The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- "Get 'R Done" ...  At What Cost?

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

The rush to get to nation-building projects has seen at least two governments, Ottawa and Queen's Park in Ontario, push for legislation that will speed the process along. That has caused some concern by those who feel the push may be too fast. Chantal Hebert and Rob Russo are here to talk about that and much more.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge, along with John Tele bear and Rob Russo. It's your Friday. Good talk. Last one of the season before the summer break. So we're looking forward to that, but we're looking forward to lots of good talk for today. First of all, you know, some of our viewers and listeners

will remember there used to be a guy on American television. It wasn't that long ago. He was called Larry the Cable Guy and he had this phrase. His phrase was getter done. You know, it got picked up. You know, late night comedians used it a lot, then politicians started using it. Doug Ford used it. This sense of get her done, look, vote for me and I'll get her done. Mark Carney, I don't think has ever said

the phrase get her done. He's much more polished. He's a sort of like, we'll develop, we won't delay. And that has kind of run as a stream through this new government over the first couple of months. It's in many ways kind of the theme of what they're claim they're trying to do is to change the process to get things done faster.

The latest example of that, I guess the most current example of that is this bill C5 that's before the Parliament of May in fact get passed through today which is possibly the last day of before the summer break for them. And C5, whole idea behind C5 or a lot of the idea behind C5 is to speed things up and that has some people concerned about what that does to the process. So rather than get into the kind of debate about, you know, the kind of parliamentary debate, the kind of parliamentary debate. I want to try and understand what this is telling us about this new government because it's not a one-off. It's not just for nation-building projects. You hear this kind of thing through each department, through each new minister of what they're trying to do. Anita Anand, the latest one today, talking about changes in the

Foreign Affairs Department, that we don't have a lot of time. We have to do this quickly. We have to make changes now. What is this telling us about the Carney government, Mark Carney's approach to government, and what we're liable to see in the days ahead. Chantal, why don't you start us this week? Okay, so the politics of it are obvious. This is a government in its honeymoon phase. As we all know, honeymoons do not last forever. So you kind of try to get a lot of things in place before it's over.

It's also a government that is facing place before it's over. It's also a government that is facing an exhausted House of Commons. So minority yes, but facing three or four opposition parties, if you count the Green Party that are in no shape and no mood and do not feel the wind in their back to put up a fight on much of anything. And an exhausted the House of Commons for another reason. These are people who have been on the go and on the campaign trail for months now. So exhaustion would probably sum up how everyone feels. There's also a sense,

and I'm not sure the government totally understands that, that what the opposition parties are doing is keeping their powder dry. This is not something that will forever last. So the idea clearly is to put as much or inject as much change in the system before this break in the cloud disappears again. The policy question is whether faster is better, and the jury is going to be out on that because it is one thing to pass, as you say, probably the House of Commons does pass this major C5 bill on

infrastructures and basically a bill that allows government to ignore its own laws when it suits the government to advance projects, which is an interesting concept, a rare concept. I'm not sure we've seen the likes of a bill that basically gives government that pass to set aside its own laws to do whatever it has in mind. Same with what you talked about Anita and the Foreign Service. It's one thing to say we need to use a crisis as an opportunity to pivot. So Trump opportunity, but all these things will take time. Just because you set those

markers in does not mean that you get to achieve the goal as quickly as you know, saying, yeah, July 1, we can we can actually do this. Even the bill that parliament is passing over the next week and a half, presumably, because the Senate is still sitting next week for another week and needs to pass it too for it to become law, says that the government wants to do this to make sure projects get off the ground over two years. Well, two years is a long time in Canadian politics. And a lot of things can happen. There are a lot of forces at play

that are not part of parliament or the civil service. We've seen that in the past. You've got the provinces. You have various civil society groups, the environmental lobby, the First Nations and indigenous leadership. So there are lots of pieces of the puzzle that Mark Carney does not completely control. That being said, there was a poll this week that showed Mark Carney with an approval rating

of 67%. It's not rare for incoming new prime ministers to have high approval ratings in those first few months. What is different this time is that the government did not go prepare for months, as is usually the case. Mark Carney has been doing things for the past two months. And his approval rating is at 67%. That's not the same as Mark Kearney just won, and he is going to call the house back in the fall. And if you look at the list of things that he's done, including not presenting a budget, including raising the defense budget and the target for 2% moving it forward really quickly, including that bill, including, and I guess we'll talk about that, what I consider a bad communications gamble on getting a deal

with Donald Trump by the G7. 67% approval rating basically is saying Canadians are happy at this point to see a decisive government doing things. And sure, it's probably not perfect in anybody's mind, but he does have at this point the leeway to do that. The test of it and the success of it is not going to be today. It's going to be maybe this time next year, and going forward. Rob? Yeah, if you ask them why they're proceeding this way, they'll say a couple of things. Number one, they'll say they campaigned on it. They'll say, we said over and over again, the Prime Minister said over and over again, we are going to do things we thought impossible at speeds

we have never seen before. And so they say, nobody should be too, too surprised. Then for further reasoning, they say, one of the reasons why we did set a 30-day deadline clock on the discussions with Donald Trump is because we're not sure that they're going to work. And if they're not going to work, we need to move quickly to prepare our industries, help our working people, and begin the restructuring

process as quickly as possible away from the United States, which we are going to do probably anyway, even if we have a sectoral deal, because we're not talking about a comprehensive deal with the United States in 30 days. That's that's the kuzma. But a sector, even if we have this sectoral deal with the United States, we need to begin to put ourselves in a position where we're never in this position again. There are dangers because in effect, as Catherine May said, they're a great reporter here in Ottawa who looks at the public service. The Carney government is trying to change the way the public service works, but I think they're also trying to

change the way parliament works, and you can't really do that. You can't really change the way parliament works. I hear the words of Chief Charlene Gayle of Fort Nelson. She said, you're going to have a delay if you wait and do the right thing in terms of consulting with First Nations. But you're going to have a delay with progress. If you don't delay, you might not have the progress that you want, as Chantal is saying.

This is just the beginning. So it's a risk. But it's a risk they believe that they have to take, that Canada is in a rather perilous state, even with the deal with Donald Trump, because of our dependence on the United States and the way the United States is changing. They believe it's changing in ways that are going to probably outlast Donald Trump. And they need to begin to get at some very serious things right away.

Okay. Except you can't change the fact that the court system exists. We are controlled by the rule of law. Yes, except you can't change the fact that the court system exists when we are ruled by the rule of law. For those who always keep thinking there's a get out of jail card for any court challenge called the notwithstanding clause, that doesn't work for any of these things. So set that aside. The courts have not been shy to pronounce on some of the issues that are being bulldozed

through the House of Commons at this point and in ways that have thrown major ranches in what the government is up to. By the way, when you do talk to top liberals, they do expect to end up having to litigate over Bill C C5, which is an interesting concept. Same with provinces and municipalities. If you look at what happened with the Northern Gateway project, for instance, the defunct one, at some point, there was talk and a threat to and in part it happened to not

deliver the provincial permits or the municipal permits needed. And you can't bypass that, what are you gonna do? Same with indigenous blockades, we've seen them in the past, what are you gonna do? So I think part of the risk is that there is at this point a consensus that it's possible to do better and to be more efficient. It exists. The risk is that by going so quickly and not allowing conversation and debate to happen, you are going to let that consensus fall apart. And you will be left with the bare naked skeleton of lobbies, the oil and gas lobby,

the business lobby. And we know from experience that these groups do not have the capacity to shore up consensus. It's the opposite. They shore up pushback by being the only voices on this. So sure, the government as leeway, it can at this point, you know, move towards the right and set aside groups that are more identified with the left, but it does need those voices on the center left to move this forward. They need David Eby more than they need Daniel Smith, if they're going to get the pipeline to tight water for anybody. And at this point, that is who they are kind of pushing aside. They are forgetting what was one of the key lessons of the Meacham-Charlottetown rounds.

Every premier has its, his or her own dynamics to deal with. They are strikingly different. And if you don't understand where they come from, and you think you can bulldoze them into compliance, you're going to fail. You're going to turn them into heroes or zeros because they will be defeated. And then you will not have an ally. You will have a premier who has been elected

to stand up to you. Now on this 30-day thing, you can't erase the past when it's only a week and a half old. A week and a half is when Mark Carney, I'm not saying some spokesperson, some minister, some source, gave an interview in French where he talked about a deal with Trump on tariffs that would see tariffs go away. That was our line in the sand at the G7. That did happen. No one else set that bar. He did. And that bar is now suddenly non-existent. It's as if it didn't exist and we have 30 days now. exist and we have 30 days now. I see that after 30 days, it's untenable for Canada to not have to move to counterterrorism, steel and aluminum short of progress. But I am still, and maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but I'm still looking for that statement from the White House that says that we did agree with Canada to speed

up talks over 30 days. I haven't seen it. But if the point is to push the US into moving more quickly, you kind of would want the guy in charge of having the US move more quickly, say, yeah, my friend, Mark, and I, we agreed that this should move faster. That did not happen yet. And so for all that we say, this 30 day thing looks more to me like Mr. Trump being nice by allowing Mark Carney to put a good face on the fact that he did fail to come up with anything that looked like a resolution of the terror issue. OK.

You know, I wasn't planning to get into the Trump stuff right away, but we're there. So I better deal with it now. And then we'll come back, because I still have one question on my sort of overall kind of question about this situation. But Rob, can you answer what Chantel is saying? Like what happened? What happened to the deal? The Americans have 50 to 100 countries lining up to make a deal and they will determine that,

I think it was put to me, Donald Trump doesn't tap dance to anybody's tune in anybody's time except his own and so we might have wanted a sprightly deal because our steelworkers, our aluminum workers, our auto workers, others are thrown out of work and they need help. Those companies that employ them need help. Liquidity, as the Prime Minister calls it. But we're in a line in Washington, D.C. And we're not at the… I can't believe that Carney made it up when he gave that answer in the Radclan interview. They were hoping, both sides, I'm told, were hoping, for a trophy to hold up at the G7 to say,

you see, you can make a deal with Donald Trump. And who got that trophy? Well, Keir Starmer got it. And what did it look like? I'll tell you what it looked like. There's still tariffs on UK automobiles. There's still tariffs on UK steel. And that's clearly not a deal that Mark Carney wants. He doesn't want that deal.

But in some quarters in the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer was celebrated for at least lowering the tariffs. And I think that that's something that Canadian negotiators and the government are going to have to wrestle with. What costs access to the US market? Is it a tariff cost? Are we just going to have to swallow tariffs? Or are we going to stand on principle and say, no, no, that's not the way it works. This is not the law of the jungle.

This is not the law where the strong subjugate the weak. That's really what they're probably gonna have to deal with. Although Trump did suggest that there was something worth looking at when he called the prime minister's concept more complex, I think is the way he put it. But what did he say? I'm a tariff guy, I'm a tariff guy. And Keir Starmer's deal proves that. So

they did want to hold the trophy aloft. The trophy aloft was was Keir Starmer's to hold the loft. I'm not sure Canada wants that deal. So did Carney I did notice what in yesterday's news conference that Mark Carney held that he didn't repeat the line that our bottom line is we want tariffs gone. He went back to the American industries

need us as we need them, and tariffs are bad for both sides, which is a different line from the French interview where he said, we want the tariffs to be lifted. That's kind of our negotiating position. And then he sounded like he had come to the conclusion that it was going to be very hard to get the tariffs removed. But knowing all that Robert said about Donald Trump, and nothing of it is new to us, and we're not even the prime minister.

Why would you build expectations in this country that you're going to deliver a deal within two weeks if you know that you are dealing with someone who, even if you give him a five-paragraph sheet of paper, will not sign off on it unless he sees the word tariffs a few times on that page. And that's what I consider the communications error. If it makes your future deal look bad because you set the bar so high in public and then you didn't meet it. And now they have 30 days to come up with something that looks acceptable and not a cave-in to Canadian voters. It's an interesting game, but as you know, and Mark Carney should have known, you should always surpass expectations. And in this case, they

set themselves up to actually come under expectations. Well, as you said, it is at times it's a game and at times over this last month or so we've seen ups and downs and advantages one side, the other in this game of chess, trade chess. Would we conclude that from this last week Trump outmaneuvered Carney on this issue? Not yet. I wouldn't say that. Look, this is a guy with a very short attention span. He certainly doesn't like multilateral processes and doesn't like bilateral processes much either.

He's a unilateral guy. He does not like, just look at what happened at the G7. He did not want to be one of the seven dwarfs. He wanted to be Snow Orange, right? He wants to be the guy who's in charge. At least he didn't want to be Snow White. That's right. And be kissed and that, wait, yeah, right.

Yeah. It's not going there. I think we kind of suggested this last week, that he would find a way to be the, to look like the guy on top at that conference, either by not turning up or by leaving early. And he did, you know, I did. And it's going to happen at NATO next week. They've had to shorten NATO to one, two and a half hour working session.

There's a war going on in the east of Europe. And it's one, two and a half hour working session. And they're going to try. The Americans just want to talk about everybody getting to 5% at NATO. Meanwhile, there's a war going on in their backyard. And there would like, some of the European leaders would like the Americans to discuss that,

Donald Trump to weigh in a little bit on the fact that Vladimir Putin is raking civilian sections of Kiev with volley after volley of cruise missiles. But it's gonna be hard to get his attention that way. But even with Donald Trump gone and six of them missiles, but it's going to be hard to get his attention that way. But even with Donald Trump gone and six of them left, they managed to go through the entire summit and come out with no common statement from the six left on Ukraine and not a word about climate, which also tells you something that even in his absence, they didn't want to come up with a six against one

communique that seemed to suggest that they had the backbone to carry climate or Ukraine alone. And that, you know, was not a moment of glory for the G6 plus one that we witnessed in Canada next class? They are, like many families, one big unhappy family. The other thing that's true, I think, is that when the first G6 meeting, I think it was, or might have been a G5, was held, and even when it became the G7, those economies were about 75% of the world's GDP, and now it's 45%. So I don't say it's useless. I think they're useful meetings, but their influence has waned over the decades. And now it was always one before others. And now it's really six who are trying to get the attention of the one, and the one

seems to be completely disinterested. He does not want, Donald Trump does not want to be at a meeting where he does not control the agenda. And again, that's what NATO is about. That's why NATO, a NATO meeting with a hot war going on in Europe is only effectively going to last for two and a half hours. You know, talk talk is always better than no talk. Right. But talk without the principle talker, it does leave a lot to be desired.

The one thing Canon Ascus can claim is what is often too important in some of these things, which are the photo ops. A backdrop like Canon Ascus you can't miss. It looked fantastic as it always does. But but it was as we have noted here it was a strange meeting and other senses of the word. Okay we're gonna take our first break then we'll get back to that one other question I wanted to to ask on our top topic. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk with Chantelle Bair, Rob Russo, Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167 Canada Talks. We're on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. glad to have you with us wherever you're picking us up and this is the last good talk before we take our

summer break and okay what was I trying to get at earlier I was trying to understand what what this whole business of speeding things up said about our new government and whether this was just a temporary thing or whether it was something more permanent than that. Now, one of the things Rob said, and this is what I'd like to get at to try to understand, and this is not just the American situation and the fight over trade and tariffs. It's this sense that we have to move fast Canada because if we don't we're in serious, serious trouble on the economic side. I guess is what the answer is on that. And more than just the economy,

there's structuring of how things operate in this country. Are we in serious, serious trouble? Does it need this kind of push to try to fix things? Who wants to try that? We certainly have lost a knack to do big things. And I'm not talking pipeline here for the record, but just to do big things. It seems every time we try to do big things, I consider the Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec agreement on the hydro power to be a big thing. And every time we try to do a big thing. At some point

along the way, we build resistance, or we don't take into account predictable resistance and it all falls apart. And at some point, it does spell trouble that we've become our own worst enemies that the dynamics that and I, I do blame part of the political class, both liberals and conservatives for where we are that sometimes it's okay to have a consensus between parties. But over the past more than a decade now, it has become that if one side says black, the other side finds a way to say white, because it's more fun to create wedges. And it started small, because and it started, I hate to say, in part with political financing, and the notion that if you're going to finance your party, you need to make people angry. And then it starts with the small stuff. It's easy to take the small stuff and be against this, because people do focus sometimes on smaller issues and say, I'm angry about this, I'm sending money. But it has moved slowly but surely into bigger issues.

There is no reason why we couldn't have had over the past 20 years come to some consensus on climate policy. It starts with the Stephen Harper's government demonizing any notion of carbon pricing. But then it goes on to liberals, for instance, calling an election so that they can demonize people who are reluctant about vaccines and the COVID crisis. At some point, it doesn't move the country forward.

It's one thing to have a good discussion. I like what's happening, not the speech, but what's happening on Bill C-5 and the House of Commons and the Senate. What I like is people are trying to improve the policy. They're not trying to demolish it. But we have seen rare examples on major policies over the past two decades where parties have tried to improve policy rather than tried to

destroy them. And that sets us back on policy and economics. If you think climate is a left issue, forget that it's an economic issue. And it sets us back. And it has for two decades. And on this, it's on Mark Carney to change the liberal culture towards wedge issues. And it's on the conservatives to look at their leader and expect better from Mr. Puehljeff. Rob. Tony Keller had a very interesting call in a couple of weeks ago in the Globe and Mail that I thought was illuminating. He looked at some of the major projects we've had in Canada and how long it took

them to come to fruition. The last spike from beginning to end was about three and a half years. We can't get a cross-town light rail in Toronto in less than 12 or 15 years now. The subway in Montreal, the first subway was built in three or four years. Great subway, great subway system. Expo in Montreal, 1967 is when it happened, but Moscow dropped out at the end of 1963 and Montreal was rushed in, and four years later it had a great expo that was emblematic of what was happening to Canada on its 100th birthday, really coming into the world. Huge success. They expected, you know, 15 million people. They got 50 million people coming to it.

So we used to be able to do things in a short amount of time, and we can't for a whole variety of reasons. Now, we look at the last spike, and I'll tell you one thing that would never happen now that happened then. And indigenous people were just steamrollered to get the last spike done.

And that's not gonna happen now. And this is where I think the government should be doing better. I know it wants to do better when you talk to people that just because they're going from five years to two years, it doesn't mean they won't consult. But you begin consultations right at the beginning, which is why C5 is really just disappointed

a lot of indigenous leaders, because they wanna be part of the process, but you're eroding their rights when you say to them, we will consult you on the consultations at a later date, which is in effect what's happening here. So I understand that we used to be able to do big things in a short amount of time, and we can't seem to be able to do them now.

And we need to accelerate them. But we need to learn from the mistakes, as Chantal has said. And we need to do things right at the beginning to make sure as many people are as included as possible and then a decision is made. I think we still have stuff to learn there if I look at C5. If, you know, clearly Carney is at the top

of this government and a lot of this is being pushed by Carney. But who else should we be watching in terms of the ministers who are closest to this, or the bureaucrats who are closest to this process? Who's to watch here right now? Am I going to surprise you by naming bureaucrats, if you can call them that, i.e. Marc-André Blanchard and Michael Sabia. This government, we've spent so many years talking about the centralization of power

in the PMO. This is not a government that is decentralizing any of the big stuff. So yes, some ministers will have more influence than others. But if you're looking for who has real influence, it's these, David LeMette, he saw those four white middle-aged guys. I heard colleagues who are not women comment that it's it, but are younger than we are, who are finding this to be more of a boys club than anything that they've seen since they came into, at the, at an age where they do political coverage. And that is also striking as I'm not looking for a lot of, I'm not seeing a lot of, of women of influence in that government.

Has it been long enough to draw that conclusion yet? Well, who you give power to matters and the biggest, the most power, on this government has been handed to Mark-André Blanchard, Michael Sabia, and David Lometty. is being handed to Mark-André Blanchard, Michael Sabia, and David Lametti. I believe Mark Carney drives this process. He is the guy to watch. He is the guy who is concerned, more than concerned, he's alarmed at what he sees as our possible economic future and the work required to get away from that. So he's really driving this. And I think that if things go badly with the United States in the discussions with Donald Trump, he will use it again, as he did during the election campaign to say to Canada and Canadians, we don't want to be in the position where we have no choice, but we're very close

to that position now. We still have, let's say in the event, we still have tariffed access to the United States market. That's not good enough for the Canadian economy. We need to do better. We have to do better, and. We need to do better. We have to do better. And we are going to do better.

I think that's what our argument is going to be. Okay. One last thing before we move on to other subjects on the Trump-Carney situation. There were times in these last couple of weeks where it looked like the real and perhaps only serious discussion that was going on to try to bring this thing to a head was between those two. And now we see once again a lot of meetings going on at a level below that. Well, is it always gonna come back to what happens between Trump and Carney,

no matter what's happening on the level below that? I mean, our experience with the 88, 89 free trade agreements are that there's a lot of serious and important work done at the ministerial cabinet secretary level. I don't denigrate that work at all. But these things inevitably come to roadblocks and obstacles and difficulties. And when that happens, one leader picks up the phone and talks to the other and tries to clear that roadblock. Now, that worked very well at that moment

because Brian Mulroney, much to the chagrin of Ronald Reagan's Chief of Staff at the time, a guy named Don Reagan, he could go around him. He could go around the Chief of Staff. He had that kind of a relationship. I know that people say that the Prime Minister and the President have a very good relationship.

I don't know that they have that kind of relationship. I don't know that anybody can have that kind of a relationship with Donald Trump. I really don't. But the fact that they're not swimming in the same pool of bile that Trump and Trudeau were swimming in is probably a good thing. But yes, inevitably, there are snags.

There are obstacles, there are roadblocks that can only be cleared at the executive level. I think Dominique LeBlanc, who's been the lead minister on this, has been working the file really hard. But I think he has also had to report to Carney that the people he speaks with in the US, it all comes down to whatever Donald Trump has to say about their work. So it's probably possible to agree with people who are not Donald Trump, but at the end of the day, it's all going to come down to Trump.

And because of that, it is going to all come down to Kearney. Okay. It's inevitable. All right, last break. And then we've got kind of a potpourri of stuff to get in the last 15 minutes. So we'll do that right after this. Welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week and for this season.

Chantelle, Rob, Peter, all here for you. Okay, a number of things. NDP. What's happening on that story? What's happening on the, you know, there are seven seats that aren't even an official party. They don't have a full-time leader, they've got an interim leader. What's happening there?

Is there anything happening there that we should know about? Chantal? Well, there is a lot of silence, right? We do know, in case they don't know that we do know, that not everyone in that caucus is happy with everyone else in that caucus. Maybe they didn't have a big end to summer party as a caucus. We know that. We know that there are disagreements about the future direction of the party. And we have seen no evidence of a calendar for whatever, you know, a calendar for whatever. As in picking a successor to Jack Mead Singh, I did pick up,

it has been flowing under the radar. And I went back to it because I heard about it this week, again, I had sounded more serious than the time we've spent on it. But this notion that there is a movement or at least people out there who would like former, well, not former soon to be former Montreal mayor value plant to run to replace Jack Meatsing. And she was asked because value value plant has been close to the NDP. There has never been any doubt about that. She's participated in events that are part of the larger NDP, federal NDP environment. She is not running in the municipal election that is upcoming in Montreal. So she was elected twice as mayor of Montreal, which is quite something. And then I thought,

this is kind of interesting, or maybe we should pay more attention for a number of reasons. The first is the NDP has like every party a legend. And that legend has a municipal politician with no experience on Parliament Hill, no real profile coming into Parliament Hill as leader and leading the party to its best unexpected election result. That would be Jack Layton. So the fear that she would be not someone who is in the federal environment has federal experience, would be totally mitigated by that legend of the party. But the other because I asked the person who was telling me about this value something kind of suggesting we should take it more seriously. So but wouldn't she have a seat? And actually, yes, there

is a Montreal seat that if Alexandre Brut, who is the only MPMP left in Quebec, but if he wanted to, he could probably hand her that seat and she could win it. Because Gauss-Mont is a place where Valérie Plante's name is in really good standing. I thought that's interesting. It's very different. And I don't know if it's, you know, in the end, it's her decision. She's clearly still the mayor is not going to make those decisions now. But it's a rare sign of life on planet NEP. So I thought it was interesting. Rob, what are you hearing? I heard the same name. Nobody believes she's going to do it. They would love her to do it. But

I did hear. I should say she was asked at the end of April and she wouldn't close the door to it, say she was asked at the end of April and she wouldn't close the door to it. Mm hmm. By the way, it would probably, it would probably be very good news for, for the new Democrats. I look at what just happened in Quebec where they've named a liberal leader. It took them three years to do this and they needed to do some serious soul searching. I'm not sure that they succeeded. But you

know, there were a couple of outsiders who were there at the end. So so there is, it seems this need to look outside when you've had a failure. The liberals at the federal level have done that, right? For me, if anybody was going to ask me what the most deft political move of the year was, it was a bloodless switch from one liberal leader to the next that resuscitated a patient that had lost almost all blood.

So there is something to that notion. And I just think that we're a long, long way away from the NDP actually beginning to come to the grips, they haven't even begun to come to grips with who they should be, what they should be this whole notion of pull and push between conscience of parliament or actually trying to wield power. They need to begin to address that issue and they haven't begun to do it. But it is interesting.

It is interesting that they believe that they need to look outside of their ranks in order to find the leadership to begin to even have that conversation. But before they can do that, I do think they need to have that conversation themselves. And it's not going to be easy. It isn't. A couple of words on Pierre Poliev. We've mentioned this the last couple of weeks. Every week seems to be yet another parade of people suggesting what he should do to get himself back in the game. He's clearly not back in the game if you look at the polling results for whatever they may be worth at this time, but

they're not encouraging for him. Any word on Pierre Poliev this week? Anything that you're hearing that you find interesting? Chantal? He He's, he's fighting for his job. He is not going to spend the summer besides the lake sipping mocktails. He's already kind of working at hanging on to his job. The Hill times reported this week, he's talking to defeated candidates. I understand he's also talking to other people who have been rumored to, who might want his job at some point. We all know what the advancing of the convention from March to January in Calgary is all about.

It's clearly an attempt to put him in an advantageous environment so that he can win a leadership review. But he's got to get to that leadership review. You mentioned the polls. You know, I've said a few times how I feel about public opinion polls, voter intention polls, in particular outside of a writ period. But I do think the polls that he needs to be concerned about are best prime minister or prime ministerial preference. Those numbers are ones that he should be concerned about. He's at about half the level of support and for who would be a preferred PM to Mark Carney.

Now, again, I take those with a small boulder of salt, but those I think are more indicative of how people feel about him and not the conservatives. And I think he needs to be aware of that. I can tell you there are members of caucus who are aware of that. So even if by moving this convention to Calgary in January, and I've been to Calgary, it has charms, but there are very few Canadian cities that have charms in January. And Calgary is a few flights away from where a lot of his opponents would be. I think we're going to have to watch caucus

if there's going to be any serious move to unseat him. Victoria is pretty nice in January. So is Quebec City for that matter. Well, they have to get there, which can be a problem. Seriously, the one and again, no leader was given a second chance, has ever won and become prime minister, led this party to success, except for Stephen Harper, whose case

is in a different category. So there is no story like that. But the main reason why people give you a vote of confidence or not is based on polls. And what's devastating about the polls that Mr. Poliev is looking at is that they show him to be a drag on the party. The brand name of the party is worth more than his place as leader. And I think when people want to get somewhere to get rid of someone, wherever that may be in Canada and whatever season they do get there,

the last leader who had a leadership preview in Alberta, a federal leader, I think was Thomas Malkier. And the NDP was in power in Alberta. so we're supposed to be friendly territory. Right. So I am not at this point placing bets on that outcome. I'm not assuming that Mr. Poliev will still be a conservative leader this time next year. I've got a few minutes left. Time for you to put on your look ahead glasses on in terms of the summer months and what they may or may not deliver for the kind of discussions that we have every week, kind of the national political landscape, the political story. What do you see happening here over these next two or three months?

Well, Mark Runney has put a marker on July 21st, by saying he was placing this day as a deadline to decide whether he puts in place counter-terrorist funds and at what level, depending he's set on whatever progress is achieved over those talks with the US. So obviously, July 21 is going to matter. At some point over the next few days, I guess, there will be a by-election called for Mr. Plyev to run in August for a seat in Alberta in the House of Commons. There will not be a big surge of momentum for Pierre Paulyev for winning that seat. Why?

Because the conservatives took 82% of the vote on election night in that riding. It's going to be really hard to do better. It's going to be really hard to do better. It's going to be really easy to do less well. And so he really needs a good score because he is winning, getting this reputation of the guy who makes a lead melt. And he can't finish with 51% in the riding, one with 82%. But beyond that, what have we learned

over the past few months that whatever Trump touches, including summer, can turn into unexpected outcomes? So who knows? Exactly. Rob. Yeah, I think the deal with the Americans or non-deal with the Americans is going to determine really the next year or two of what happens in Canadian politics.

In the near term, I do worry when I speak to Indigenous leaders who are responsible, they themselves are worried about whether or not we are going to go back to an era where we're just before COVID, where unrest has sparked and we get back to blockades and serious protests. We do tend to forget that just before COVID hit that railways were being blockaded, supply chains were disrupted as a result. There is dissatisfaction. There is concern about erosion of indigenous rights because of C5 and I think everybody would like to see that headed off and if it isn't there is concern among indigenous leaders themselves that that sort of thing could happen again

this summer. Mark Carney seems determined that that won't happen. But as you say, he's going to have to show. He's going to have to show cards that prove that fact in terms of consultations and participation in some of the big decisions that he's talking about that have to be made. One of the decisions we made earlier this year was in January when Bruce Anderson took leave from Good Talk, as he often has done in his life over the last 30, 40 years, where he slipped into the political process, both at times for the liberal leader of the day and at times for the conservative leader of the day and at times for the conservative leader of

the day. In this particular case, he slipped away in January to work alongside and advising Mark Carney. But it was always something where he was not looking for a permanent job or even pay of any kind. He was just there for the political process. He's coming out of that now. And this, uh, this summer he'll be back with good talk. When we do our, uh, our first one special near the end of July, we'll do a special good talk. That'll be the next one from here. And as a result of that, Rob Russo who's been with us for the last six months and

has done a fantastic job for us helped Helped build an audience both on YouTube and on SiriusXM and on the podcast. And we will make sure, Rob, that we find spots for you in the time going forward. But it has been an absolute pleasure having you with us. I have so enjoyed this. And I'm reminded on a regular basis of just how vast and varied your audience was.

As a matter of fact, I was out last night at a place called Stellaluna, great place to have Italian ice cream. And a young RCMP intelligence officer came up to me and he said, aren't you Bruce Anderson? And I said, no, I'm not. But I'm glad you watch and tell us what you like about the show and what Chantel really like. Yeah, I'm so sick of that.

If I'm ever, ever, you know, if I'm ever tempted to get chaplips from Kiss kissing my mirror, I'm reminded regularly that I shouldn't do that. The other thing that I'm really pleased about, like I have enjoyed it, is that the following my mother has gotten ever since she tried to interrupt me with us with a technical problem. I'm reminded of that on a regular basis. So it's been a delight.

It's so great to be on a program like this. And you guys should be very, very proud of the work you do, because I hear about it all the time from people right across the country, whether it's Chuck Wagon Cafe in the Diamond Valley in Alberta, or Standing in Line in Richmond, BC, people telling me about the work that you guys do on Good Talk. It's, it's, it's first-class journalism, first-class political analysis.

And it was a pleasure to be associated with it. Well, thank you. We've enjoyed every, every moment of it. We're out of time and we're out of time for this season. Thanks to Chantel. Thanks to Rob. Have great summers. All of you. We'll see you near the end of July with the next special Good Talk. That's it for now. Bye.