The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk for a Wild Week

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Three words: Truckers -- Erin O'Toole.   And then many more words and lively discussion from Chantal and Bruce!

Are you ready for Good Talk? Well, of course you're ready for Good Talk. This is Friday, man. And there's so much to talk about. Peter Mansbridge here in snowy Stratford, Ontario. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. And if you were looking for a week where lots of interesting things were happening in the nation's capital, this was your week. What a week.

The protest. Well, we're going to define what to call it here in the next few minutes, whether it's a protest or an occupation or whatever it is you want to call it and there was also the firing of the leader of the opposition i mean that's a lot of good stuff so we'll talk about that and let's get started right away on the on the situation on the streets of Ottawa. Because after seven or eight days now, people are asking who is actually in charge. If something's going to be done about these honking trucks and the people in them, whose responsibility is that?

Is it a municipal responsibility, City of Ottawa, Ottawa Police? Actually, from what we've seen from the Ottawa Police, they don't seem to want to do too much, except, wow, they gave out parking tickets. That'll scare them away. Is it the province of Ontario? Hey, the Premier seems to be trying to distance himself as much as he can from this.

Or is it the federal government? Part of this is obviously on federal government lines. So whose actual responsibility is it? The Prime Minister says he's not at the point of calling in the army. A lot of people think he should be. But let's start with responsibility. And, you know, I suppose there's a degree of responsibility for each one of those levels of government but who has the overall responsibility on this one chantelle why don't you start us well the people who are holding uh the city of ottawa and the

federal capital hostage have the first responsibility on this. The Ottawa police forces who saw this coming, it's not as if they materialized the truckers or the intentions of some of them, of their leadership was unclear before they ever got to Parliament Hill, was very naive in its handling of people who come with big trucks. I am amazed that you, Bruce, and I have driven around Parliament Hill over the years. And if he or I had parked under the Prime Minister's office building for 10 or 15 minutes, it wouldn't have taken even that long for someone to come from the RCMP or the police to tell us to move out of that space. And if I had said, well, I'm just picking up my child or some valid family-related excuse, they would still have

told me to move on. It wouldn't have been negotiable. So the notion that you allow people with big trucks, sometimes full of fuel, to just park in that area, it kind of boggles the mind to imagine that that was allowed. I think the Conservative Party, for validating and associating itself or some of its members with the demonstrators in the face of people who are bearing signs or saying things that actually are unacceptable in a democracy. This is a group that came to Parliament Hill telling some of its supporters that it wanted to overthrow the government. The notion that parliamentarians would deliver donuts to people who are coming to Ottawa to say, we're going to take over and we're going to get rid of the government is also mind-boggling, and it's the first in all the years that I've covered it. I think the Trudeau government has done a very poor job of explaining why there is a vaccine mandate to cross the border and of showing up at the time of crisis when the eyes of the country are on Parliament Hill. Justin Trudeau is still the Prime Minister, and he has left that space largely vacant. To hold a news conference on childcare in Manitoba is really interesting, but it does not

speak to there is someone in charge who is explaining what exactly is happening. Waiting for journalists to ask does not really qualify as strong leadership, usually in a crisis. And it's been the case over the course of the pandemic. Government leaders are front and center to show that they're aware of this. I looked at Prime Minister Trudeau's itinerary for today. He's visiting virtually, I think, a classroom. I don't think that sends the right signal to the country and to the many Canadians who are saying, well, how does this end?

And is anyone preoccupied within the government with this? Where does it go from here? I understand the response about the army. You just don't call in the army unless you have the Premier of Ontario, the Mayor of Ottawa, et cetera, saying, we need to do this. Can you please move on this? You need some kind of a political consensus and it's happening in Ontario. And just as an aside, the absence of the Premier of Ontario from the front lines over the first days of this event was also very surprising. There is a convoy making its way to Quebec City and the National Assembly,

and I can safely report that Premier Legault has not disappeared at his cottage to go cross-country skiing over the past three days. He's been front and center in saying we will not tolerate the abuse and we will not allow this to become a siege. Whether he succeeds or not, it is still kind of surprising. So I'm guessing that kind of goes around. The Bloc Québécois and the NDP, I found, have been responsible adults in this discussion. But as François Blanchet rightly pointed out, neither of them is at the head of the federal government,

just into it always. All right, you've opened a lot of doors there. Let's see which one Bruce tends to take. Who's responsible for doing something about it? The first thing, Peter, is that, you you know as i've kind of felt before like this is the problem with asking sean talent to give the first answer to the most important question she has a boatload of all of the good ideas and all of the good takes and then she just kind of puts them out there and then the rest of us go well why don't we just go and have our second coffee of the day no look i agree i agree with so much of what chantal said i think that technically peter the question of policing responsibility is you know first and foremost with the ottawa

police and i don't think they've done to say that they've not done a good job is completely to understate the situation and happily at least outgoing mayor jim watson has been more and more blunt and scathing in his criticism of of the way that things have been going in the last few days i think once that fails then it's up to the province and then if that fails it's up to the federal government and we've had cascading levels of hesitation to step in. Now, I understand the reason for the hesitation, which is and everybody can get it, which is that you don't want to precipitate the violence that some people attending this protest probably do want. They want conflict. They don't really care about the vaccine mandates.

They don't care about um you know the whole pandemic basket of issues they want conflict because they're here because they hate trudeau and they want the government to be changed and they've been disappointed with the outcome of elections and they're and they're venting their frustration and it's february and it's canada and it's cold and and so there's a lot of that um But, you know, I think the absence of Premier Ford is also really, really compelling. I don't know what he's going to do in Toronto this weekend if there's a protest, but I rather suspect that he can't afford to be as hands off as he has been with respect to Ottawa, where he doesn't look at these political math and think that there's very much at stake for him.

I think the shocking, but not that shocking, display of the Conservatives, some of the Conservative members of Parliament, including now the interim leader of the Conservative Party, who, let's be clear, wore a MAGA hat. And a lot of Canadians may think that Donald Trump is a good human being, but a great number more don't. And so now we have a Conservative leader, interim for sure, in Parliament, who was cheerfully sporting a MAGA hat. And I should say two years ago, maybe just almost to the day, was pretty clear in calling for an end to blockades in another situation where a different type of Canadian were involved.

And in this particular instance, you know, we saw this leaked email today where she advocated that the Conservatives not encourage the protesters to go home because it was better to make it Justin Trudeau's problem. Well, this is a level of cynicism that people are entitled to wish for better from their politicians. And I'm not going to dump very much on the Conservative Party today. It's had a bad week, and I really hope that it heals itself and improves itself. But the track record of Pierre Poliev and Candace Bergen and Andrew Scheer and, you know, for sure, Aaron O'Toole as well on this protest has been miserable. It's been a miserable display of character and leadership. And we should all, including the conservatives, take note of it and say, we've got to do better than this. All right. You know, it's still, and I think you've all basically saying the same thing, it does come down to being Justin Trudeau's problem.

If the other levels of government aren't going to do anything, eventually it hits the federal wire, which it seems to have done now um part of dealing with this is trying to determine what in fact are we dealing with i mean bruce you call it a protest it's been called an occupation it's been called any number of things and i certainly get it in the mail i've never had more mail um to the bridge than i than i've had in this week, and 90% of it has been about what's been going on in Ottawa. I just want to read you a short excerpt from one letter that I got from a fellow named Derek Andrews in Fredericton, New Brunswick. And this may sound like a bit much in terms of what's going on here, but listen to what he says.

Listen to this argument. I believe the different levels of policing know this is an ugly, ugly fight. I hope I'm wrong. I'm hoping there will be a pivot this weekend, and there's indeed a plan to remove these people, but quite honestly, I'm not sure you can do it without an ugly, ugly fight. I'll be watching with close attention what happens in Quebec, what's happening in Coutts, Alberta, which is completely in everyone's blind spot, and of course, what the next steps are in Ottawa.

If Ottawa fills up with happy protesters again, that'll be a great sign to get this back on track. If not, these trucks may have basically trogan-horsed themselves into our capital under the cover of protest. And he goes on, if you think this protest was a tactical move, it might help to adjust the perspective. Remember, they're about to do the same thing to Quebec City

that they've done to Ottawa, possibly also Toronto. So within a week, they'll have our prime minister secured outside of Ottawa, played a part in getting the PC leader removed, and have both the English capital of the country and the French capital occupied and locked. These truckers have been empowered to believe they are freedom fighters, and I'm not sure how the government or the military are going to play this out. I can tell you for certain it's not going to be a bunch of parking tickets that people are suggesting. Okay.

So that's quite a picture he paints of an occupation force that's moved in and is moving in and tactically moving in a number of areas. Not forgetting what their goal is. Stated goal, overthrow the government, make them resign, get them out, have the governor general appoint a new government. So what do we call this? What do we call it? Well, what this is describing is a coup.

And you can try to see this under that light, but that would mean that you are going to overthrow Doug Ford's government, Francois Legault's government, and Justin Trudeau's government, and then who comes and leads the country. It's a simplistic way. I'm not saying this won't turn ugly, but I'm saying before you go there, you need to show who it is that would run the country. Are we seriously saying here that the people we've been seeing on Parliament Hill or those who are driving to Quebec City will be walking in Parliament and the National Assembly next week and making legislation.

I don't think so. I believe the critical mass, a massive critical mass of Canadians, Quebecers, Ontarians would stand in the way of that. And I don't for a second believe for all of their flirting with that movement that people like MPs like Pierre Poilier or others would actually play in that movie. That's kind of a bridge too far. So, yes, I think civil society would react. I was interested in seeing in the tide of that movement how the Quebec and Ontario convoys are kind of in support of what's happening on Parliament Hill. And I was fascinated by the fact that not only is not a single member of the National Assembly going to come and grace this demonstration with his or her presence. But the fledging Quebec Conservative Party, which has been on the rise because of its opposition to vaccine mandates and health restrictions, is also declining

to associate itself in any way, shape or form with the Quebec City convoy. So, where you get the political momentum to stage the coup that is being described here, I don't see where you get it. I don't see a group of parliamentarians, whether they be provincial or federal, willing to play in that movie. And I don't believe that you can stage that movie unless you have some solid political ally to execute it. Okay, Bruce. As far as I can tell, that's not happening.

Yeah, I think this is one of the more ludicrous propositions that deserve to be, you know, stomped on immediately by all of the elected officials across all of the parties. Just simply to say that one thing that is not on is that we become ungovernable because we decide that we need to negotiate with a group that decides that it's going to come and blockade parliament that's just a completely ludicrous thing and maybe in some respects the most you know the second most disappointing thing to watch is how few conservatives were able to articulate that proposition in the midst of this crisis, the most disappointing thing was the realization, not for the first time, that there are angry people, there are racist people, there are people who believe in Nazism, there are people willing to put the Confederate flag on their trucks, there are people willing to buy and sell Star of David badges. And we've always known that there's a part of society that has that harbors those feelings

and what's happened in this situation is that they found fellow travelers to go to ottawa and make noise and draw attention and it didn't mean i'm not saying and saying that that everybody who came to town is part of this protest or that everybody feels some alignment with the protesters which is actually millions of canadians who feel something in common with these protesters. It doesn't mean that they all harbor or countenance or support those views, but it does mean that we've given some more oxygen and somehow conferred a little bit more legitimacy and life on these um the the people who hold these dark angry uh offensive prone to kind of incitement of violence uh views and that's a that's a worrying thing for the future of our country and it's happening obviously in other countries too so i'm quite worried about

that and i sort of break down the what's going on this week into four issues one is do people have the right to protest sure and we've shown that that right is upheld uh for without any question whatsoever second are there people who have um hateful views and um and is that something that we should be more careful not to ignore, not to enable, not to goad, not to sanction, not to dignify? Yeah, absolutely. And so there was some disappointment, I think, from my standpoint in watching how this played out. Third is, should we end vaccine mandates or lockdowns or mask wearing? And I think this is a more complicated issue because I do think that while people,

some people want that hand to come right away because they're so frustrated. I think other people are able to look at the data and what's happening in other parts of the world and without rancor or without being completely misinformed or without being traffickers and conspiracy theories are able to say, I think the level of risk has come down to the point where it's acceptable to change some of these rules. And I think that's a legitimate debate. I frankly think that we're probably three or four weeks away from that policy step being taken. So I think that the size of the protest is probably much greater than the outcome really requires. But I think it's important to recognize that that's a legitimate debate. And it's not only up to the health professionals to decide that.

There are mental health issues. There are issues of what is a kind of a, enough of a, you know, a level of risk that's tolerable. And, and I think everybody gets to have their view on that. And I think politicians need to be cognizant of that. And the last one is the dissolving government.

And I think Chantel handled that perfectly, which is that it's just ludicrous to imagine that we'd put ourselves in a situation where we'd go along with their idea that we dissolve government and replace it with who knows what. It's nuts. Well, it may be nuts, but they are saying it, right?

I mean, and the question was, and the letter was from this fellow in Fredericton, was basically looking at what they're saying and what they're doing and you get up in the helicopter and look down at it it is a coup that they're planning as chantelle says when you when you get in on an helicopter and look down on it what you see are 250 people that's right. Let's be serious here. I get it. I get it.

But the point is that he's making is look around at what's happening, whether it's 250 people or 250,000 people. These things are actually happening in our country in strategic locations. You've got the prime minister

out of town for his we don't know that by the way well wherever he is he's somewhere in a in a spot that's secret because of for his own protection um you you've got the capital kind of locked down and and occupied by truckers they're heading towards quebec city they're heading towards toronto they've got the problem in southern Alberta. I mean, there's a lot of stuff. I hear what you're saying, all of you, what you're saying. I also hear what our friend in Fredericton is worried about. He clearly states this is the extreme view as to what might be happening, but it's a view.

He should be worried that the law and order party is basically saying let's uh let this play out see where it goes maybe there's some political upside for us listen we get it bruce and you're you know you've made it very clear how you feel about the way the conservatives have uh have acted this week and there's probably not a lot of disagreement on that but uh you know the bottom line is they're not in power at the moment you know others are at different levels of government and what they're doing or not doing uh is certainly of interest to a lot of canadians i got to take a break here there's a great discussion and we'll keep it going i i do want to you know i i watched this news conference yesterday i mean they called it a news conference.

It's a series of statements by some of the figures we've been kind of wondering about all week as to what are they saying about what it is they're actually doing. These are the protest leaders, supposedly. I found it a bizarre news conference. I mean, there was everything but somebody with hair dye leaking down the side of their face. It was a very strange situation to watch and it was cut short. They didn't answer really any questions,

which is odd. So I wouldn't mind getting your feeling and your thoughts about the leadership of this movement that is holding, as Chantel says, is holding the city of Ottawa and to a degree the country hostage right now. But first we've got to take this break. And we're back on the bridge with Good Talk, Chantelle Iberis in Montreal, Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa.

The topic we're still rolling on is the convoy, the protest, the occupation. You call it what you want, but it's certainly a topic of hot discussion, not just on this podcast and broadcast, but also in living rooms and kitchens across the country. So we'll keep talking about it here for a second. Your thoughts on the leadership of what we, at least what we've witnessed and the little we know about the leadership, the apparent leadership of what's going on initially in Ottawa. Bruce, why don't you start us on this part?

I think that, you know, it's hard to know what the leadership really is. I feel like it's a good idea that parliamentarians are looking into the GoFundMe $10 million that's been reportedly raised and are going to try to get to the bottom of it. I mean, yesterday we had some people who said that we are the leaders of this. And what was probably notable about it from my standpoint is that they persisted in this idea that they were going to succeed in their coup. And, you know, even before the break, we were talking about this. I don't believe that the government has stopped governing. I don't believe that a coup has succeeded in any way, shape or form. And I don't think it will.

But the leaders were trying yesterday to kind of soften the image of what they're doing because they felt that it had been characterized badly and presumably that they weren't kind of commanding as much public enthusiasm as they had hoped. But I don't really believe that they are capable as a group, the people who spoke to the cameras yesterday, of controlling or limiting or shaping the behavior. It doesn't feel to me like a kind of a movement of all like minds and um and similar political perspectives i think that it's a it's it's pretty ragtag and i think the leadership can say what it wants but the behavior is really the thing that needs to be addressed and and it you know and i i don't know i thought it was it was uh I don't want to be too unkind about it, so I'll stop there.

It's so unlike you to be unkind about anything on this show. Well, you know, it's Friday. I'm trying to ease up. Okay, Chantal, your thoughts? I'm not even sure that everyone who is still around Parliament Hill in this operation knows who the leadership is or has a sense of how they became leaders. That's far from clear to me. And I'm not sure that those so-called leaders have a clue

as to who exactly is sticking around for them. But I do know that that press conference, if it was meant to make the families who showed up last weekend feel safe and happy to do it again, that certainly didn't work because it was chaos. who were not in any position to give the impression that they were in charge, that they had a game plan beyond saying, we're not going to go anywhere until God knows when. I'm guessing that the security services and the police forces have a better take on who is doing what. But I'm still curious as to why the public is getting all kinds of hints about foreign

money, weapons, but the result is zero action. To tell people, as my understanding is, people who work in hospitals in Toronto have been told to make it look like they don't work in hospitals, is one of the weirdest instructions that I've ever seen. We're actually telling healthcare workers

to hide the fact that they try to help people who are sick from people who are coming to demonstrate. Or we're telling, in the case of Ottawa, telling people, well, maybe you're better off not wearing your mask on the street. How does that work in the real world? And how does the role of the police and others become so turned around that their job

is to tell you how to hide from potential unlawful abuse of your capacity to be going to work or to be walking on the street with a mask or without a mask is the larger mystery to me. When this is over, and it will be over at some point, I think we will need to look into the circumstances that led to this abdication of what the role of protecting the public is from the standpoint of police forces. I'd be shocked if everybody who holds a job at senior levels of certain security forces still has those jobs once, once this is all over, um, the,

the healthcare workers and what they wear, um, that, you know, Chantal, you're quite right. That, that was the instruction put out yesterday by, um, uh, police, uh, forces in Toronto, uh, based on what, some of what had happened in Ottawa. I mean, some health care workers were, if not attacked, were certainly harassed by some protesters for being health care workers. And the Toronto authorities fear the same kind of thing, but that this would be happening and all the other things you list,

and nothing is being done to stop it, appears not to being done because i agree with you you can be sure that whether it's cesus or the rcmp or the opp or you know maybe even the ottawa police force when they're not busy handing out tickets parking tickets um there there is surveillance going on as to everything you know like phone calls they're triangulating all kinds of stuff to uh to see where the money's coming from all that kind of stuff is going on let me you know if there was a you know in the letters that i received this week most of them i'll say were very supportive um or not supportive of the protesters. And that had turned. Some had started off being supportive and changed their minds as the week wore on,

as I think Bruce hinted to earlier. That was common. But there was also something else common about some of these letters, and it was a challenging situation in terms of the media, because those who are obviously in support of the protesters feel the media has not done a good job on telling the story, that they're not getting their issues put forward, and the focus is all on, you know, the swastika on the flag, the, you know, the yellow stars, the, you know, the peeing on the National War Memorial,

the stomping on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the stuff draped around Terry Fox's statue. Warren Shockey wrote to me, and he's from Calgary. The politicians in Ottawa aren't listening. The three major news outlets aren't listening. And I'm a bit disappointed that your podcasts are not making any attempt to listen either. I've lived and worked in both Eastern Canada, sorry, and Western Canada, and I'm fully vaccinated and support the vaccination mandate.

But I'd like to hear the other side of the story once in a while. That's Warren Shockey in Alberta. And, you know, that was a more polite letter than a lot of the ones i did receive too from uh supporters of the protesters has the media handled this in a responsible fashion keeping in mind that there are obviously different uh different kinds of media reporting out there but in a general, has it been handled responsibly? It is not journalism to give equal weight to arguments on both sides of a story when one argument is basically faulty. And in this case, so let's go back to the original reason

for all this, which is vaccine mandates for truckers who cross the border to carry stuff from the U.S. and back from the U.S. Well, lost in this, possibly if you're going to go there, is maybe the media did not make it clear enough, especially in the early days, that this is a rule that applies both in the US and Canada. And so that those who would say, let's get rid of the vaccine mandate for trackers, or actually, or have the onus to show that they have convinced the Biden administration and US authorities to do the same thing. Because otherwise, what exactly is the practical result of saying yes to, okay, we're not going to ask you to be vaccinated and you still won't be able to go to the US and do your job? Second, if that is the main reason. Then, at what point does the fact that 90enters in a minority in a given environment and say,

well, these people matter as much, even if there is a handful of them, as the vast majority who are in the same situation and who say, I can live with that. It's part of my job to satisfy a number of safety rules. I I'm guessing that the third issue is, these are people that have been listened to in that they came to Ottawa with an agenda that has, as far as I can tell, very little to do in the end with the vaccine mandate for truckers. They have not brought on site the Truckers Association. And they did come with the agenda of overturning the government. That's what they said they wanted to do.

It's not the media that made it up. So here we are supposed to sit as journalists and say, gee, you know, they want to overturn the government. We just had an election six months ago where most 60% of voters supported parties that agree with vaccine mandates. That's a clear majority. So let's give equal weight to the call to dispose of this government and replace it and explain how that would work. Well, it's impossible to explain how that would work because it doesn't work. That is not what democracies work like. So I am not big on the vaccine mandate thing. And I was not surprised, but also not unhappy to see Premier Legault drop the idea of a health tax on people who are unvaccinated.

I thought it was a wrongheaded move and it went against every principle and tenet of the Canada Health Act and the way we operate when we offer health services. But the arguments that these people are bringing forward are frankly not arguments that you can do much with except do what I just did, which is take them one by one and say, I'm sorry, but you don't have a case here. This is not something that I can look at and say it has equal weight to the other side of the argument. Bruce, on the media. Well, you know, as I've tried to say so many times over the months, the media is not a monolith. And, you know, so I think I feel obliged to say that again,

just in case you guys forget that. But here's the thing for me, right? I actually think the media have done a pretty good job by and large i mean there's always room for um for some things that you find discomforting and i i particularly wish that there had been a little bit more regular and frequent um acknowledgement the fact that um this is a this is a rule that exists on the American side of the border. And so changing the regulation that the protesters say that they wanted to have changed literally would not have any effect on their ability to cross the border and do their work.

I think Chantel's right. The reason why your writer is frustrated really isn't the fault of the media. It's the lack of reasonable argument here. Why would you expect anything other than coverage that is skeptical to critical to, you know, kind of mocking almost? I mean, it doesn't hold up. If you're if you said that your argument is we want to have a discussion about whether or not vaccine mandates are still a good idea. And by the way, if anybody shows up with a Confederate flag or anything like that, they have to go away. They're not part of our group. I think this could have been quite a different conversation. Now, I still don't think it would legitimize blockading the city for the better part of a week now. But I think there are a lot of people who are quite prepared to say,

including the Ontario Medical Officer of Health yesterday, that we now need to kind of look at this two-shot mandate and say, if it doesn't really confer a higher level of safety, because the booster is the necessary step, and maybe there's enough people that now have it, and we're close enough to what appears to be barring some other variant the end of this pandemic and it turning into an endemic situation well i think that's an entirely reasonable debate and and i don't think that that's what this protest sounded like it wanted to do i think it sounded like it wanted to um bring a whole bunch of people who wanted to hurl slurs at the prime minister and kind of voice angry opinions about a whole variety of things and say that they were here

to dissolve the government. So I think they got the media that their arguments deserved, which is to say pretty critical by and large. And I think that's the way it should work. Okay. We're going to take our final break here. We've got 10 minutes left, which sounds like a lot, but the way you guys are talking today, which has been great, 10 minutes are going to fly by.

That's mostly Chantal. I know, that's right. Okay, guys. And when we come back, the topic, we can say it in two words, Aaron O'Toole. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. We welcome you from wherever you are listening. You know, I think it's been pretty clear from what we've had to say over the last six months since the election that Aaron O'Toole was dead man walking. And as it turned out, the walk ended this week with, you know, an overwhelming vote in caucus. About three quarters of the caucus, almost three quarters of the caucus, voted to say it was time. Goodbye, Aaron O'Toole.

And that's what's happened. And as Bruce mentioned and Chantel mentioned, Candace Bergen is the new interim leader. While they wait to find out the details of when an actual leadership convention will be held and who will step forward to to run this party that has developed a once and done format in terms of its leaders they get one chance and if they don't win they're gone even if they hold the other party to a minority even if they get more votes than the other parties, they only get one shot at it. So when you see those numbers, I mean, we talked the other day, Bruce and I talked the other day about, you know, in a way it's kind of the Flora syndrome.

Flora McDonald in 1976 didn't get anywhere near the number of votes in the leadership convention that she thought she was going to get. And she felt she had been promised from Conservative Party members. She didn't get it. And what we determined then with the Flora Syndrome, as it was called, is that people lie. And I'm sure that Aaron O'Toole didn't walk into that room. He may have thought his leadership was in serious trouble,

but I don't think he thought that three quarters of the room was going to say goodbye. Um, and if he didn't know that, uh, maybe he has, uh, you know,

bad powers of, uh, focus on in terms of what's happening in front of him. Um, but nevertheless, that number, did it surprise you, and what does it tell you about the state of the Conservative Party today?

And Chantal, you can start. Keeping in mind, in spite of how much I've just blabbed on, we have a limited amount of time for this one. Yeah, well, thanks for taking all that time. Seriously. No, it did not surprise me. Why did it not surprise me? Because I think many MPs who would have preferred to keep Aaron O'Toole, when they saw that almost one third of caucus had signed a letter to have that vote on his leadership, realized that even if they might have preferred keeping him on, because they don't really relish the alternatives, the only thing voting with him would accomplish would have been to delay the inevitable and cause a painful period of even more divisions. And so they did vote with those who really wanted Aaron O'Toole gone and who have wanted him gone since possibly before the election.

And when he offered to move forward the party's leadership review, I think he convinced them that there was no point. If you're going to have someone lose his leadership, it's better to just do it and get it over with than to just drag on and on and on at cost of caucus unity. That being said, that is not to say that there is not a serious group of MPs, some of them serious, valuable MPs who have been frontline critics and who you would want around the cabinet table, who are not keeping their options as to their political future open on the condition of how and who becomes the next leader. This parliament will last maybe 18 to 24 months. There are people in that caucus who can go on and do things that they will feel will be more productive should the party take a turn towards the let's be more like Maxim Belny's party and let's throw out all of the climate change agenda that O2 painfully advanced.

So this story is not played out and the stakes in the choice of the next leader for the Conservative Party are possibly even more serious than the stakes of the caucus vote on Erin O the number of its most valuable members slowly but surely went on to do more productive things sitting for instance around the cabinet table of john horgan they kind of gave up on the notion that they would ever be in government they felt they had talent they went and used that talent more productively than sitting as a rump in the house of Commons. All right, Bruce? I think the first thing for me is that you could look at that result at the caucus vote and the sheer size of the rejection and say that was merciless. On the other hand, I think Chantal makes the point that in one sense it was merciful because

it made it clear that this shouldn't go on and he didn't have the support. And so he might have felt incredibly surprised by it. But in the end, it was probably better. And a second thing is that my my wife, Nancy Jameson, is is is the smartest person I know about politics. You know, no disrespect to Chantal, who is like tied for the smartest. Where are we going here to a matter of years ago when she was a legislative assistant to joe clark when he was prime minister was kind of made famous and i think jeffrey simpson's book for saying that on the morning of a fateful vote that the conservatives

had in lawson the house would come and she said we don't have the numbers and I'm still kind of shocked that this vote went ahead, given the degree to which they could have had a caucus delegation call up Aaron and say, let's not have this vote, because this is how it's going to turn out. That would have been a more elegant way for him to end his political career. I would also add that he kind of finished the way he started. You know, he started his leadership by being that person who said, I'm going to campaign this way, and then I'm going to switch to what I'm kind of standing for. And I think in the final hours of his leadership, it seemed that that's what he was doing, again, offering to change what he stood for and campaigned for. And maybe that's a lesson for future leaders, that that kind of prevarication, that chameleon style of leadership doesn't actually generally

work very well. It makes you vulnerable to all kinds of people who have different points of view than the ones that you harbor or voice on any given day. And finally, I think that while it's fair to say that the Conservative Party needs to worry about whether it's too quick to reject leaders and this idea of one and done, I think that's a legitimate question. I think that Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole are out because they weren't very good at the job. Their negatives went zooming up even as they were opposition leaders campaigning against the prime minister, who's not without scar tissue, wasn't without vulnerabilities. And their negatives greatly outstripped the evidence that the party brand

was a problem. And so, you know, I do think that the party needs to be careful about giving people a chance. And as you know, I felt like Aaron O'Toole deserved another chance. But I do think that the party needs to be careful about giving people a chance. And as you know, I felt like Aaron O'Toole deserved another chance. But I also think that leaders need to understand that if they become that unpopular without having had to make decisions in government, they're doing some things wrong. And that goes to the point that Chantal was making about what kind of party did they want to be for mainstream Canadians to see. All right. We've got a couple of minutes left two weeks ago we uh we all seem to agree that pierre poliev was the likely leader in the clubhouse so to speak before a campaign had even started i'm wondering if your view has changed on that at this moment on on one question and the second is uh max bernier depending on which way this party drifts is there any way he could end up back and his party and his 7% or 8%, whatever it is, drifts back towards the Conservatives?

There are two questions on the Max and Bernier thing. voters drift back to the party, possibly, but it would cost to the hopes of the Conservative Party under its next leader to go and occupy that right of centre vote that is the vote that is available to blue liberals who are not feeling that the Trudeau government reflects what they believe should be the government and the fiscal course of the government, but who find nothing in the performance of the Conservative Party that makes them believe that this would be a competent alternative. So the closer that the party gets to the Maxime Bernier types, and the more it caters to them, the more it stands to disconnect itself from the voters that will make a difference to getting elected. The second part of your question was,

could Maxime Bernier come back in the fall? He says no. And would he ever accept to play second fiddle to a leader? But people always say no before a negotiation. That is how you negotiate. Here again, I think that would be really dangerous. People are going to say, well, didn't Stephen Harper bring, you know, make peace with Peter McKay? I think it would be an insult to the former Reform Party and certainly to the former Tories to compare them with the People's Party and to Maximilien. I think the circumstances are different. And he is a toxic presence. And the closer the conservatives get to it, the more they risk shrinking their own capacity to expand their debt. All right, Bruce, you get the last word.

I think one of the worst things that happened to the idea of a centrist, competitive conservative party was the creation of the reform party i think one of the better things to have tried was to bring the conservative reform alliance together with the progressive conservatives i don't think it completely took as an idea because i think that the leadership subsequently wasn't really that into winning the hearts and minds of centrist conservatives i think it's, it seems likely on the surface that Pierre Polyev will win this and that probably what he'll try to do is focus first on bringing back the votes that were lost to the people's party. And I think that that will feel like a thing that warms the hearts of a lot

of his caucus and a lot of his members. But I think it, it poses further risks for the Conservative Party. There's a lot of water under the bridge, a lot of things that Max Bernier has said, a lot of things that won't hold up very well under scrutiny in an election campaign. And so I hope that's not where the Conservative Party goes. And I really like seeing all of the columns and opinion pieces written saying we need a competitive conservative party one that can win and i really hope that the party listens to that and has a field of candidates that reflect that point of view all right fascinating discussion

um and you know we've the three is three of us have all seen a lot of different things happen in ottawa over the last years many years that we've been covering it and watching it and analyzing it. And this week will go down as one of those weeks. Two very different things, but with some similarities at the core, have taken over the national headlines. And neither story is over yet. We've got lots to talk about on Good Talk in the future with both of these events.

We'll see how they unfold. All right, Chantel in Montreal, Bruce in Ottawa, thank you both. And we'll talk to you again in a week on Good Talk. The Bridge will be back on Monday. Have a great weekend. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Take care.