The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk for an Age of Conspiracy.

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Bruce and Chantal join in with some Good Talk about whether the summer has changed anything on the national political landscape. There were great expectations back in June about what needed to happen, but did anything?  Also a feisty conversation about the growth of conspiracy theories and their impact on the political dialogue.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And of course you're ready. You've been anxious to hear Good Talk for, well, more than a month now since our first summer special edition of Good Talk. This is the second summer special edition of Good Talk. The last one for the summer, we'll be back with our regular weekly episodes of Good Talk starting in a couple of weeks from now. So Chantelle is in Montreal, Bruce is in Ottawa. And the last time we talked in June, it was kind of to set up the summer and whether or not, you know, the Liberals were able to get their act together, whether Conservatives were really on the verge of electing Pierre Polyev, whether the NDP were

having doubts about whether or not this deal with the Liberals was a good thing or not. So all those kind of things were at play and they had two months to sort them all out. And the issue now is, well, did anything really change change has the landscape changed at all in the canadian political situation bruce is just out with a new abacus data national survey of canadians opinions and if you look at the straight vote intention thing it hasn't really changed that much the conservatives are up a couple of points theatives are up a couple of points. The Liberals are down a couple of points. Everybody else is kind of where they were over the last few months. So nothing big has changed there.

When I sort of peel back the numbers beyond that, Bruce, the thing I notice most is the way Canadians feel about Trudeau, the prime minister. And it's, you know, it's not pretty. But the question is, is it really that different than it's always been? And, you know, just to basically look at some of his numbers, I mean, there were more people who think he's a horrible prime minister than any of the other categories you list, and there are four other ones.

But a horrible prime minister, 29%. A great prime minister, 5%. So you look at that and you look at, you know, Trudeau just generally is a prime minister. Their impressions of Trudeau have changed dramatically and seem to be on a real downturn form right now. Negative impressions of Trudeau, and it goes on. So the question is, is it as bad as it's, you know,

is it worse right now for Justin Trudeau than it's ever been? And if so, what does that say about the national positioning of the parties? It's a serious situation for the prime minister and for the government, but it isn't historically anywhere near as bad as we've seen for some incumbents. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't look at those creeping upward negative ratings and not take them seriously and understand the nature of what's motivating people to say, I'm less and less satisfied. But by the same token, his numbers are probably by a point or two the worst that they've been, but only by a point or two worse than they were right around the time of the SNC-Lavalin scandal, after which he did win a couple of elections. So I think we need to put them in some context. many people think he's a horrible prime minister also needs to be read with an understanding that

there are a lot of people who voted against him three times and were pretty heavily motivated by their dislike and by parties that opposed the prime minister who said you should dislike him. But that's still not 40 or 50 percent. And his opponents in the last two elections saw negatives that got up into the 50% range, Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole. And I guess the big question, apart from what the prime minister can do to improve his standing with Canadians, is how will Pierre Poiliev, assuming that he's the conservative leader, fare? Right now, he's communicating on a channel that is mostly being consumed by conservative partisans.

His positives aren't growing. His negatives are a little bit elevated. But the question is, once he emerges on the stage, if in fact that's what happens, and Canadians start paying attention to him, is he going to wear better than Aaron O'Toole or Andrew Scheer? Or is there a potential that because of the way that he comes across and the things that he espouses, that he's actually going to start to see his negatives rise as well? So I think there's a lot left to be done. The Liberals can't afford to just bank on another underperforming opponent. And the other two things that have changed, and I'll finish on this point, is the last time we talked, we were still talking about COVID. And Canadians were still thinking a lot about COVID. And right now, we're at the lowest level of public concern with COVID than we've seen since it

arrived in Canada. We'll see what happens to that in the fall. But all the indications are that people see COVID now as a risk that they can take on and live with, and they don't want the economy shut down, and they don't want government imposing a lot of measures. They might or might not take boosters. But it's a very different context than we've seen for the last couple of years where the government's agenda really just needed to be COVID and what to do to help people. Whereas right now, food prices are high, gas prices are high, it's hard to travel. There are frustrations that didn't

exist before, mostly around economics. And the government, in my view, has been a bit silent on some of that stuff this summer. And they're going to need to sound more like they're engaged on the economy if they're going to look to find those voters again. All right. I want to bring Chantel into this and remind all of us and Chantel that when we talked in June, We were pretty aggressive on the sense that the government actually really needed to do something to show that it was focusing on some of those issues, like the economy, like the finance minister getting involved in that. And the question is, you know, two months later or even more than two months later, has anything really changed? Okay. I want to get back to those standing, but first to your more immediate question. It seems to me, or I'm possibly being generous in my interpretation, that a strategic decision has been made to keep

the government and the liberals powder dry until the Conservatives have a leader in place and the House resumes. I say generous because maybe it's just that they don't have any clue as to what they want to do. And we will discover that in the fall. But it would strategically be an option to say Canadian minds have not been totally focused on politics this summer, on the contrary. And the conservative leadership campaign will end shortly before the House rises. That being said, I agree with Bruce that you say, you know, the notion that the finance minister would become more involved in economics, an economics issue, is that not her job? And it seems to me that I keep seeing Chrystia Freeland welcoming foreign dignitaries and tweeting about Ukraine, which is all fine, but not really taking up the space that the government should be taking in the frame of

the bread and butter issues that are the prime concern of Canadians. To go back to Trudeau's standing, I've covered, like you guys have, a number of prime ministers. I don't think that his poor ratings at this point are anywhere in the category of Brian Mulroney over that last mandate, or even Stephen Harper, where it gets to the point that even policies that make sense are tainted by the fact that the prime minister is the person who is putting them forward. I don't think we are quite there yet.

And I'll bring you back to another example. Jean Chrétien, over his last mandate, also had very high negatives. But they seem to me to be closer in texture to those current bad ratings than to anything else. Remember, Jean Chrétien eventually put a date on his retirement to avoid internal turmoil and the Paul Martin faction poisoning the well of his leadership at the convention with the confidence vote in his leadership. But before he did reach that date, he put in place a series of policies that left the Liberal Party and Zhang Qixing himself in majority territory and voting intentions. Had Zhang Qixing gone to the polls after he declined to join the US and Iraq, after he put in public political financing, go down the list, he would have won that election

hands down. So this brings me to the number that I find more interesting and more disquieting for the government, and it goes back to the first points. And it is that the government's approval numbers are down, significantly down. And that to me tells me that most of us already have our own idea of Justin Trudeau, and we are not going to change our minds. If we think that he is so-so, we will not suddenly discover him as brilliant. If we think he's great and there are liberal partisans who believe he walks on water, that's not going to change.

And if we think he's crappy, we're not going to be convinced otherwise. Where the government really needs to work is on policy and making policy happen. That is where the cure is. It's not in reinventing Justin Trudeau. At this stage in his tenure, it's too late to reinvent him. But it is to demonstrate that this is a government that can still come up with competent policymaking that does respond to people's concerns. And that starts first and foremost with the economy, but also healthcare. If you go out there, you will hear about healthcare. And on this file too,

the federal government has mostly been missing in action. Did you want to pick up on that, Bruce? Yeah, I wanted to pick up on a couple of things. I agree with a lot of what Chantal has said, obviously, but I think a couple of things that occurred to me as she was going through her observations, going back to the negatives for Mulroney and Harper and past prime ministers. We've heard the expression, the irrational kind of dislike that exists around certain political leaders in the past, that their supporters will say, well, the criticisms of Harper are kind of irrational. They're based on this kind of exaggerated sense of how bad he is.

And I always think there has been a bit of truth to that, that people can get kind of dug in in their strong feelings against an incumbent. And maybe that's been more true with some conservatives than with some liberals, but that doesn't really matter to me. What matters to me now is that the quality of the irrationality towards Trudeau manifests itself in things that we've not really seen very much before, the conspiracy theory stuff, the idea that you don't just have to dislike his policies, but you have to believe strange things that aren't based on fact, that aren't based on science, that don't really make much sense from a public policy standpoint. And you almost see now Polyev having to do what Republican candidates have to do in the States, which is to follow that herd that is voicing

these conspiracy theories rather than stop them cold once in a while and say, well, actually, that's not a real thing. And what we should be trying to do is reduce the deficit or get to a place where taxes can come down, or this is our solution to the cost of housing, or this is what we could do to help with inflation. I commented a little while ago that I don't think that Pierre Polyev has really been stress tested in this race very much. And that's kind of what I'm talking about, that he doesn't seem to need to. All he seems to do is to put up a sign that says, there's a meeting where you can talk about bizarre conspiracy theories and hate on Trudeau. Why don't you come to it and while you're there, sign up for the Conservative Party and vote for me. I think it's working for him as a strategy to win that

leadership. But I don't think we've seen a version of irrational dislike of an incumbent that's quite like this. And I don't really know how it's going to play out because once he's the leader, can he really, I mean, people talk about whether or not he's going to be able to pivot or he's going to be willing to pivot. And I think the question is the people who he's been attracting, they don't want him to pivot and he doesn't look like he's getting ready to. He looks like he's comfortable with some of those theories.

The last point I would make is on the economy. It's a different set of economic issues than we've seen before. It's not jobs, jobs, jobs. There's lots of jobs. There's not enough workers for the jobs. It's inflation. But it's also the case that while some people are hit really hard by inflation, other people aren't experiencing inflation as a life-changing scenario right now.

It's not clear exactly what government can do in the near term and whether the problem will kind of go away over the medium and longer term. But the idea of an economy that everybody can thrive in, that's what I see as being a new definition. And for young people in particular, voters that Mr. Trudeau and the liberals need to count on to win, the question of housing affordability is the biggest part of that. And I don't know if they've got a plan that's going to be more persuasive and positive for people who are worried about that part of their economic lives, but I would think that they need and edgier and more impactful on the current situation than we've ever seen before. And I don't quite understand why, what's feeding it. But before any of that, quick break. break and we're back for our final summer edition of good talk chantelle is in montreal bruce is in

ottawa um before we get into conspiracy theory stuff again at least one question on it um chantelle did you want to pick up on some of the stuff that bruce was just mentioning before the break some uh i i understand would be saying about housing but i don't see how a federal government that is dealing with the bank of canada that is raising interest rates and mortgage rates, can do much except look like it's going, it's kind of eating its own tail. You give a break to people who are worried about housing. At the same time, you're making it harder for people to hang on or to get into housing.

It's a difficult policy area, and I don't really believe that it's one that can get resolved by the federal government on its own. It's coordinated action that's needed. And from province to province to province, the situation is also not necessarily totally similar, except that there are housing shortages in a lot of areas. Healthcare, to me, sounds like another matter.

And I know that we're all wary, given that we gave at the office a decade and a half ago to say, here we are again having a big debate about healthcare. But I believe that is where we are going. And that is a concern that the federal government needs to pay even more attention to than housing because it is a lot more widespread and its responsibilities in that area are considered by Canadians as being real. And I listened to the premiers, I listened to them this summer. And while you can think of a lot of things that the provinces have done wrong or could be doing better, you do know that nothing that happened this summer gave the impression that the federal government was terribly interested in being part of the solution.

It gave the impression that they wanted to win an argument with the provinces. And I'm not sure that that's going to work really well for Justin Trudeau and his government when he ends up with probably Francois Legault re-elected with a majority, with Doug Ford at the beginning of a new mandate and with very few friends around the provincial table, including BC's NDP government on health care. So if I were sitting in those back rooms, I would be saying you need to do better than announce that you've just hired a new chief federal nursing person. Because then the question is, oh, yeah, and to do what?

It sounds like an answer to a problem that is not maybe non-existent, but that is not the real problem. Are those who say that the health care system is on the verge of collapse, are they overstating the situation or is that where we are? I mean, you can't create nurses out of thin air. You cannot force a nurse that works in one area to suddenly go work in another area. You cannot create doctors, GPs, out of thin air. There is a critical shortage of medical personnel, nurses, et cetera.

And it is not limited to the usual places where it has been hard to ensure access to medical services. It's everywhere. You hear it from Ontario and from Toronto, not a place where you used to hear those laments as much as where I live these days. So it's not a simple issue. I'm not too sure. I mean, a lot of provinces, conservative ones, are saying, well, we're going to contract out to more private services. Seriously, I don't see that as a threat to Medicare, but I don't see how you create doctors and nurses or don't end up having them migrate out of the public system to the private system by sending more work to the private system. There is a labor issue at this point and a labor shortage.

It's critical not only, and by the way, it is not only nurses and doctors. Kids are going back to school today in Quebec. Hundreds of classes do not have a teacher to welcome the kids. It is not because there is no money to pay teachers. It's that there is no teachers to hire. So this issue of the aging of the population and what it is going to be doing to our public services, healthcare, education, you never really hear the prime minister or the minister of finance talk about this in terms that relate to people's everyday experience of thinking, where is my child, or in my case, my grandchild, going to be next week when they have suddenly merged grade three and four together because they're missing teachers?

You never hear about things like that. And I think up to a point that that conversation is more important than the housing conversation. Okay. Bruce, I want to rewind back to this issue of conspiracy theories and how people are being attracted, or some people are being attracted to it like a moth to light, in a way that we haven't seen before. I agree with both of you, obviously, because we've all witnessed it, how a government and a prime minister can fall out of favour in a big way with the Canadian people.

We've seen it more than a few times in our careers um but this seems to be being fed at least you were suggesting was some of it especially the depth of you know hatred um for the current prime minister by the willingness of his political opponents to draw people in on the conspiracy front and say you want to talk about this let's talk about it you know i i don't disagree with you in some cases as we've seen you know through the conservative leadership convention on the lead contender for the job, for sure, including his wife. I mean, his wife was saying things the other day on Twitter

about the prime minister, which I've never heard. I've certainly never heard anybody in the political arena talking that way. But why is this happening? What is feeding this? I mean, obviously, we see some of this south of the border, a lot of it, actually. But what's feeding it here? Well, I think that we talked in the past about the role of the Internet in allowing people to come across bits of information that help them feel better about something that they're frustrated with, and how often those elements of information, or not really information, but the elements of argument

that's presented to them, are kind of designed to foster their sense of grievance, their anger, and to torque up the sense that somehow the world is out to get them, is doing things that are against their interests. The clip that you and I were looking at the other day, Peter, about the conversation on a doorstep that Pierre Poliev and his wife had with a voter about the World Economic Forum is bizarre. You can think that Davos is a waste of money and that there are better ways to have a conversation with other people around the world about the economy. But the idea that having a conversation with other people from around the world about the economy is a terrible idea that's designed to undermine your interests as a Canadian.

That's really what was being discussed in that exchange. And it's not just those people, those three people having that conversation. There are a large number of them. And we saw Pierre Polyev say, I'll never let my ministers go to a meeting like that. And he applauded as this woman, and nothing against the woman, was saying things that really deserve to have that John McCain treatment when somebody said Barack Obama is Muslim, you know, and he's out to destroy America or something like that. And McCain correctly said, no, no, ma'am, we've got to understand here, we disagree on policies, but that's not who he is. And I think we need more of that, obviously.

I do think the larger question is not just this contest that we're headed towards. It's the idea that conservatism is being redefined as an engine for what, to my eyes anyway, and others I'm sure will disagree, for chaos and division. I listened to what Jean Charest and before he left the race, Patrick Brown and maybe Aitchison as well are saying, and they seem to be calling for supporters to embrace a version of conservatism, which isn't about chaos. It's the opposite. Conservatism for me has always been about stability and the opposite of chaos and unity, not division. in Canada, this tendency to redefine conservative as being something where the table is going to be flipped over. Who knows what kind of currency system we should have? Let's fire the Bank of Canada governor. Let's embrace whatever wild and nonsensical ideas are out there that are getting people angry who might decide that they

can cast a vote for the blue team. And I think it's very dangerous. I think it's dangerous for our democracy. I noted in the United States a little while ago, maybe three weeks, I know about a week ago, there was an NBC News poll, which asked people, what's the biggest threat facing the country, or the biggest threat facing the country or the biggest issue facing the country? And threats to democracy was the number one answer. Now, the curious part about that is I'm sure Democrats think that threats to democracy are coming from Republicans and vice versa. We're not there yet, but we do need democracy to kind of not become the flashpoint that everybody wants to tear down. We need people to want to build it up again.

And I fear we're heading in a difficult direction on that. A party revising its theories about itself and where it wants to go and suggesting that those theories on where it wants to go are wrong or bad or bad for the country. I mean, parties go through revision on where they stand and how they operate. The question is, you know, I guess is how defining is this revision that's happening now on both sides of the border, if in fact that is what's happening? I mean, they don't even call it the Republican Party anymore. Most people in their discussions about it, including Republicans, they call it the Trump Party. Or the MAGA Party, yeah. Or the MAGA party, yeah. Or the MAGA party. Well, I suspect we're not about to have the Poliev party, notwithstanding the fact that he will possibly, probably become the next liberal leader.

I don't see that happening. Conservatively. I just wanted to. We caught Chantel on a misspeak. Yes. You will catch me again. I have not been speaking English for the better part of two months now. I found that very relaxing.

How's your French today? I think somehow we need all of us to step back from two or accept two realities. One of those is that the social media acts as a magnifier for conspiracy theories, et cetera, et cetera. But it also acts as something that creates a disconnect. To treat it as a mirror of a political movement or a population is a very dangerous thing because it's distorting the reality of actual people who do not spend their days spewing hate or conspiracy theories

on the social media. That's one. The second is, yes, Pierre Poiliev, if he wins, will have had the vote of people who are well outside the political mainstream in all kinds of ways and who subscribe to theories that totally make no sense. And which, yes, it would be in his interest and in the interest of his party's brand, to disown. But that being said, to pretend that Pierre Poilier will always victory to just those people rather than a large, large number of conservative members in good standing who were happy enough to see Stephen Harper go to the World Economic Forum is also to distort reality. And those party members who will tend to be around long after some of the new recruits are gone because the excitement will have gone from this leadership contest, also have thoughts on conservatism that does not go to extremes. So if imagine, for instance, a 350,000 conservatives vote for Pierre Pallier, that would leave, I'm

not saying that's happening, but out of 600,000, that would leave 250,000 who pick other candidates, mostly Jean Chagrin. So totally different view. If he is going to be running a party, he will have to actually take stock of who is in his own party extreme view of reality or society and the way that he runs ontario and he is as far as i can tell the highest ranking conservative on the map at this point in canada so so the other thing and i think it was from an abacus poll, is that because of social media, most of Canada's chattering classes come to a very strong impression of Pierre Poiliev, for good or for bad. But what the polls show is that most Canadians have not yet looked at Pierre Poiliev and come to a decision. The jury is out on him. They have not decided this guy is crazy because of Bitcoin.

They're not into who runs the Bank of Canada thing, and the World Economic Forum is really not something that they worry about any day of the week. So here is the risk that this chattering class that is largely appalled ends up defining Pierre Poitier as so bad that he can only look very reasonable to most people who finally pay attention and say, what's wrong with all these people? He's not so bad.

A recent example, so many observers and political folks described Justin Trudeau as someone who was totally incompetent, that once he showed up at the debate and proved that he could tie his shoelaces, a lot of people said, well, this guy is not incompetent. He can tie his shoelaces. What were they saying about him tripping on those shoelaces the second he starts to run? So I think it's always good advice to say, get your head out of social media once in a while and talk to actual people. You may find that your soul feels better for it. Can I just maybe disagree gently with one point, which is I'm not suggesting, I guess I am agreeing with you in the sense that I'm not suggesting that Pierre Poliev either in demonic terms and then turns out to not sound like a demon to people who are hearing him for the first time, that that won't work to his advantage. I agree with all of that. find in a manner that looks like what Republican looks like in the United States and looks to

Canadians as something that is so far off the mainstream. And so grievance, but not normal grievance, grievance that's based on misinformation. The idea that the vaccination question should be so central to the political alignment of the People's Party and about a third of conservative voters right now is a weird thing, in my view, because it really speaks to an anti-science, anti-establishment conservative that didn't really exist in anywhere near that proportion before. It's a mistrust of institutions rather than an embrace of traditional institutions and the informed scientific and otherwise thoughtful guidance that they can provide to us. And so, I don't think we've seen a situation where somebody could presume that they can run to be prime minister. That's how he's choosing to characterize his effort and say, I guarantee you that there will never be a mandate to be vaccinated for anything, anytime in the future. That doesn't seem to me to be consistent with the way in which people have looked at Conservative Party leaders or mainstream party politics in Canada. And so, I think the challenge is that our Conservative Party, not necessarily Pierre-Paul Lievre,

although I do think he's more susceptible to that, starts to look like it's something other than what people used to think of it as. And I think that's a very real that, starts to look like it's something other than what people used to think of it as. And I think that's a very real risk and it could divide that party too if Polyev wins. Okay. And by the way, I'm not too sure that the federal government, given its purview on healthcare, has ever mandated vaccines for very many things before the pandemic. Mandating of vaccines, for instance, to go to school are well beyond the purview of a prime minister. So I'm wondering how much real actual real policy substance there is to that or whether it's not a bit of a freebie.

And I am forever reminded that Justin Trudeau started off by saying vaccine mandates were too divisive. And then once having been demonstrated very publicly by some liberal strategists that vaccine mandates in the federal area could win him a majority, suddenly became a big convert of vaccine mandates so i i'm write me down as not converted to the uh liberal virtue on vaccine mandates fair points all of them uh we're going to take a break and uh come back on a question about Jagmeet Singh and the NDP right after this. Back with our final block, final segment of Good Talk for this special edition as we close out the summer of 2022. Earlier in this program, Chantel talked about, you know, the dangers, I guess in some ways, of not delivering on something you either promised or suggested was likely to happen.

Here's one that seems to have got Jagmeet Singh talking about how long he's going to hold on to this deal that he has with the Liberals to keep them in power for a couple more years. And it all revolves around dental care. And the suggestion being that, you know, if something is not actually on the table in terms of legislation before the end of this year, he's going to pull that deal out from under the floor of these two parties and tear it up and that'll be that. How should we look at that? Is that somebody who is now having second thoughts about what he did in the first place, that he's having second thoughts about whether the Liberals were serious about dental clear, or whether he's getting pressure from within his own party? Who wants to start this one off? I will. How should we take these statements about pulling out of the agreement,

statements that were qualified shortly after they came out like an ultimatum? I take them very, very, very lightly in the immediate future. And I'm being polite here. This is a fourth place party in the House of Commons that has not seen a single poll that promises a better position in a future parliament. And who would risk ending up with a majority government, liberal or even conservative across from it, meaning it would have zero influence. So to say I'm going to throw all this out six months after I've come to this agreement sounds like a way to say, hey, people, I'm still here. It's been a long summer and no one's talking about me. As for dental care, where the fate of the political stability of the country now hinges, I have seen no evidence of provincial buy-in to the idea.

And why did I not see the Premier of BC, a new Democrat, rush to the barricades on that and make it a big topic when the Premier is met earlier this summer? Because the Premier is out there eyeing on a different ball, which is called healthcare funding. So yes, I believe that there will be some form of dental program that will be coming through the federal government. And yes, I will anxiously look to see how the federal government does at delivering it, given its great success at getting me passports in a timely manner or even registering guns without spending billions doing so at the time of the gun registry, because the federal government and its competence does not do a lot of delivering things to individuals.

But yeah, I believe the liberals will come up with something. Whether it's going to be a great thing, I don't know, but it should be enough for Jagmeet Singh to keep his own powder dry at least until the spring budget. Is there any sense that he's getting pressure from within his own party? No. On what? On dental?

Just on the position he took, you know, qualified to a degree, or was this a solo shot? This dental thing, I don't think it's an issue. I'm with Chantal. I think that Jagmeet Singh was looking at kind of weak polling numbers, and even his own personal numbers are softening for the first time in a fairly steady way in the last several months. Not anything. He's still the most popular leader. But he was just trying to draw some attention to the role that the NDP is trying to play. But I don't think that anybody on the government side understood it to be a real threat of some sort of imminent breakup.

Because I'm with Chantal, there's no evidence for the NDP that they would be happy with what would happen. Especially, I think they've got to be anxious about the polarizing effect of a Pierre Poliev conservative leader being another lucky break for the Liberals as they try to coalesce progressive voters. I think the larger challenge for the NDP is my sense that there's always going to be a segment of voters who want a very high-minded, passionate, almost pious articulation of progressive values and aspirations. And they're going to get a big chunk of those voters. The liberals have competed for those voters in the past.

But that's not a growing dynamic. Right now, you've got more voters who are saying, well, I'm progressive on social issues, but talk to me about food prices. Talk to me about gas prices. Talk to me about whether we're going to get to some sort of geopolitical stability and our economy is going to be secure in that context. Make me feel you can be a progressive politician and understand my everyday concerns. And in that context, I, the NDP talking about dental care for people below a certain income threshold, that's part of it. But it's not a giant idea.

And it is certainly not the kind of thing that is going to make people go, wait, I hadn't thought about voting for them in the next election. And I better, you know, revise my thinking. Or even better, great, we're having another federal election because the NDP did not get the dental care program it wanted. It sounds like a weak entry into a competitive election campaign. I'm curious, and this is not just about the NDP, it's about every opposition party in the House of Commons, including the Conservatives, if led by Pierre Poilievre, there is much emphasis on everything that Justin Trudeau has been doing over the past few weeks and months that has been on the international relations front and on the Russia versus Ukraine dynamics. And again, over the past two weeks, we've seen the prime minister hosting the chancellor

from Germany and now NATO chief. And if I were to identify a weak ground for the NDP or for the conservatives under Pierre Poiliev, it would be foreign affairs. I don't think I have seen any evidence of anything pertaining to foreign affairs coming from the Koyev campaign. And the NDP is also, it is not a strong suit of the NDP. So the question is, if, as too many believe, the international outlook is going to worsen and worsen over the next five, six, seven months, whether the Liberals and Justin Trudeau are not building up capital that the opposition will find hard to equate under their current leaders. If the question became, who do you want to be prime minister at the time of war?

Would the answer automatically be Jacques Milsaing or Pierre Poitier rather than Justin Trudeau? Not so sure. Mind you, it's rare, as we all know, that those kind of issues take hold in an election campaign and people vote on the foreign policy front. But the Iraq thing, half legs. So also, I think if we if we remember that the movement of five hundred thousand to a million voters is really what will decide the election. And there are seven million who say that they will they could support the liberals, but aren't right now. That's a very big pool. There are, I think, 6 million who say they could

support either the Conservatives or the Liberals, and a little bit larger number, more like seven, who say I could support either the NDP or the Liberals. All of that tells us that it's not every vote that's up for grabs, but there are a lot of votes that are sitting out there willing to consider each one of those three parties. And I think Chantal's right that if we look at it as it's either going to be leaders or issues, that's the wrong way to look at it. It will be a big part of the conversation, especially when you've got such strong personalities involved in the race and high-profile people. But there are going to be issues. I happen to think that the defining question that the liberals might be able to use in

prosecution of their argument against Pierre Poliev if he leads the conservative party is this idea of does he represent some sort of chaos and because that's not what people are looking for they're not looking for tipping over the table uh right now there is a sense of wanting more action more sense of ambition more action, more sense of ambition, more clarity of purpose, all of that. But that's not the same as saying, let's throw everything up in the air, because there are a lot of people who would see themselves as being in jeopardy in that situation. You know, earlier, Chantel, you mentioned about you were thinking the Liberals were holding their powder dry on dealing with Polyev, waiting until he becomes leader, if that in fact is what happens,

and then go for a strategy of some kind to deal with him. Is there any sense of what that strategy would be? Because we know what Polyev's strategy is going to be, or at least we think we do, given what we've witnessed over years, not just this campaign, of going for the jugular and being personal and doing it. And so you can kind of see that developing over the next couple of years in the House of Commons and elsewhere,

that he'll be attacking Trudeau on a very personal basis. Trudeau is, I don't know, I don't think he's like that in terms of coming back, you know, fighting back that way on a personal level. What I was saying the other day, what Trudeau may need is the pair of Polyev that Stephen Harper had for doing the attack, and he needs someone on the front benches of his thing going after Polyev.

I don't know, maybe that's the plan. Does anybody know what strategy they have to deal once the powder isn't dry? Well, if you're talking fast politics, Pierre Polyev goes after Pierre Polyev. He has provided the Liberals with enough clips to feed an entire election campaign with stuff that makes your hair raise if you're an average voter who is wavering between the Liberals and the Conservatives. I don't believe that it works with the Trudeau brand to do cutthroat politics to respond to cutthroat politics. I think that is part of the reason why Thomas Mulcair is not prime minister today, and Justin Trudeau is, that he was so ineffectual,

and so were the liberals at getting in that mix between Mulcair and Harper that in the end, that did help them. But I figure the liberals expected Poitier will have troubles of his own. He now will need people who are not his followers today to follow him. And caucus management has been a difficult issue for every conservative leader, including Stephen Harper. So unless Poitier has great polls that show him headed for a majority government as soon as he has a chance, I think the liberals will be content to let him get really personal, because when he gets personal, he doesn't talk about policy. And bread and butter will win you this election more so than saying Justin Trudeau is a terrible person, especially since once,

you know, if you're elected prime minister three times, you must be doing something right, is what most common sense people would think. I think Pierre Poliev or all the others are doing a lot of things wrong. Sorry, you got a minute there, Bruce, go for it. I think absolutely right. Pierre Poliev and the other conservatives who've criticized Pierre Polyev have provided the liberals with a lot of material to work with in defining who he is without sounding like this is just them being kind of partisans. I also, though, I agree that it's not a great idea for the prime minister to start to look as though he's become this kind of a rabid personal attack dog. Having said that, I think he needs to be crisper, tighter, firmer, stronger in the way that he comes across.

He's sort of adopted this kind of I've got your back softness to him. And I think it's a little bit ill suited to the times where people are looking for what feels more like strong direction and clear and crisp leadership. And he's got an opportunity to appeal to economy-concerned voters that Pierre Pauliev isn't really seizing. He's almost kind of missing it because he's talking about the economy in ways that sound as though it's almost some sort of a video game or something like that. He trivializes some of it.

Whereas I think there are large numbers of voters, especially in our kind of biggest urban centers, who want to hear a message about the economy that's not just everything's going more or less okay or will get more or less okay, but are also wanting a serious set of policy ideas. All right. We're going to leave it at that for this day. Interesting discussion on a number of areas. I know we didn't get to all the things we were hoping to get to, but there's lots more to come in the weeks and months ahead. A reminder that the bridge is back at its daily rate the day after Labor Day. So that's Tuesday, September 6.

Is that what it is? I think I believe it is. And that week on September 9th, the Friday. Okay, I've got my numbers mixed up. But anyway, on the Friday of that week after labor day, September 9th, good talk. We'll be back on its regular weekly spot.

Thanks to Chantel. Thanks to Bruce. We'll talk to you again in just a little while.