The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Four Options for Justin Trudeau

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

It's one thing when the Conservatives slam the CBC, threaten to defund it, and raise money from supporters by making the threat. But now they're suggesting there's a conspiracy between CTV and its parent company Bell, to bad mouth and lie about their party. 

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there. Welcome to Friday. Welcome to Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here. And we got to start with, you know, full credit to Chantelle. It was in British Columbia yesterday. Certain commitments there. But she wanted to keep her commitments here on Friday, not only to the bridge, but to her family, to, you know, other commitments she's got on the media front on Fridays. And so she flew back all night on a plane. She was on a red-eye. I watched so many episodes of a cop show that I may have fairly bloody metaphors this morning. So you didn't sleep on the red-eye?

More or less. I'm not good at sleeping on trains or planes or cars, for that matter. Same here. I can sleep. He can sleep anywhere. I can't. I fell asleep on this show once. We might have to nudge him on this show.

Okay. We'll find ways to. Was beautiful BC as beautiful as ever? Yes, and very much in an election campaign. Yeah, a crazy one. Which I was in Kelowna, so not Vancouver. And of course, the convention is full of people who are from out of province. But still, you can feel that this is going to be an interesting vote that they're going to be having later.

Well, after mid-October. A lot more competitive than people expected, right? And I think some of what's happening to the conservatives provincially in BC is bleeding into the national numbers for BC. Because I just saw a poll this morning from Léger that's got federally the conservatives at 51% in BC. And the NDP that usually does fairly well in BC, in that poll is at 19% behind the liberals. And I think that 51% is probably not completely real, but it says something about the surge of that provincial conservative party that was nowhere on the map a year ago. Well, you know, it's going to be a fascinating election to watch unfold over these, you know, the next couple of weeks. And we'll be going through the results and those numbers for sure afterwards and see what impact it has, you know, nationally, if any.

I mean, it's funny, this country, there are times when the national numbers and the provincial numbers are total opposites. And there are times when they can be quite similar. So we'll watch that and see what happens. All right. Topic number one this week is not Chantel's travel plans. But it is this strange fight that's going on between CTV and its parent company, Bell Canada, and the Conservative Party of Canada. They are, you know, it was one thing when the Conservatives were after the CBC,

that's kind of normal. They've been that way for years, very much so with this particular Polyevlad Conservative Party. And there have been times when it's been clear that he doesn't get along with the media. But this fight seems to be different. It's not just about a bad report that was on CTV News.

It seems to be more, there's something more involved in this. And Bruce, why don't you start us off? What's going on in this fight between? Yeah, I mean, just to shorthand what it is that we're talking about, for anybody who hasn't sort of picked it up in the news, I guess the CTV ran a story about the non-confidence motion that the conservatives brought.

And in the way in which the story aired, it left the impression that the conservative motion was tied to the idea of dental care, the liberals dental care program. And the notion was the interpretation could have been that the conservatives were voting to bring down the government because they disagreed with the dental care plan. When in fact, I think a reasonable observer would say, well, the Conservatives actually said they just had no confidence in the government and it wasn't really just about the dental care plan. So I guess there's a few things about this that are a bit mysterious to me. First of all, Peter, I think the scale of the response know, is kind of likely reflecting the fact that its bonds are junk bond status, just one level above. So he's essentially running down the economic value of the company, which I think is a strange

thing for somebody to do who wants to be prime minister. This is a company that has 40,000 employees, I gather. I was looking on their website today. It says that 60% of the shares in BCE are owned by retail investors, meaning not all Canadians, but a lot of individual Canadians own those shares. And I think it seems quite unseemly for somebody who wants to be prime minister to be tackling a company on that basis. Second thing is CTV apologized and let it be known, I guess, that they dismissed the employees involved. But it isn't clear whether they're saying it was an error or a deliberate misrepresentation. If I were CTV, I would come clean on what it was.

If they found that there were employees who were deliberately trying to misrepresent what happened, then they should say that and maybe it would let the air out of it. But if it was just an error, then I'm not sure that firing those employees is a good precedent for CTV and BCE to set because, and this is my last point on it, I guess, which is that to some degree, what Pierre Polyev seems inclined to do here is to establish that he's got leverage over a large company that owns a significant media enterprise. Maybe leverage that he intends to use later on as he gets into an election campaign to encourage voters to dismiss their reporting. We've certainly seen a lot of that in the US and the fake news arguments that Donald Trump makes. So there's a lot of this that doesn't look great for CTV and BCE. But I think there's a lot that doesn't look great for Pierre Poliev and the conservatives either.

And I hope that we see a little bit more transparency about what actually happened and maybe a dialing down of the rhetoric by Pierre Poliev as well. Well, I want Chantal's thoughts on this, too. But let me just say that, you know, Poliev, to me, it's been more than that item, that news story. There's something else going on here because he even suggested, Polyev even suggested, didn't say outright, but suggested that the CTV staff was working on the, you know, the direction of the head of BCE in terms of dealing with that story. Now, that's a hell of an, you know. Well, especially since there's really, you know, no evidence that BCE is a liberal-friendly corporation.

I'm not saying that they're tilted much the other way, but if I had to guess, they do seem to be a little bit more aligned with the conservatives of the last couple of years. And they've got big regulatory issues to deal with. So it's quite problematic. Chantal? Well, I guess I would describe BCE, and it's not unique in that, as a government-friendly organization.

So to have BCE become more friendly to the conservatives over the past few years kind of goes hand-in-hand with those polls that show that the next government will likely be conservative. I don't believe that they are on a mission corporately to save the liberals from a defeat. I find that really hard to believe. But that is Pierre Poiliev's style. He did get some flack for all those comments about BCE for the reasons that Bruce explained, those thousands of Canadian workers that Mr. Poiliev says he is going to be defending and representing. as he claims species stock is now a junk stock. And what does Pierre Poilievre do when there is pushback?

He always doubles down. So far, I have seen few examples of anything other than that. Before I talk about this particular episode, I was really interested to note that the conservatives reacted like scalded cats to the suggestion through editing that they would be going after the dental care program. That kind of tells me that they do not want to be in any way, shape, or form perceived as wanting to take away the dental care that is now on offer for seniors or for younger people, because it is a popular program and it matters to the people who use it. And I would be amazed if a conservative government party campaigned on getting rid of the program. It probably wouldn't be expanded.

But judging from that reaction, they believed this was really damaging to them. I have seen zero evidence, factual notion, zero evidence that in any way, shape or form, the Conservative Party over the past two weeks has tied its non-confidence motions to the dental care program. That did not happen. And that is what makes that piece of editing so weird. Someone somewhere, for sure, and I don't know whether it was deliberate or not, but someone should have caught it. If it's not the journalist or the editor, at some point, you do normally, you know, you didn't air lots of stories on The National that no one had seen except the journalist who had produced it.

So, and if you'd seen something like that, you would have said, wait a minute, this isn't deep constitutional niceties that the people may not be aware of. You would have said, wait a minute, that's not right. So somewhere, somehow the gatekeeping flew out the window. Now, I've been looking at the tweets since that second, because there was first a correction, and then under more pressure, this second apology and the news that the people associated with the episode had been fired. No names and no real, as Bruce pointed out, no real sense that it was intentional or accidental or a product of ignorance. But Pierre-Paul Leve in his tweets again this morning doubles down again by saying we will ensure that ethics and integrity prevail in the media, i.e. when we are in government. A couple of points here. I think that the

conservatives, like all parties going in a campaign, fear people looking too hard at them from mainstream news organizations. They believe that they have largely blunted the impact of CBC journalism by saying that they're going to sell the CBC. They're basically having people say, oh, yeah, that report was really hard-hitting, but then these people are fighting for their jobs. This episode allows the conservatives to do the same thing to CTV, to blunt any critical reporting of the Conservatives going forward. And I'll remind you that it wasn't that long ago that Canadian Press published a story that did have a factual

error in it. And Mr. Poiliev went at Canadian press calling it an agency that works for the Liberal government. For the Liberals, yeah. And my final point is, who is supposed to be surprised? In what universe was it not expected that once media organizations, for their economic survival, I'll grant you that, be it newspapers or television stations, et cetera, that politicians would not use that to exert more and more influence on their reporting. And I am not saying that journalists are getting orders or that there are ways to get rid of journalists that are too critical in a media organization.

You send them off to cover cats and dogs instead of politics. But that pressure is being felt pushed and that the media has less and less credibility to fight back because it is taking and needing corporate government subsidies to survive, is exactly where we are today. And if it hadn't been Pierre Poiliev this week, it would have been someone else in three days, four days, four years, doing the same thing. The media is not only vulnerable financially, it's vulnerable now in its credibility and vulnerable in its financial capacity to survive.

Yeah, I'd just like to pick up on one or two of those points as well, Peter. Canadian press to systematically try to undermine the trust that people have in journalistic coverage of him and his party. Is that completely new? I think it's fairly new. It's, you know, Chantel's right that every party has tried to, you know, charm, bend the coverage of news organizations to suit their purposes. But I don't know that we've ever seen an effort as persistent and vitriolic as this one to undermine trust levels in major media organizations, the content of which many, many, many Canadians depend on, it layers over the idea of a conservative party that more than has been the case in the past, I would say, raises questions about knowledge and science on various issues because

part of the base of that party cheers that on. Part of the base of that party cheers on dismissal and derogatory comments about news organizations and journalists. And we see the corrosive effect it has on democracy south of the border. I'm worried that it will have over time. Maybe it already is having somewhat a similar derogatory effect. And whether one, I'm not saying any of this to defend journalism. I've had my share of critiques of what's been happening with journalism lately. But we do need functioning journalistic enterprises. We do need the public to believe that they can count on some of the information that

is coming at them about issues global and national and local. And I don't think it's responsible for Mr. Poliev to be as aggressive as he has been in running down the credibility of these news organizations. It does look like a political strategy rather than a judicious public policy. And I don't love the sound of government will be responsible for kind of ethics and objectivity. I forget exactly what you said, Chantal, of the news organizations. That seems like a slippery slope from my standpoint, especially for a party that isn't in favor of online regulation very much.

To decide that it should have that kind of role with news organizations seems a stretch. All right. Let me – I think we're all basically in the same ballpark on this. But I do want to underline once again something that you've all said, but I want to underline it again, is that, listen, they botched that story. We don't know whether it was incompetence or whether it was deliberate, but they botched it, and that shouldn't happen.

And it shouldn't happen on the part of a major news organization, supposedly the number one television newscast in the country. That should never happen. There is a process, as Chantel outlined. I do wonder, though, as Chantel also used the phrase, no one should be surprised.

No one should be surprised when organizations starting cutting in a drastic way and Bell down to CTV has cut in a big-time way. I mean, that number one newscast closed basically all of their foreign bureaus around the world. Gone. No foreign correspondence in them. And many of their provincial operations that were servicing the network are gone too. If that is not just happening on the face of the reporters and the bureaus, but also in the editorial process, whether it's the producers, the vetting that goes on and must go on

in a news organization that significant on every story, on every word that ends up in the mouth of the anchor at night. So somewhere things fell apart. Whether it was an accident, incompetence, or deliberate, it still fell apart. It allowed it to get on the air. This probably wasn't, I didn't see the broadcast, but this probably wasn't the fifth story of the day, right?

This probably was the number one, at least it would be the number one political story of the day. It was a Sunday broadcast, is my understanding. And like you, I didn't see it because I don't have a TV. I'm not, you know, I'm not someone who watches these guests. Just when TVs are becoming obsolete, we'll buy our one. Anyway, to me, it doesn't matter whether it was 5th, 10th, 20th, or 1st. The same process should apply, right?

Well, as you know, when you are the victim of a botched story, it's the only story. Yeah, that's right. Even if it's the last, the kicker in the newscast, it is, if it's happening to you, there's no other news. The world can be falling apart, but that's the only news that you will obviously

focus on because you're going to feel that someone is coming for you or someone has really done a number on you, no matter what the reasons. So I don't blame them for complaining about what had happened and demanding a fix on that. I do worry, and I think you've both expressed the same feeling,

about where this could be leading to, especially as we approach an election with one party seemingly way ahead and having this relationship with the media. We've seen it before. We've seen difficult times with Harper in the media during an election campaign, and media was basically put in a cage through that. But, you know, I worry about where it's leading. Well, you know, Ratu Canada, TVO, and others can tell you from experience that you can survive this, considering how Jean Chrétien approached the Francophone media and Pierre Trudeau before him.

I mean, Jean Chrétien's staff at some point said that everyone who worked for Radio-Canada was a journalist. Every journalist. And got a large audience for that point of view outside Quebec. So, but the danger is that people who are journalists, you know, you look at this and it says we fired those people, they start to self-censor, to launder their news reporting so that it's not too critical and doesn't put them in harm's way. Because let's be serious, journalism jobs are not, you know, a dime a dozen these days. Yeah. One last point, if I can, on this, Peter, which is that this is the kind of thing that feels easy to do maybe when you're 20 points ahead. But there's always got to be, if you're being really judicious about your politics and your political tactics,

you got to be aware that things aren't always going to be the same. And the bill for this kind of rhetorical attack can come due at some point. And I'm not saying that's right. I'm not saying that's the way it should be. I'm not saying that journalists will be lying in wait and looking for an opportunity to kind of return the favor. But people are people. And organizations that take as much of a beating as the media have been taking at the hands of Pierre Poliev, they're going to harbor some sort of resentment about it. I wouldn't overstate it, but I think that if I were Pierre Poliev,

I would probably not continue to invest in running down the media because there might be a day when that kind of works against my interests rather than as he probably perceives it now working in favor of his interests. Okay. We're going to take our first break.

We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, which, of course, is good talk. That means Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson are here. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. And we're glad to have you with us,

no matter which platform you are listening or watching on. Topic number two. You warned us last week, Chantelle, that the Bloc was going to become an increasingly important player in this Parliament and the direction in which it takes and just how long it may last with no party sort of wed to supporting the Liberals if there's a confidence motion. Well, we got even more of an indication of that this week when, first of all, the Bloc did not support the Conservatives on their initial attempt

at bringing down the government and probably won't again next week. But their leader made it very clear that they're putting a time limit on how long they will continue to support the government through confidence motions. And that time limit is basically another month. And they've tied it to a couple of things, their bills, that they want done and they want passed. Or they'll pull the plug, which will almost certainly lead to an election now, before Christmas. So tell us about this, Chantal. What is the bloc thinking at this point,

that they can grab exactly what they want, one of the things on pensions, which is probably popular in a lot of parts of the country. But what are you hearing? So up to a point, it's rather clever. The Bloc is, yes, showing that it can play a role and get things in the House of Commons and make, you know, effect change, even if it will forever be a party that will never vie for government. And Mr. Blanchet's perhaps biggest saving grace in so doing is that notwithstanding the noise coming from the government of François Legault about they should ask this or that, or they should bring down the liberals, Quebecers are in no hurry to trade Justin Trudeau for Pierre Poiliev. When Mr. Blanchet says, why should I vote for his

non-confidence motion? That would be like saying I'm trading one for the other, which is accurate, but it also is a fact that in Quebec, the conservative leader is not someone that people are looking forward to have as prime minister. The numbers in Quebec are completely different from anywhere else in the country on that score. And the B. Blanchet has done that is different is that he has made his two conditions, two private members bills of his party, but that have been supported by the NDP and the conservatives along the way. The old age security bill, which would increase old age security payments to people 65 to 74,

putting them on par with what the government decided to do for people 75 and over on the rationale that when you get to that age, you're probably less, you probably have less of a piggyback because you've used up a lot of it. So you're less, you're more vulnerable to inflation and rising prices. So that's one. And the other bill is, to me, it's kind of, there is something more symbolic to it because it's a bill that

would prescribe that future federal governments never negotiate supply management and international trade talks. That has been the position of the government of Canada from, you know, Jean Chrétien, Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau, and again, the prime minister in the House said that that was one of his, you know, bottom lines in trade negotiations. But you cannot tie in legislation the capacity of the federal government to actually negotiate supply management. All you need to do is if you make a deal that involves changes is to say, we're doing this in the treaty and do away with the law.

But that law on supply management is in the Senate. It also did not get there without the support of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons, i.e. the NBP and a section of the Conservative Party. So what's Mr. Blanchet saying? He wants both bills to be passed, royal sanction and all by October 29th. That is more complicated than it seems. Why? Because those bills are private members' bills. And when it comes to private members' bills, the government doesn't have all the tools that it has to move forward government bills. And that's particularly true in the Senate. If you want to force this by October 29th, you need more tools than there are in the toolbox at this point. Why October 29th? I don't believe that's an accident. It so happens that this is the day when there will not be a provincial election that is

ongoing anymore anywhere. BC, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan will have gone to the polls. Does this mean that Mr. Blanchet will, on Halloween, suddenly turn into the person that does away with the and move a non-confidence motion? It's complicated. Why is it complicated? Because what if the government gives the bloc its single opposition date between now and the end of October? Then Mr. Blanchet does not have a day to move a non-confidence motion. He clearly would prefer

to have one of his own and not follow anything that Pierre Poilievre is doing. And then there's this other question. The NDP is really not keen on having an election before 2025 for obvious reasons. They're not doing well in the polls. They don't have money. They're not election ready. So even if the bloc says, OK, fine, we're pulling the plug on the government. You can't assume that that would necessarily happen. And that is basically, you know, so far it's been mostly a win-win for Mr. Blanchet. And he has no cause to fear a federal election tomorrow or next month or in three months. It's kind of a freebie. I do think that it leaves the prime minister with a number of options

that he has to explore over the weekend, but I'll come back to that. Yeah, let's get back to that in a minute. And thank you for gently reminding me that it wasn't a pension bill, it was an old age security bill. Bruce, your thoughts on this yeah i think what we're seeing now is um a significant increase in the precarious in precariousness or precarity i'm forgetting which is the right word of the situation that the liberals find themselves in um you know for the last couple of years because of their agreement that they had with the NDP,

all they had to worry about was keeping the NDP on side. Now they have to think about a lot of other dynamics that could work against them. Add to it the fact that I agree with Chantal, I don't think that there's any reason for the bloc to fear an election, if they can have one. And I could probably make the case that even though Chantal is absolutely right that the NDP doesn't appear election ready, don't appear to have the money, they're not looking fantastic in the polls. They do seem to believe in their idea that Justin Trudeau is so weak, if they can have an election against him, that they might be able to create more traction than they've been able to muster

through the course of their agreement with the liberals over the last couple of years. It would be a big gamble, but not the craziest gamble that I've ever seen. And I say that in part because I do think that pretty much everybody in the House thinks that the one party that will do terribly if an election is held now will be the Liberals. And I say pretty much everybody in the House, including pretty much all Liberal MPs, they're terrified that they're going to be forced to have an election with Justin Trudeau's leader. Maybe I'm overstating that a little bit. Maybe they're going to be forced to have an election with Justin Trudeau's leader. Maybe I'm overstating that a little bit. Maybe they're not all terrified. Maybe terrified is one step above where they're at. But there's a great deal of fear that because Mr. Trudeau has again decided to ignore the

evidence in the Verdun by-election that he is a drag on his party, that every week that he stays on and insists that he's staying on is, you know, not to be unkind, is stealing a week from the future fortunes of his party, leaving them one week less in which to try to regroup and rebuild and reposition for success in the next election campaign. I'm sure he does believe that the more weeks that he gets, the more chance he will have to rekindle a flame with voters. I don't believe that. I don't think there's been any evidence of it. I think all of the evidence has mounted in the other direction. The last thing I'll say is that regardless of which issue precipitates an end to this parliament, it's unlikely that that is going to be material in the course of an election campaign.

If Justin Trudeau is the leader of the liberals in the election campaign, he will be the deciding factor in my view. I think, you know, polls say what they, you know, sometimes you see different polls, but you pretty much only see this in the polls, which is he is the central ballot question for enough voters to put Pierre Poliev comfortably over the top in a first-past-the-post election. And so I do think that as long as there's no liberal leadership convention, the liberals do have a situation where an election could happen to them at a given point in time. The question I think Chantal puts her finger on correctly is where will the NDP be on this? Because it's easy to see that they could want to avoid it, but it's also possible that at some point they decide that they would rather toss the dice and see what happens in an election against Mr. Trudeau. Well, the other question that Chantal put her finger on was what are the options that Trudeau has at this moment? So let me take our final break and then

come back with a substantial final block to address that question. Be right back after this. Okay, we're back here for Good Talk. Chantel and Bruce are here. I'm Peter Mansbridge. And we've got about 15 minutes to discuss this, about this around. In many ways, we've been having this discussion for the last year and a half.

But we're at, we're at that moment where it seems to be even more relevant now than at any time before. And that comes down to, you know, what are the options that Justin Trudeau has? I mean, if one believes him, and I don't think there's any reason not to believe him anymore about staying. I mean, he went on American television this week

and used all his time addressing basically that question, that he's staying, he's in for the fight, it's important he stays, et cetera, et cetera. So what are the options, Chantal? What are the options that he's got? Now that Mr. Trudeau is back from what could well have been his UN farewell tour, because he's going to probably have to be reelected to be back for the UN's fall session next year. He must sit down with his advisors and look at the reality of what the bloc is saying

and the outcome of what he does and various options. The first option, the obvious option, is to do what the bloc wants. It's complicated. Procedure, logistics, there's a break for a week in October. And it only buys you a month. But Mr. Blanchet has totally been saying the complete sentence is, and once I get that on October 29th, I will be crafting new demands. He's not saying, and I understand that in the talks,

the liberals would probably want some guarantee that they would be looking at going into 2025 and another budget from the Bloc. But that has not happened yet. And Mr. Blanchet is under a different kind of pressure in Quebec in the sense that some of his allies and Premier Legault want him to push the immigration envelope harder, to which he has said, even if I did that, the NDP would vote with the liberals and nothing would happen. So that would be a lost opportunity. But that is Mr. Trudeau's first

option. It comes at cost. He's going to look like he's doing the Blex bidding. And outside Quebec, it never looks good on a government to be doing the bidding of a sovereign test party, regardless of the fact that those pieces of legislation do have federalist support in the shape of NDP and conservative votes. The other option, obviously, is to refuse the Bloc demand. I totally believe that if that were the case, we would have a non-confidence motion from the Bloc.

And unless the NDP really caves, and I'm not as willing as Bruce is to think that there's a throw of the dice that would pay off for the NDP if they vote for an election. They're only better than the liberals looking at an election because they have so many less seats to lose. Well, in the land of losers, that doesn't make you anything except a diminishing force from any perspective. Third option, very radical, it's calling an election. It's saying, I can't do everyone's bidding. I'm not going to spend billions of dollars on old age security.

I'm not going to tie the hands of future governments in trade talks. I stand for the public interest and public policy. So let's go to the polls. I call that the rush to the cliff option. I think it's the anniversary of when thousands of caribous in Quebec jumped off a cliff. That option looks like that. And then the fourth option, and I'm not saying it would happen, but the one that fits the most logically would be for Mr. Trudeau,

in theory, the Pharmacare bill is going to get through the Senate before Thanksgiving. And then there will be a break. The fourth option would see Justin Trudeau call us in on the day after Thanksgiving to announce that he's both proroguing parliament until February and stepping down. Once you prorogue parliament, zap, everyone is frozen. You get to February, no non-confidence votes. If he prorogued without quitting, he would look like he's running away from parliament. But those are basically the only options that he has. And in the case of option one, do what the bloc wants, well, it probably gives you six weeks, but it still leaves the

door open to an election, you know, government falling in December and an election at the end of January, as we saw with Paul Martin's government. So I would really like to be at that meeting, mostly because I wouldn't have a stake in it. These are not pleasant options, none of them. You did mention the expense of, especially the old age security thing, it is billions, as you said, and a lot over time. Can I be cynical?

Yeah. Let me be the cynical liberal strategist in that room that says, sure, but at this rate, we're not the ones who will have to struggle to find that money. Boy, that is cynical. Which option do you take, Master Anderson? Well, I think option the last option is the only one that makes any kind of sense for the reasons that Chantel detailed. All of the others are pretty unpalatable, unlikely to create any kind of better dynamic for the liberals. But if I'm Justin Trudeau,

and I'm absolutely convinced that I don't want to do that last one, I don't want to prorogue, I don't want to leave, I'm not going to do it, then I'm going to go along with the block request. And I'm going to count on the NDP to want to support it. I'm going to take the criticism that I'm kind of vulnerable now to a shopping list from the NDP, a shopping list from the bloc, that I'm not ready for and that I will almost certainly lose and not just by a little bit or to leave. So I think that is the option that he will take if he's absolutely committed to staying the course, which so far on the evidence, it appears he is. Why have the Liberals not appointed a new campaign director if they're so close to an election and in such difficulty? How is it that they would have an outgoing campaign director and no one's stepping in? Maybe nobody wants the job. It's a little like the president of the CBC. They can't

seem to find one of those either. There are always people. I'm not saying they would necessarily be winning teams, but there are always people who, for the good of the party, would step forward to take that role. That does happen. But it is strange that when you find out in July you're losing your campaign director, and here we are at the end of September talking about it. You know, I don't know whether either of you heard the other day on the Moore-Butts conversation on Tuesday that Jerry Butts, who was, as everyone knows, was a former principal advisor to Justin Trudeau in the initial years of this government. I don't think he advises him on any level anymore. But his comments, which he's probably made to both of you because I know you both know him,

is that this government's done. This parliament is done, sorry. And he used that East Coast expression, Newfoundland expression, the arse is out of her, that it's done. There's just nothing less it can accomplish. And we see it every day in terms of the way they all talk to each other like a bunch of schoolyard kids. He cannot see it lasting beyond next month.

Like, he can't see it lasting beyond November. And he doesn't know whether Trudeau wants to step down or not. I don't think he wants to step down, but whether he will step down or not. But he does feel that we're into an election. You know, if nothing happens that we're into an election. You know, if nothing happens, we're into an election by November, and it'll happen before Christmas. And, you know, I was kind of surprised to hear him say that publicly,

but that's what he said, and that's what he feels, and that's what he figures the next, you know, how the next six weeks are going to unfold. What does that tell you, Bruce? Well, I have, you know, enormous respect for Jerry's acumen. And so, you know, I'm inclined to think about it a little bit more because it's his calculation. I don't think that, you know, it's more to Chantal's point, the state of readiness of the Liberal Party, psychologically, organizationally, financially,

is really, really poor. And so the notion that they would find some way to go along with, as opposed to if it were apparent that they were going to be forced into an election, to go along with willingly an election before Christmas. I don't see it. You know, I've said before that it seems illogical on some level that only one person gets to decide what happens to the Liberal Party in this situation. And that probably makes sense in theory, but in practice, it is what happens. Whether that would still hold if it looked like an election were going to be imminent, I don't know. I think that there are enough caucus members on the liberal side for whom

an election this fall would mean losing their jobs and not having a chance to do everything that they can to keep their jobs when they thought that they had another year or so to do that. I don't think they'd go along with that. Now, who knows what the outcome of that would be, but I think there would be a lot of tension and division within the Liberal Party if that was a choice that the Liberals decided to make. I mean, and I know this from Pablo Rodriguez,

the Quebec Lieutenant of the Prime Minister who resigned from cabinet, now sitting as an independent because he is running for the Quebec liberal leadership. But I understand that he was kind of asked to keep his role as MP until January. Why? To avoid by-elections. So clearly, at the time at least, the liberals believed they had, notwithstanding Jagmeet Singh's tearing up the agreement, they believed that they would get to the spring in the House of Commons.

The risk, if their approach is to try to survive and to do so by figuring that in the end the NDP will save them because the NDP is desperate. Well, we have seen more than one minority parliament go down to miscalculation. There is no certainty of that. It is possible. But it is possible that that won't be true. That Jagmeet Singh will say, take me out of my misery, let's have an election campaign. I can't do this anymore. You can see that he is under a lot of stress from outcomes that aren't what he wants. And I don't think people totally understand that what is happening in the provincial election in BC is big in the psyche of the federal NDP, because the NDP government in that province is fighting

tooth and nail against a very conservative party. I think if the conservatives win in BC, Daniel Smith in Alberta is going to look middle of the road compared to the conservative party in BC. And that, in a caucus where the largest group comes from BC, including the leader, that's a big deal. It does not lift your spirits in the morning to look at those polls and think what in the world is going on. Our most certain place is under attack by someone who is to the right of Pierre Poilievre, and it's working. So the mood in that caucus can be very combative at this point. I think it's inversely proportional to Mr. Singh's personally combative mood. Other things are happening. Last night, the president of France was in Montreal. The prime minister and Mr. Macron hosted a reception.

Obviously, they invited the premier and many of his ministers, who at the last minute said, we're not showing up for this. You look at the picture, it's not just parliament. It's deteriorating federal-provincial relations, governments in provinces becoming increasingly hostile to the federal government of Justin Trudeau, and liberals in the provinces going out of their way to try to steer as clear as possible from Justin Trudeau because it hurts them. And you kind of think to Bruce's point and to Jerry's point, no, I don't think very much can be accomplished in parliament going forward.

The only issue is when is this dying parliament going to end? Tomorrow, next month, or in February? It really is quite something, isn't it? I agree with all of that. I think that all of those tensions are there. And I know that more and more people are hearing from Christy Clark, a former BC premier who is, you know, she has not declared that she's running for the leadership of the Liberal Party, a job that is not open.

And she speaks no French. It's a pretty open secret that she is, you know, because Justin Trudeau decides that it should end sooner and move on and let there be a leadership race, or it's going to end badly next year. But there's a lot of bad chemistry right now on the Liberal side, which is not making their job of managing these pressures from the opposition parties any easier at all. Okay, we're going to wrap it up. How many options were there, Chantal, that you listed? Were there five?

Four, with sub-A, B, C. Yeah, four was a 4A and B. And number four was the popular one, which was proroguing and having a leadership campaign. Yeah, I think I'm putting my money on the 4-A for now. I'm happy to change it because I change my projections all the time. You can afford to lose money on whatever bet you make. Exactly.

Listen, thank you both very much. A good conversation. Lots of good conversation in that today, as usual, as our listeners have become accustomed to hearing from both very much. A good conversation, lots of good conversation in that today, as usual, as our listeners have become accustomed to hearing from both of you. So thank you to Chantel. Thank you to Bruce. A reminder that the buzz comes out tomorrow morning,

5 or 7 a.m. Eastern time in your mailbox, your inbox. My thoughts on the week. If you haven't already subscribed, there's no charge. You can get it at nationalnewswatch.com. And this version of Good Talk is also available on our YouTube channel,

so you can catch that there as well. Next week, Monday, is a stat holiday in many parts of the country, the National Truth and Reconciliation Day. And as a result, SiriusXM will be doing special programming throughout that day. And there will be no new edition of The Bridge on Monday, but we'll be back on Tuesday with Jenna Stein. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.

Talk to you again next week. Take care, you guys. Have a good weekend. Bye.