm actually kind of agnostic. I do think that there should be a strenuous test. I do think that we should all be worried about politicians creating the appearance of scenarios

that require them or appear to require them to use a different set of measures than have been used before. But I do think that by indicating that this was going to be time-limited and narrow in scope and that sort of thing, the Prime Minister reduced the risk of that. And also, it's a minority government, and people are debating it, and other parties are not supporting it, and people will have a chance to kind of hear those arguments. I think that's all good. What I also wanted to come back to though peter is your

your idea that um the right thing to do in this situation would be for um the public safety minister to disclose what he knows uh or as a result of ongoing police investigations into uh the flow of funds. I don't think that's the right approach. I think people should be entitled to hold parliament and politicians to account or hold government and politicians to account after the fact, but not in the moment. I don't think that it would help necessarily the investigations.

And I think if you can't divulge that information because you're fearful of jeopardizing the investigations and i think if you can't divulge that information because you're fearful of jeopardizing the investigations and maybe you get some lash of public opinion against you because you can't disclose it that's a price to pay it's the big leagues maybe you have to live with that but better that than i think because i actually do think there is a serious issue. I don't think that it's unproven to me. I think that when you have the evidence that we've already seen in the in the commentary, in some of the news coverage of this, in the actions of U.S. Republican politicians, in the voice of Donald Trump, there's a lot of reason to believe that if our politicians are saying money is coming in by the millions of dollars in short time spans, it appears to be coming from the US. If we see the disruption coming also from Russia,

you don't have to be a tinfoil hat wearer to say, maybe we need to be cautious about this in a way that didn't exist in the 70s. So I think the analogies to the War Measures Act stop to some degree when it comes to the flow of funds internationally using Bitcoin or below the surface means and the ability to evade tracking if we're not careful. So I hope that it's not as bad as I fear that it is. But I do think it's something that we need to take seriously. And whether or not we need the Emergencies Act, I don't I don't have a view about that. It's above my pay grade. Okay, we got it. But if one is serious about the money, a 30-day order won't do it.

That's true. I agree with that. And the answers will not be coming between now and three weeks, which is what is left of the 30 days. That's true. And that is not serious. Just one point about whether there were other mechanisms. The OCA crisis has a lot more similarities to this than the October crisis in the sense that you had a blockade, people who were potentially armed that had gone on for a while in a heavily civilian

environment right next to Montreal, the Mercier Bridge suburbs. And Brian Malroni and Robert Bourassa were not about to use the Emergencies Act for obvious historical reasons. Robert Bourassa asked for the War Measures Act in 1970. He wasn't, as premier, about to do it again, even if it was a different act. So Brian Malroney used a section of the National Defense Act to send in the army. And the army did not go in there with tanks. It went in there to act as a buffer. And that did work. So there are other mechanisms that are in play. I totally understand that Justin Trudeau did not want the optics of having

a military presence to protect Parliament Hill to act as a buffer with civilians. But I'll just say it was done in this country when the civilians on one side were Indigenous and not mostly white, including some white supremacists. Okay. We've got to take a quick pause. Let me just say one more thing on the Mendocino angle. And I say this with respect to the public safety minister because i think he's done a pretty good job in the briefing so far he's not wedded to script like some of the other ministers are uh he's been pretty good at uh saying things but

and explaining things but i think on this issue that we had discussed where he used it as a pillar of action, one of the pillars of their action, that their evidence existed, that sharing something or simply saying we need to investigate that might have been better. I just think he left himself a little bit open on that one. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about the NDP's position on this. And it intrigues me, and I want to hear your thoughts on that.

Coming back right after this. All right, Peter Mansbridge here in snowy Stratford, Ontario. It's pretty well snowy all across central Canada right now. Snowy and windy. It's been quite a last 24 hours. We'll see what the next 48 look like, especially in Ottawa, where there was snowing all night. Chantelle Hebert's in Montreal.

Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. And you've been lining up on the podcast platform for the last couple of weeks. Actually, the last couple of months, ever since the election campaign. And it's great to have you with us.

Okay. The NDP, as we already explained, a reversal of where they were in 1970, a reversal on the conservative side as well. The first thing I want to get at, because I've been trying to watch and see whether there's any sense of disagreement within that caucus, as there often is on a lot of different things, but are they united behind the position of Jagmeet Singh?

And if so, why? Who wants to take a crack at that first? I believe they are united under the conditional position of Jag Neeson. They are willing to follow his lead in as much as he is willing to reconsider his position in light of events between now and the vote. What I'm trying to say here is, are there lots of new Democrats who are uncomfortable, uneasy, or really unhappy about Jagmeet Singh's early decision to back the use of the act? The answer is yes. Sven Robinson, former MP, still an influential figure in the New Democrat movement, ran as a candidate for Jagmeet Singh in the last election, is expressed in very strong terms how he feels about this.

And it was not a complimentary position. But and I would and I believe that if between now and Monday, the clearing of the parliamentary blockade goes smoothly, that clearing of the parliamentary blockade goes smoothly, that things at caucus would be happy enough to follow him in saying we no longer back this motion. But I think there is, on both the liberals and the NDP side of this debate, there has been a miscalculation that has propelled the NDP into this kind of veto right over whether the motion is approved in Parliament, just a bit of parliamentary what happens mechanics. If the

motion does not pass on Monday, and it can't pass on Tuesday, and it can't pass without NDP support, then the Emergencies Act stops applying. That's done. They need that vote to pass the Liberals, and only the NDP will back it. But I think going into this early in the week, and time flies and things change very quickly, there was an underlying assumption that the Conservative Party, as the Law and Order Party, would actually back the government on this, or at least that the substantial number of its MPs would want to. And that meant that the Liberals going in had, or assumed up to a point, that they had a double insurance policy, that if the NDP wobbled at some point, they could still make up for it with conservative votes. And if the NDP changed, and the NDP, if it changed its position, was not going

to be changing the outcome of the debate. So it wouldn't have a veto, really. It would just be saying the situation has evolved in such a way that we can no longer support this. That is not what the dynamics is like now. The Conservatives, by all indication, are not going to be dividing over a vote on this motion. And so only the Green Party, from what I heard of Elizabeth May in the debate, is not going to lend its voices to it. There is no doubt that there won't be a single Bloc MP to support it, given the stance of the Quebec government, the National Assembly, but also the history on this. So it's an interesting position for Jagmeet Singh to be in. It also means that the Prime Minister has to consider the alternative scenario that at some point early next week he withdraws the Emergency Act before it is voted on in either House of Parliament.

Because what does a defeat in the House of Commons over this mean for the government? In theory, it's not a confidence vote. But in practice, it would be very hard for Justin Trudeau to lose a vote on this issue and say that he still has the confidence of the House, even if the next morning the NDP moved a confidence motion that passed to restore confidence in the government. This would make the government very, very fragile. So this story is not played out yet politically. I think that it would probably be the best case scenario for the government that they end up in a situation where withdrawing the bill is the obvious solution. The prerequisite for that would be clearing the blockade. Then what would be left to discuss

you know, even partisans will say they never should have done it in the first place. But if you ask me whether that's going to amount to, you know, a kind of a traumatizing public issue, I don't think it will. I don't think that there will be a kind of a lingering debate about that. I think that some people will walk away from the use of the Emergencies Act for that limited period of days and say, was that the right thing? So we're really talking about whether or not it will have been in place for, call it six days or 30 days. And if I'm Justin Trudeau, I don't really want to fight beyond what I need to to clear that blockade. The second question about the money.

I think when I think about the NDP position, which is where your question was headed, I was just looking at Jagmeet Singh's latest posts on Twitter. And one of them is this petition to shut down U.S. interference in foreign financing of the Freedom Convoy. And it goes on, a financing campaign laid by organizers who promote racism and hate is fueling the occupation in Ottawa, with much of it coming from the U.S. We need to shut it down. So the NDP is on record, not just agreeing to go along with an effort to stop that problem, but building a petition to solve that

problem. And there's quite a lot of text in there that talks about the Texas Attorney General and others manifesting that there's a problem. And I think they're right about that. I think the government's right about that. I don't know whether or not the Emergency Act is the right solution to it, but I don't think that the problem goes away. And I'm glad that the NDP will probably support whatever other measures the government might have to use beyond the Emergencies Act, whether they withdraw it or whether it expires, because that problem, you know, it can't be ignored. A couple of points. The NDP was on to the money angle when the Prime Minister was still ruling out the Emergencies Act. And I suspect that part of the reason why there is a strong

financial package in the Emergencies Act is because the NDP wanted something to show for that. So I totally expect them to continue pushing that envelope and pushing it strongly, whatever happens to the act. I watched the leader speeches in the House of Commons yesterday, and I thought that in their own ways, they all spoke well and with arguments that were not totally based on partisanship, which was interesting to watch. But I thought Chuck Mead saying it come a long way from the rookie leader that he was when he was first elected in the House of Commons. This is a difficult thing to do for an NDP leader, to walk that line. It's such a fragile line that when Charlie Angus, a longtime NDP MP,

who has been a rival for the leadership of Jagmeet Singh, there was a question and answer period after leader speech. And when he got to his feet to ask, you kind of have to wonder what in the world he was going to be doing. And he actually asked a question that allowed Singh to again frame the conditionality of that support. Well, anyone who's led the NDP can tell you that to just be able to go in the house and do that speech and not have someone go outside to say, this is a betrayal of my principles and we are way off base here.

I also watched Alexandre Boullée, the lone Quebec MP of the NDP, and you can imagine how much pressure he is on that, participate in the debate to tell the Bloc Québécois that this is not the same bill as the War Measures Act. So, it's a fairly successful political operation. I'm not the poster here, but the only party of the main parties that seems to have gained ground over the course of this has been the NDP, which is also interesting because the conservatives might have hoped to, you know, all this barrage of criticism against Justin Trudeau normally results in going to the alternative, but since their frame is either empty or filled by someone that maybe a lot of centrist voters do not identify to, those voters are now premiers and the first minister's phone conference, when Justin Trudeau briefed the premiers on his intention to invoke the act, that the BC premier, John Horgan, was not necessarily keen on the move.

But by the end of that day, he had come out in support of it. And I think that makes a crucial difference to Singh's capacity to exercise his options, that he has the only NDP premier in the country on side with him. Bruce? Yeah, I wanted to pick up a couple of thoughts. Chantel made reference to public opinion, and there were a few things

that I've been kind of focused on thinking through a little bit i wrote a piece for the national observer this morning um which people may want to read which really digests a lot of the public opinion data that we've gathered recently about the protests and about vaccines and safety measures and um one of the things in it is there's no question that people, 60% think the country is more divided. And some of those people think the prime minister is responsible for that.

Some of them think that vaccine measures have been responsible for that. A lot more of them think that extremist groups are responsible for that. But my point is really that there is scar tissue on the prime minister. There has been scar tissue accumulating for all of the years that he's been in office, that's kind of how it works. And some people are better at avoiding it, limiting it, pushing it off into the future. Sometimes you try and it doesn't really work. And so, you know, in keeping with the conversation that we had last week, I haven't changed my view that this was a sluggish start to managing this crisis by the government. And that falls to the prime minister.

I don't happen to believe that the things that he said about a small subset of the anti-vaxxers being misogynist or homophobic was incorrect. I think it was correct. And I do think that politicians who see that need to call it out, even if it sounds impolite or divisive, because the division is there. And not talking about it doesn't make it go away. Talking about it is an act of leadership. But in our country, it is also a bit of self-harm politically, because people look at you and say, well, yeah, but you didn't divide people people or you said some things that were pretty strong about some other people. And I don't really like that. And I, and so that tends to, um, that tends to, you know, kind of add to a certain fatigue. I think that, that we've seen develop over the years with the prime minister, some of that's normal, some of it's self-cause, some of it's just you add a pandemic to the normal rate of scar tissue development and you're going to have more.

I think right now where we're at is that people are looking at the situation for Canada coming out of the pandemic, hopefully, and saying, you know, we did most of the right things. And but whether or not that's going to turn into any credit for Justin Trudeau, I think is an extremely open question. It doesn't look like it will now. It almost looks as though people are willing to kind of put it in the rearview mirror and say, well, let's move on to what's next. But there's no way of feeling good about the pandemic experience that we've been through, even if we know rationally that acquiring vaccines and promoting safety measures was a good thing and saved a bunch of lives. I think Chantal's point about the NDP is exactly right. The conservatives have created problems for themselves, which will be difficult to work through as they choose a new leader and then try to re-engage with the mainstream Canadian voter rather than the base who are going to choose the leader.

And I think they compounded those problems in the last 10 days by raising questions about their commitment to law and order, not necessarily as it relates to the Emergencies Act, but generally as it responds to the blockades. And the NDP has been both able not to have to decide any of these things, but also able to find a zone that allowed them to speak to kind of working people who were feeling empathy for the disruption in small businesses and the blockades and the jobs in that area and not find themselves offside the civil rights component of their group. Because in part of this, civil rights important, but U.S. interference, hate and all of that kind of stuff is also important. So I think that it's been fairly adept by the NDP. I don't know that anybody's, you know, card is going to be filled out anytime soon in terms of how they rate the parties, but I do think that Chantel's onto something there.

All right. I want to take our last break before I come back and, and pick up on something Chantel said earlier that I'd like to explore a little bit, but first of all, let's break. And we're back with Good Talk. Chantel Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm in Stratford, Ontario.

Before we get to that mystery what was it chantal said earlier but first of all i i want to ask is there any reason to believe that the conservatives when it when and if this does get to a vote on monday tuesday wednesday whenever next week the emergencies act is there any reason to believe that they've got a problem within their caucus? Or are they solidly behind the interim leader's position? I think they're pretty solid. I think part of what helped them be pretty solid has to do with the Quebec caucus, which took its cue from François Legault and the National Assembly on this.

And the debate in the larger picture about whether the criteria have been met to use the Emergencies Act. So I would be surprised. You never know. But I would be surprised if we saw a very fractured vote, if it does come to a vote. But I'm convinced that they would be happy enough to be spared that vote the uh you know one of the terms that got bandied around a lot yesterday was whether or not you are on the right side of history on this one that they all used at each other well somebody's going to be on the wrong side of history here and it'll be interesting to see how that plays out, not only in the end game,

but in the votes that take place within caucuses. Bruce, any thought just? You know, I'd be shocked, even though perhaps I shouldn't be, maybe it sounds naive, but if the Conservatives found another reason right now to divide themselves publicly, that would be shocking and political malpractice yet again. Candace Bergen knew that she was on very solid ground in terms of the willingness of caucus, even if they didn't agree with her, even if they felt there was some risk in the position that she was taking.

I'd be dumbfounded if they splintered on that. is um in some ways uh a more effective interlocutor in the house of commons debate than erin o'toole was certainly than andrew sheer was and if she holds to that standard whether or not i agree with her positions i do think she will be um she'll be an interesting contrast in a way to Pierre Poliev, who everybody sort of looks at in terms of from a distance, looking at those conservative horses lining up in their leadership race and say, well, he's the guy who really knows how to punch a message through the clutter to deliver something that people find kind of memorable and catchy and pithy and

crisp. And I don't think it's been a fantastic competition that he's succeeded at there so far. But I think Candice Bergen has been showing a different way to do that. Some of what she's said in the past has been quite inflammatory and harsh and partisan, and I don't agree with that. But her tone and style as a communicator in the House of Commons very recently has, in my view, been the kind of approach that would be better suited to the public at large than the approach that Pierre Poliev has taken.

So I find that an interesting thing to watch. I don't know if you saw it the same way, Peter or Chantal, but I was a little bit struck by it. I did think that, you know, you don't have to agree with what she said, but if you're looking at it from a performance basis in terms of her speech, and in some ways this was her first you know major speech as the interim opposition leader and i thought it was pretty good i mean i thought she handled herself really well and uh and she seemed passionate and emotional at times she was she got in her partisan shots certainly can't take that away from her um but I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was impressive.

Okay, let me get to... The mystery. I want to hear Chantel on that, though. Well, she'd already indicated that... I agree. We're seeing her head nod, but everybody else isn't. No, no, but I'd already mentioned that I thought all the speeches were adult speeches.

And yes, her performance in this debate was closer to Ronna Ambrose's tenure as interim leader, which served the party better, by the way, also than Andrew Scheer's subsequent leadership. Okay, here's the mystery. It's not really that much of a mystery. But Chantal hinted earlier that, okay, if this is what you're going to do for this protest on Parliament Hill, this occupation, the claiming insurrection, where it has basically been up until the point of the Emergencies Act, you know, peaceful. There was a few little scuffles, but nothing serious. No physical violence. Violence if you're, you know, a citizen of downtown Ottawa and you've been put through this for three weeks, that's been pretty violent.

But if you're going to go to this measure for this protest, why don't we see it on some other things? And I raise this because I read last night and again this morning something that's happened out in Houston, British Columbia. It's pretty violent what happened there. Houston RCMP presently investigating

an incident where individuals allegedly engaged in a violent confrontation with employees of Coastal Gas Link and with attending police officers along the Morris River. It was yesterday, early in the morning. The Mounties were called to the, I'm just reading from the RCMP statement, but just give me a minute here. It was called to the Martin Forest Service Road after Coastal Gas Link Security reported acts of violence at their worksite. Approximately 20 people, some armed with axes, were attacking security guards, smashing their vehicle windows. It was initially reported that some CGL employees were trapped,

but all had managed to safely leave the area by the time the RCMP got there. Literally millions of dollars of damage. Physical threats, clearly. Guys going on swing and axes. And you go, okay. It's unclear as to who the protesters were. There's indications of, you know, this has been a simmering dispute around pipelines in BC and this pipeline in particular.

But you go, okay, that sounds a lot more violent than what's been going on in Parliament Hill. What's the difference? Should there be a difference? Is there a difference? Who wants to take a crack at that? Well, there shouldn't be a difference in terms of the determination to enforce the law.

If you're asking a question, should the Emergencies Act be applied to that? I don't... Like, I'm agnostic about whether we needed the emergencies act to apply to the blockade or the occupation in ottawa but so i i wouldn't have a position and i would think probably not with respect to the coastal gas link situation but that's not the same as saying I think it's somehow less important to enforce the law around that kind of violent act than it is in Ottawa or at the Ambassador Bridge. has been the number of people who seem to feel that if they feel passionately enough about a cause, whatever that cause is, that the law doesn't need to apply to them. And alongside that, the two dimensions that are kind of relatively new. One is that the way that people communicate

with each other and share information includes the ability to share a great number of mistruths and disinformation that feed and cement that feeling that you're not in the wrong by taking matters into your own hand. You're doing the right thing for democracy. That's a very scary situation that wasn't available before some of the communications pathways that exist now. And the second part of that is, I really hope, separate and apart from the use of the Emergencies Act, that all parties that represent how our democracy functions by putting candidates in races for public office recognize a common threat there and a common responsibility to stand up for law and order and enforcement of the laws that are passed by elected people and that hasn't been as

consistent or as as clean as i would want it to be and i hope that it's one of the things that as conservatives debate their leadership choice comes to the fore, because the idea that you could sort of back burner that when the threat is greater than it has been and still maintain the idea of a law and order party or participants in a democracy that rests on elected officials passing laws that are enforced by police. That's a that's a kind of a crucial, you know, 2022 and beyond issue, in my view. I think to your specific question about what happened overnight and yesterday in B.C. and the coastal gas link issue, that the government of British Columbia has the powers at its disposal to enforce the law without requiring a, we can't live in a country where the federal government routinely uses the Emergencies Act and everything that it triggers and paints into it, whatever it sees fit, because we have difficult situations. But overall, to the larger issue, I believe that the rule of

law is the rule of law is the rule of law, no matter how worthy you may think a cause may be, be it climate change, indigenous rights, or vaccine mandates, and what they may mean to your livelihood. And you can't pick and choose when the rule of law should apply. One of the more troubling features of the current crisis has been the capacity of some CPC members, starting with Pierre Poilievre, to say about the blockades at the bridges. And Pierre Poilievre says, I never supported blockades. No, but when they were indigenous blockades, he openly called for vigorous moves to undo those blockades. And on the contrary, he or others of his colleagues have congratulated those who have blockaded Parliament Hill,

encouraged them to continue because they had, quote unquote, momentum, and in some cases told them to hold the line. And that goes in the name of climate change, we should give people a pass, or that it should change its discourse and say, these are just a few bad apples in BC. But while the people are in Parliament Hill are clearly the product of an insurrectionist, foreign funded conspiracy, you need to apply the same standard to what is illegal behavior. End of story. Okay. Well, end of story is correct because we're at the end of our time.

We've got a minute left. And so I throw this out to you because you know that there are those in the country who are sort of watching all this happen and they're not not necessarily picking sides but they're watching all this happening and they're saying wow you needed the emergency act to do parliament hill you didn't need it for the ambassador bridge you didn't need it for coots you didn't need it for emerson but you needed it for your own backyard so this was an audible thing if they or you didn't but if this had been happening somewhere else it never would have got around to the emergencies act

what do you say to that and once again i only got a minute left um well you say to that uh you're right it's a good question to ask don't ask it of the federal government or even the government And then once again, I've only got a minute left. Well, you say to that, you're right. It's a good question to ask. Don't ask it of the federal government or even the government that sits at Queen's Park. Ask it of the Ottawa Police Department and how it handled this, because similar convoys have come to the National Assembly in Queen's Park. And Monday morning, it was Monday morning in Quebec City, and Quebec city and Toronto after that we'll see this weekend. So it starts with a major miscalculation or misread on the part of police forces and then around the parliamentary pyramid and no one should ever forget

that. Yeah, that's really where this, I think that your question, Peter, I just think it's going to be a moot point in a matter of, you know, a few days or two dozen days. But the real issue here is that nobody can want or imagine going along with, including Pierre Pauliev, should he become prime minister, the idea that the downtown core of Ottawa can be blockaded by anybody, regardless of what issue they're promoting. And that was a policing failure, but it requires a different kind of diligence. And it's not really going to get solved

by the Emergencies Act one way or the other. It's a policing and control question that we need to address in the medium and longer term. And also the political point that Chantal made, that the conservatives have to be unified in support of the law, not cherry pick. All right. A yes or no answer on this.

Will we still be talking about this next Friday? Yes. Yes. Oh. Maybe Ukraine too. Yeah. Hopefully not. Hopefully not Ukraine.

But probably. But quite possibly. Yeah. All right. Listen, thank you both. Another wonderful discussion. We covered a lot of bases there. Chantelle in Montreal and Bruce in Ottawa.

I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford. We'll look forward to another week of great programming right here on the bridge, leading up to next Friday's Good Talk. Take care. Have a good weekend wherever you are. And we'll talk to you again on Monday. Thank you.