The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk For Another Wild Week

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

How do you feel about the leadership of Justin Trudeau during the "convoy crisis"?  Is it strong or weak?  What could he be doing that he isn't doing? And what about the Conservative's huge flip flop -- going from cheerleaders for the protesting truckers to demanding they, stop their protest now?  Lots to discuss and Chantal and Bruce are ready for just that.

Are you ready for Good Talk? Well, of course you're ready. You're ready for Good Talk. It's Friday. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Toronto today. It's been another wild week. And it seems whenever you look out at the country, there's yet another place where there's some kind of blockade going on. And the main one, I think, seems to be the focus has always been on Ottawa, but the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor and Detroit,

I mean, that's costing real money and real jobs. And a lot of people are getting anxious. The Americans are getting anxious. The Americans met with the Canadians yesterday, said, okay, you guys got to do something. We're ready to help you. Last night, the Prime Minister was meeting with them, or at least conversing with the opposition leaders and trying to get them on side after we watched a flip-flop early in the day from the conservatives on on the protest but here's my question and it's about the leadership of justin trudeau and it was spurred on earlier today i was watching on american television an interview with doris kearns

goodwin she's the executive producer of a new program coming up on the history channel in the on abraham lincoln now i don't want to set any false equivalencies here but she said in preparing this documentary and after studying the early life of ab Lincoln, and they realized that this guy is a young lawyer and a young politician, made a lot of mistakes. And one of the ones he used to make was saying things that were taken, if not the wrong way, they were certainly taken in a way that didn't help him in his relationship with the people. Anyway, what she says is they track in this documentary,

the life of Abrahamraham lincoln that sort of she she puts it this way it kind of goes from abraham to abraham lincoln maturing process and how he handled a crisis and we know what that crisis was through the civil war so here's the question um is there any way of looking at the Justin Trudeau leadership of the last, well, since he became prime minister, really, to this moment, where there has been any comparison with a sort of going from a Justin to a Justin Trudeau in terms of leadership? Yesterday was an interesting day for him because it seemed to see both ends of the dial, if you wish, on leadership.

But there's the opening question. Chantal, why don't you start? Sadly for Justin Trudeau, you picked this week to ask this question. And I would argue this is a three-term prime minister, not a new prime minister learning the ropes. And I would say, if that's the question, is he maturing in office? And are we seeing this over the past two weeks? Are we seeing a regressing of the prime minister in office? I would go for regressing. Justin Trudeau came to power with, for sure, a learning curve to go through. But the one thing he did have, and he did have that also as opposition leader, was a good sense of reading the room and connecting with Canadians. I remember him giving me an interview for the book I did with Jean Lapierre about the referendum,

asking him where he was, not that he played a role in that referendum, obviously, but where he was. And the thing that struck me in that interview was how, looking from the outside, he was a young man who'd been traveling and looking at the campaign, the difference between the strategies and what was really happening on the ground and in people's minds. And the prime minister I saw this week in the House of Commons on Wednesday, who spent 45 minutes trying to stick the blame for the convoys on the conservatives, playing partisan games, I would call it, rather than being prime ministerial and offering avenues of resolution, is a prime minister that has now become part of the bubble and who is failing to read the room. And I would argue, from conversations with a number of liberals,

some of them in cabinet, some of them in caucus, one or two of them in public, that he is increasingly failing to read his caucus room. Bruce? I think that the thing that strikes me, Peter, first is that here we are with an economy that is functioning relatively well, surprisingly well, probably given all of the circumstances. We seem to be really near the end of this long nightmarish pandemic. And yet, I think Justin Trudeau has had the worst week

politically in his career as prime minister. And so I've been asking myself, well, why? And I kind of go back to the last several months since the election, and it feels as though there's been a bit of sluggishness and a bit of, I don't know if it's, you know, if you take somebody who's so tuned by retail politics and his ability, as Chantal said, to kind of connect people and understand people. And if you take him out of that, maybe that's part of what's going on here is that he's been sequestered as we all have. But that the price of sequestering him is that he's not as able to kind of imagine the role that he should play effectively. And I hesitate to be too critical for two reasons. One of which is that in our polling, which we're going to start releasing, I think, tomorrow, we have seen his favorability numbers personally drop four points in one month, which is not off a cliff. And there's still relatively good levels of support, but it's the kind of thing that you would notice. The approval level for the government has dropped six points over the same period of time. That's not insignificant. But I think that the thing that's going on isn't that people are saying, I'm for the truckers, or I'm against vaccines. I think the Prime minister is kind of caught between two debates, neither

of which he has a winning or an easy argument right now. And one debate is about vaccines and mandates. And the government finds itself sounding like it doesn't want to say we're at the end of the pandemic, and everybody else is able to look at the data and say we kind of are um and so that's a bad place to be to keep saying well we need to keep pursuing the science that we need to keep the mandates in place and we need to you know argue against the anti-vaxxers and the other debate is really about the national security question do governments have the ability to push back and overcome? People in Canada don't like to use the term insurrectionist, but there's an element of it, and some good journalism has been done to describe those elements. I think it's awkward for the

government to say, look, there's a problem of some of the anti-democratic forces are better organized than we maybe thought they were. And we don't know what to do about them because our police forces aren't really properly tuned to deal with those kinds of threats. So I don't think the government really wants to have that discussion. And I don't think it loves where it's sitting on the vaccine debate. And I think it's getting some scar tissue right now as a result. They don't want to discuss vaccine mandates. They don't want to discuss the issue of national security that Bruce has mentioned. In clear, they don't want to have a conversation about anything of significance, and they don't seem to be able to move beyond talking points. Take some of the federal policies that this government is responsible for.

We're not in a schoolyard here. If you move this way, you're going to give the other guys a score. So we're going to stick to our guns because we don't, with good reason, like the occupation of downtown Ottawa. But there is a line or a space between going to negotiate with people who are occupying downtown Ottawa or blocking the borders and having a conversation with Canadians who, as Bruce has mentioned, can be for vaccines, but can also be able to see the evidence that once 90% of people have actually gotten vaccinated, how long are you going to

try to make life hard for everyone to convince people who will never be convinced? The government has refused to have that conversation. Public health officials and others have been saying repeatedly, for instance, that the measures the federal government is implementing at the borders for travel are no longer serving a public health purpose. But you can't have that conversation because you will be told, oh, you're with the anti-vax and you're shutting down a conversation that others are having. Vaccine mandates. Vaccine mandates, provincially and federally, were meant, first and foremost, to convince people to get vaccinated and not to ensure my safety as a vaccinated person. When I go to a hardware store in Quebec, do I really feel that I would be

threatened by other clients who may not be vaccinated when the people who are behind the counter are not necessarily vaccinated. All these issues are increasingly common-sense issues. What you are seeing in the frame at the time when there is quite a crisis happening in this country is a prime minister and some ministers who keep repeating talking points. We're saving lives by imposing a mandate on truckers across the border. Well, how many lives did we lose when we exempted them until this month or last month? So they have taken themselves out of a reasonable conversation. I think now they've realized that they're trying to get back in.

But the bottom line is that there are blockades at the border and that no national government can tolerate that its borders are not open because people are blockading. No matter who's sending money, who's behind that i'll organize this is not something that a mature g7 country can tolerate uh end of story all right well um end of story to a point are we going home now i i want to i want to introduce another part of this because i i agree with both of you on the vaccine issue and there's no doubt there's been a shifting of the public opinion uh on that where there doesn't appear to have been a shifting of opinion if anything may perhaps going the opposite way is on um the issue of the unlawful nature of some of the occupying forces if you want to call them that or the protest

movement the insurrectionists. Everybody has a different term that they tend to use on this. And as a result, we've seen a couple of times in the last few days, including in the New York Times of all places, a question about, once again, Justin Trudeau's leadership and saying he's looking for his just watch me moment. Or why isn't he taking a just watch me moment? that of course is a reference to his father and i i want to remind i mean it was 52 years ago some of us remember this well um many don't and it's worth uh reminding ourselves of what happened so i'm going to play this sort of minute and a half clip of the moment outside the parliament buildings where Tim Rafe, who was a CBC reporter and a great one of his day, challenging British trade envoy, and Pierre Laporte, the Quebec labor minister, had both been kidnapped. It was also a couple of days before the body of Pierre Laporte was found.

But the country was in crisis. They were looking for leadership. And this is what unfolded in this mini-scrum outside the parliament buildings. Tim Rafe, Pierre Trudeau. You know, I think it's more important to get rid of those who are committing violence against the total society and those who are trying to run the government through a parallel power by establishing their authority by kidnapping and blackmail. And I think it's our duty as a government to protect government officials and important people in our society against being used as tools in this blackmail.

Now, you don't agree to this, but I'm sure that once again with hindsight you would have probably found it preferable if Mr. Cross and Mr. Laporte had been protected from kidnapping, which they weren't, because the steps we're taking now weren't taken. But even with your hindsight, I don't see how you can deny that. No, I still go back to the choice that you have to make in the kind of society that you live in. Well, there's a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go on and bleed, but it's more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier. At any cost? At any cost? How far would you go with that?

How far would you extend that? Just watch me. At reducing civil liberties? To that extent? To what extent? Well, if you extend this and you say, okay, you're going to do anything to protect them, this include wiretapping, reducing other civil liberties in some ways? Yes, I think the society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergent of a parallel power which defies the elected power in this country. And I think that goes to any distance. So long as there is a power in here which is challenging the elected representative of the people, I think that power must be stopped.

And I think it's only, I repeat, weak-kneed, bleeding hearts who are afraid to take these measures. So there you go. Pierre Trudeau. Speaking with Tim Rafe, just after he'd ordered the army into a number of key locations in the country, not just in Quebec, but in Ottawa as well. And it's interesting listening to that back again. As I said, that was october 13th 1970 and it was october 17th that they found the body of pierre laporte the quebec labor minister now when you listen to that back

again obviously we're not dealing with um well in some cases it's similar there was there is black mail uh there is an attempt to overthrow the existing government those things do exist the army has not been called in and as both Chantel and Bruce said earlier there is this sense that the police forces whether they're the OPP the Ottawa police the RCMP either don't know how to handle a situation or haven't been asked to use certain measures to try and deal with it and to clear the areas, especially Ambassador Bridge and around Parliament Hill in Ottawa. When you listen back to Pierre Trudeau,

understanding the differences between these two times, 52 years apart, this call for a just-watch moment from justin trudeau does it make any sense bruce it makes sense in the in the narrow way that people want excitement in politics sometimes whether it's good for them or not they want excitement in news sometimes whether that's a helpful thing or not um and so every once in a while we find ourselves and we're not alone in this as a country we find ourselves in a situation where politicians kind of look for the the really stunning gesture because it draws attention because it feels uh empowering because it kind of puts them it feels empowering, because it kind of puts them on a stage in a way that might seem appealing, but it often can go wrong.

And I don't think it makes sense right now. I think that the time for more firm language probably has passed in a way. I think it would have been better had the government spoken with one clear, sharp voice some days ago. And I don't think they did that. And I think that now the situation we're in is 14 or 15 days in Ottawa and a few days in this Ambassador Bridge. And we've now got a different kind of issue, which is a governance and management, crisis management issue. And we also have a population that is starting to wonder if the country is becoming more divided, and if the Prime Minister is doing enough to reduce the divisions. I don't want to overstate that, because we, again, this is something we're exploring in our research, and people are far more likely to say extremist groups or anti-vaxxers are

responsible for increased divisions in the country than to say that the prime minister is. But that having been said, if people start to believe that there is a problem of discord in the country that's growing, some of that is going to accrue to the prime minister, whether he deserves it or not. And in part, because back to the conversation we were having, which is this, if he can't be the leader of the path out of the pandemic and into endemic, he's going to end up looking like a guy who sounds to some years like he wants the pandemic to carry on or he's okay with the pandemic carrying on and that in and of itself is a divisive idea it's not aggressively divisive but it is effectively making people go i can't be with him on that i don't i you know i feel like're safer. Omicron isn't killing that many people. It's not making that many people really sick. I'm triple vaxxed and I can

make my own math on this now. And I think that's the problem for him is that if he ramps up the rhetoric right now on the anti-vax thing, unless he's saying something that sounds like next week all we're out of this but you have to move those trucks and i don't know how they do that i think they're caught in this kind of world of anything that we say that sounds like it's capitulation is off the table and i and i get that and i think that's probably right but long-winded way of saying no i don't think it makes sense to to think about that now all right i want chantelle i want your comments um on this but i got to take a quick break which gives you time to yes because you're not gonna get off the hook with the war measure tax stuff not happening yeah no i didn't call for that i i just you raised it well yeah i've i've raised it. Well, yeah. I raised it, and I said. You played it.

Your nostalgia came through, and so my absence of it. Hey, listen, I was provoked by others, including the New York Times, who mentioned it. Oh, yeah, the New York Times. But anyway. Bible of Canadian knowledge. Listen, there's been questionable questionable bible knowledge of of canadian uh events from canadian media the in the past two weeks as well but anyway let me uh let me take this great this quick break

and uh and see if i can knock down the line from montreal so i don't have to listen to chanel crap all over me here uh okay uh back in a moment. Everybody's going to want to come back for that. Okay, they will. And hello there. You're listening to Good Talk. Sean Talley Bears in Montreal. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto today. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Wherever you're listening from, we're certainly glad you've joined us. The floor, the microphone, the audience is yours, Chantal, on this question that we just raised. So let's go back for a second to this piece of historica that you played, the just watch me moment that so many seem to crave from Justin Trudeau on the basis

of his father's great moment and remind people that the War Measures Act led to significant abuse of civil liberties. People picked off the streets on the basis that they were artists that seemed inclined to nationalism. Poets had nothing to do with this. And on the basis of information that said there was an apprehended insurrection, which panned out, which didn't pan out. In the end, there was not an apprehended insurrection. But more importantly, in the context of this period, two things. First, Robert Bourassa, the Quebec premier at the time of the October crisis, did ask and support the

use of the War Measures Act and the army moving into Montreal with those powers. I am not aware that Premier Ford has been making a similar demand, and I have not heard it from any of the opposition parties in the House of Commons. Second, after the abuses that happened under the auspices of the War Measures Act, we rewrote the act. It's now called the Emergencies Act. I've been giving it a look to see how that works, because you can't just wake up one morning with a magic wand if you're the prime minister and say, I'm suspending civil liberties and here's my army and my tanks.

It requires, the first criteria is that the situation, and I'm quoting the bill here, exceeds the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it. By any measure, there are many things that the Ontario government can and might or could still do. So its authority to deal with the issue at this point is still very much existent. Second, the prime minister has to consult with the cabinet of the province where this act would come into force. So this brings us back to Premier Ford and his cabinet agreeing or not to this. And third, this is a minority government. And given the history, the NDP in 1970 also distinguished itself by being the only party that voted against the War Measures Act.

It is a point of pride in the history of that party. I do not expect Jagmeet Singh to ever support the use of the War Measures Act or the Emergencies Act in the current context. The Bloc Québécois, for obvious historical history, would probably struggle with supporting the use of the act. And the conservatives, given their stance on the truckers and the evolving situation and Premier Ford non-calling for the Emergencies Act, would be hard-pressed. The law says a federal government that uses the act has to come to the House of Commons within seven days to get it approved. I'm not so sure that Justin Trudeau, even if he saw it, and I don't think he wakes up at night wanting this just watch me moment. I don't think that he wants to precipitate a parliamentary crisis that could

see his government toppled. I think the other thing that occurs to me, Peter, is you can't be, it makes no sense politically make sure that everybody kind of feels as though because you're trying to motivate your caucus and your party members and supporters to to believe in the approach that you're taking on it um if it if it has a bit of a peekaboo quality to it then it then it not only doesn't do that but it creates more uneasiness uh where people are kind of wondering, well, what is exactly our position on this? And I do think a lot of this has to do with the kind of the under, underneath the hood. I think the reality is that the government probably did intend that by this time, everybody was fully seized with how,

how quickly these restrictions were going to start to be lifted. And now they kind of found themselves in a conversation where they sound like they're not really ready for that to happen. And so that's unfortunate and unplanned and disappointing, probably for them and very frustrating for them. But the other conversation, which to me, the Ambassador Bridge situation, and Matt Gurney's reporting out of Ottawa, and Judy Trinh's reporting out of Ottawa has really kind of brought to the surface is this question of national security, which about which there is enough known now to be quite concerned about whether or not we have the infrastructure in our democracy,

in our systems of gathering intelligence, in our policing systems, to ward off the kind of risks that we see happening in other democracies around the world, including the United States, but not only in the United States. And if we don't know if we are prepared to manage those kinds of pressures, it's not great to have a conversation about how they've grown more organized, they've grown better funded, they've become more influential in ways that most people can't see every day. And I think this is a larger question that will linger after this current episode around vaccines will pass. And I think it will pass. And I would sort of say for those who say, well, aha, this is the moment that conservatives are going to win the election. I

don't think any of that is kind of necessarily apparent in the data that we're seeing. In fact, the Liberals are still kind of leading in our poll by three points. But I do think that larger question is going to be one that we're going to have to grapple with. It's a complicated and difficult question and it's difficult everywhere in the world where these forces are coming into play. Okay. I'm slowly picking myself up off the floor and wiping the blood off me.

Well, it wasn't your blood. I just tended to your wounds there a little bit. It gave you a little time to recover. However, I will live to fight another day, and it'll start right now on two things. First of all, I'm glad Chantal added the history in terms of the ndp's position in 1970 i i should say that while that was the party's position led by tommy douglas the leader it wasn't a unanimous position not all members voted uh in in favor of well against the war

measures act there were i think at least four or five caucus members who actually sided with Trudeau on what was, at the time, in the moment, a very popular action on the part of him. And I guess that's the point I was trying to make in doing that clip. We do know what history tells us what happened and the abuses that that led to. But in that moment, it was a leadership moment. Not, you know, forget about actually what he said, but it was kind of the way he said it addressing the issue of the day.

And that's what some people feel has been missing from Justin Trudeau over these last couple of weeks. Now, you know, in his defense, he and his family were fighting COVID, and as a result, he was, you know, isolated and not on all the time. But that was really the reason I played it, was the choice of the language and the action of the language and the way he was there handling that particular scrum. We haven't, I don't think we've seen that, for that matter, from anybody, but certainly not from the top leader of the day. I'm not saying you shouldn't have played that.

I've seen enough references to when will we, including some in Lafraise today, when will he have his just watch me moment to know that it reflects a feeling that he has been absent from the frame or that he has been wreaked on downtown Ottawa. I don't think that we are to the point where we're going to find the body of a sitting provincial minister in the trunk of a car or a diplomat being held hostage by people that could presumably kill him. But I am not as generous as you or maybe Bruce are about the prime minister, COVID and family. I do believe that at least initially and for too long, the liberals believed that they would score big points on the conservatives by letting them stay in the swamp of their support for people who with every passing day were losing public support for their tactics in Ottawa. And that that drove the absent or the relatively weak response of the government, that they thought, and until Wednesday during question period, that it was good enough to just throw it back to the conservatives as if the conservatives were the government and the

liberals were the official opposition, if you took just a transcript from question period on Wednesday and forgot who is who, and you read Justin Trudeau, you would think that he's the leader of the official opposition going after a conservative government for having supported or being sympathetic to this obstruction. I think questions that will linger, and I found three that could come back to haunt the players in this, I think there will be more questions going forward as to whether Justin Trudeau should or would lead his party in another election. Bruce is right. It has been a sluggish beginning to a third term.

And at some point you say, well, if you don't really feel like being there anymore, others will probably want to do it in your place. I would worry if I were the Conservatives under a new leader that if they ever came to power hour, and they were faced with blockades over some energy decision or any number of situations, what they did this week will come back to haunt them. What we saw this week on the part, for instance, of the frontrunner, or the only declared candidate in their leadership race, Pierre Poilievre, is a double standard. One, and that is true also of Premier Scott Moe in Saskatchewan, the standard you apply to indigenous demonstrators who have a cause

is different from that that was applied to the people who are holding up Ottawa and holding up at the border. That sounds a really powerful message as to who you believe matters. People who include white supremacists and others are given a pass by leading conservatives, while indigenous activists, environmental activists would not. And in both cases, the rule of law should be the same. Absolutely. Absolutely. And what does the CPC government do when faced with a situation like that? And how does it find support for doing things that this week they weren't willing to give? And finally, it's starting to percolate, but it is really serious.

We are in a debate over the future of our auto industry in the transition over climate change. And the first industry that has been afflicted, paralyzed by what's happening at the Ambassador Bridge and elsewhere is the auto industry. At the time where many in the United States are saying, well, gee, you know, doesn't that prove our point that we should be careful to make sure the vehicle industry is concentrated solely within America's territory? And that is economically something that no one wants to happen.

The timing for this is actually totally horrible. And you heard the governor of Michigan yesterday saying it's time to, or no, it wasn't the governor, it was one of the legislators in Michigan, saying it's time to withdraw into our own borders the future of the American auto industry and stop having stuff made outside as a result of what's going on at the Ambassador Bridge. And the fact that they couldn't rely on canada to deal with these kind of situations anymore that's that's not good news just to add to chantelle's point bruce you wanted to say something yeah i wanted to say uh you know if you're if we're looking for any silver linings

in all of this cloudiness um and maybe we're not maybe i'm just looking at a gray sky here in Ottawa and thinking, is there some good news before we finish? The one productive thing for me, I guess, is I'm glad that the conservative leadership is happening at a time when these issues are in the fore. I worry a little bit that the last couple of conservative leaderships happened kind of away from the public eye. And so that it allowed the party to kind of gravitate towards it's,

you know, it's kind of a harder edged, more highly organized, more faith based, or further right wings. And if it does that, again, again, I'm worried that we don't have a competitive conservative alternative when we need competition in our political system. So right now to be having this debate, that includes a debate about economic security, national security, whether mob rule should supersede a democratic elections. It's really important for the conservatives and obviously for the liberals to sort through where they're at on that, but for the conservatives to have that. And when I read Derek Bernie's piece this morning, where he was saying,

you know, the truckers deserve a hearing and, you know, vaccines were supposed to be the be all and end all, and maybe they didn't turn out to be, and masks, there's mixed opinions out there. I was surprised because this is somebody who was a very, very senior part of the conservative apparatus for many years. I think chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, if memory serves me correctly, and a very respected individual. He's the ambassador to the United States for Canada as well. And so I'm not trying to pick on him. But I am saying I want to see people like Jean Charest,

if he's interested in running in the race, I want to see Tasha Carradine in the race, I want those people who are going to say, hang on. We can't be a party that says we're for law and order, but only in certain circumstances, or only around certain issues. We need to have this kind of rule of law that's really clear and precise. And the Conservative Party as a stabilizing influence in Canadian politics is something that I think a lot of voters kind of crave, not a destabilizing influence. And so maybe there's something good to be said for the fact that that leadership is happening. I mean, it's a little bit disappointing

that they've had effectively three leaders in the last few weeks, if you count Pierre Pauliev as one of them. And they've had four or five different positions on the convoy. You know, I find one thing irony about those changing positions. When O'Toole was still leader, a couple of days before they stuck the knife in him, they were stuck the fork in him. I don't know which is the right one to use there, but he was done in any case. But in a couple of cases, a couple of days before that happened, Candace Bergen wrote a letter to him. She's now the interim leader.

And she said that they should basically support the truckers because this will put all the pressure on Trudeau, and Trudeau is going to wear this. And everybody, including this podcast, dumped on her for that and dumped on the conservatives for allowing that to happen it's ironic in a sense because bruce if your numbers are uh correct that abacus is coming out within the next couple of days the past week has been a disaster for justin trudeau because he is wearing it which would suggest that she was right at the time.

She was saying what she was saying. Certainly not in the big picture and the long game, which you've both outlined really well. But in the short term, maybe she was right. Except that she is only right because Justin Trudeau, who is a master of his destiny, seemed to forget for a couple of days that he was the actual prime minister. I have found over the past week that the best questions on that came from the Bloc Québécois, and they were the most basic questions, as in, do you remember that the buck stops with you?

It could have played otherwise had the government decided to be proactive. And I believe both major parties played partisan games. Yes, at this point, the Conservatives did better at them because the Liberal game was flawed in the sense that they are in power. There is only so long you can say the problem is the Conservatives without saying, and we are the solution. And that second part of the sentence, we are the solution, we did not see until pretty much last night. So, yes, she was right. But I have noticed that in the new position that the party has taken, we have also moved from asking the prime minister to offer the demonstrators an olive branch to we want the demonstrators to leave.

I wonder whatever happened to the olive branch, did it get burnt in some campfire around the convoy or what? But it has now faded from the conservative radar, the olive branch thing. Did you want to say something on that, Bruce? Yeah, I think the olive branch idea was kind of ill-advised. And I think that the reason it was ill-advised is I think people who are kind of close to this in politics know that there really are two protests.

And I know I'm kind of harping on this this morning. There are the people who came here because they wanted to be part of a movement that said they're tired of the pandemic. And some of them are tired of the pandemic measures and in particular the vaccine mandates. And some of them were just really tired of the pandemic and they don't like Justin Trudeau. And they wanted to come and say, I'm kind of mad as hell about all of that. So that's one part of the protests that we're seeing right now. But the other part is really something more nefarious. And for any political party, any political leader, and I assume that this is one of the reasons why Justin Trudeau wanted to get together with the other leaders.

I probably would have done it 10 days ago, 12 days ago, is to have that national security conversation about whatever it was below the surface that was making it impossible for the police forces to do what everybody expected them to do. We've all watched that, and we've kind of been scratching our heads constantly, day in, day out, wondering why does it seem so hard to move these trucks, to clear these streets, to write the tickets, to levy the fines, to get this protest over with. And yesterday, the Ottawa police chief, who's taken a heck of a lot of criticism, was pretty explicit about the amount of organizational influences coming from outside our country, the funding, the level of organization and all of that sort of thing. And I'm not taking everything that he said, as read as fact. But I think that aspect of this protest is the more worrisome long-term thing. And I do believe that there's no room for an olive branch to people who are not interested

in an olive branch. They want to dissolve the government or they want to create destabilizing influences in our democracy. I think that's something that shouldn't be a partisan issue, and there's no room for negotiation on. All right. We knew all that and their intention to state what the first question that needs an answer is, beyond all of those very valid questions is, in what universe does Ottawa police allow trucks to park in the parliamentary precinct and just under the windows of the prime minister's office with all of that advance warning and to say now those elements are there well in what in what world was the Ottawa police leadership in over the week when those truckers were making their

way to Ottawa well this this is going to end at some point. We don't know when. We assume it will end. I go to Ottawa a lot, especially in the summer, because I've got a cottage in that area. But now I know how I can park downtown without any problems. Also, though, Peter, don't forget, the hole-in-the-wall restaurant is open again. It is. And it's the same thing there. You can park anywhere you want in Ottawa.

You just need to run a flag upside down, swear about the prime minister, and park wherever you want. And no problems. No cost, no tickets, no meters, no nothing. We've got to take our final pause. When we come back, I want to talk about the, you know, at the moment, the assumed assumed front runner in the conservative leadership race that's when we come back and we're back with our final segment on Good Talk for this week. Chantal's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa.

People assume, and certainly the people around him assume, that Pierre Polyev has this thing wrapped up, the conservative leadership race. I don't think he's got it wrapped up. We don't even know when it's going to be. And there are people sitting on the sidelines who can't decide yet, or if they have decided, they're waiting for the opportune moment to get into the race. We'll see what happens there.

But nevertheless, he is the assumed frontrunner at the moment. And he hasn't had a news conference. He hasn't had a scrum. He's not answering questions about the current situation. He has left the impression by his earlier actions that he's not answering questions about the current situation he has left uh the impression by his earlier actions that he's in support of the truckers and the protesters and he hasn't said anything beyond that so will somebody especially with his party his party flip-flops on this issue through their interim leader over the last 10 days. But they seem to be in a different position from their assumed frontrunner.

What can be said about Pierre Palliev's situation here? The thing I find particularly disturbing is he's not answering any questions. He's not putting himself forward to give his opinion on where we are. Chantal? He did post a letter to the Prime Minister late yesterday in which he takes party and cause with the truckers and where he calls for the end of all federal, I'm reading here, and all federal vaccine mandates, encourage an end to provincial mandates. He would have the prime minister call in all the premiers within a week to tell them to cease and desist from provincial mandates. And nowhere in that letter does it call on the protesters to stand down at the border or in Ottawa.

And then he signs it. I find that really interesting. So obviously his name, member of parliament, candidate for prime minister. It's not even written as a conservative critic or a candidate for the conservative leadership. To go back to your original question, I believe Pierre Poilievre is probably the best thing that has happened to the other side of the party, the party that wants a leader that will present new solutions from the conservatives on climate change, on social programs, and who will not need the social conservatives to win because they will unite behind one. And Bruce was talking about the last campaigns. And I'm just going to talk about the last one. I believe that in part,

the progressive wing of the party, but also some of the more centrist conservatives believed in the last campaign that one way or another, they were going to get a leader that was going to be that kind of leader, either Peter McKay or Aaron O'Toole, and they divided between the two, and in the end, gave the kingmaker's role to, in large part, social conservatives and others. I don't think the dynamics of this upcoming campaign are going to play in the same way, in the sense that there are many who sat back last time and said, well, you know, whoever wins, we are going to come back closer to the center, make a move on climate change.

That's going to happen. They're not saying that now. They're saying whatever happens, if Pierre Poilievre is the party's future, I'm part of its past. And so I think they will get their act together. I've seen people come out in Quebec to say openly, I'll work for Jean Charest if he runs, basically. People that Jean Charest called last time to say, would you support me if I ran?

And their answer was noncommittal. So we are in a totally different ballgame. And what drives this is Aaron O'Toole's experience as leader and his failure to bring the party closer to the center and survive the effort, but also Pierre Poiliev's polarizing personality. So up to a point, every time he signs letters that say a candidate for prime minister, as if no one in the party has a word to say about whether he is the leader of the party, he kind of helps the other side. It's a rare politician, Peter, on opposition benches, or indeed, even on the government and front bench, who becomes so visible that opinions develop about them among the general voting public. It really is unusual these days, anyway. And so I was looking at our data again, and I don't mean this today to be a data

dump, but I'm really fascinated by some of the data that we're picking up right now. I wanted to just drop a couple of points on you and our listeners. The available or accessible voter pool for the Conservatives hit 39% this week, which is a really low number for them. The liberals, in contrast, I think it's about 55. So this hasn't been a period of time where wind is in the Conservative Party sails. It's actually more the case that people are kind of wondering what to make of the Conservative Party, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. To Chantal's point, I think there is a heightened sense of interest on people who don't feel like they want to vote Liberal

or have another Liberal government, and what can we do with the alternative? But then for Pierre Polyev, the question we asked was about a variety of names, and I'll just talk about Polyev's numbers. We gave people four choices. I'd be enthusiastic about voting for a conservative party if he was the leader i'd be willing to consider it i would be unwilling to consider it i would be deeply opposed so the total number who say enthusiastic or willing to consider with polyev is 37 percent it's 12 enthusiastic 25 willing consider. You get 63% on the other side saying, no, this doesn't work for me.

Now, that number can always change. But if you're a candidate for the leadership and you haven't had that role, that's a remarkable level of already built up skepticism to resistance to it. And I'm also looking at the 60 plus crowd where a lot of conservative votes go. And it's 72% who say unwilling or deeply opposed to it. And certainly on the center, where most of the voters are self described center, 65% say no. So he's got a lot of work to do. He might be able to win that leadership but the country might be a harder sell all right this has been a great conversation today a really good one i know that so good that some of you will want to listen to it again and it's available uh throughout the

weekend on serious exam and of course you can um grab it on your podcast there were a lot of solid podcasts this week a a really good program. So you can listen back to starting with Mondays that looked at this issue is the pandemic over. Dr. Isaac Bogoch was with us. If you're, if you're concerned about the COVID issue, you want to listen to that podcast, a really good one. Wednesday, obviously really, really good conversation. Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on Wednesday with Steve Schmidt joining us for a bit.

The former senior Republican strategist and his thoughts about the dark side of what may be going on in all this right now. And of course, today's, not to mention the great piece on Tuesday in terms of what it's really like covering the Olympics. Anthony Germain was with us for that. But we're wrapped up here.

Chantel, thank you. Sorry. But we've come to expect that. That was a great tape. I was so happy to listen to that again. I love that. Yeah, it brought back teenage memories. I like that Beatles song that we all listened to again this year because we saw it on the documentary. Yeah, it brought back teenage memories. I like that Beatles song that we all listened to again this year

because we saw it on the documentary. Yeah, right. Okay, listen, thank you both. And we can't wait until next week's Good Talk. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again on Monday. Thank you.