The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Governments face bad weeks and really bad weeks. This could be really bad.

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Two potholes for the Liberals in their path to try and find recovery.  One serious. A scandal that could last a while. The other perhaps not so much. Plus the ugliness surrounding demonstrations in Canada on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war -- what does it say about the country. Plus a lot more with Bruce and Chantal.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, welcome to Friday. It's Good Talk time. Sean Talleybear, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here to discuss another week of all kinds of little things that have been happening and try and put them in some kind of context, some perspective on these different issues. You know, I think we've both all three of us have been around long enough and our audience has been around long enough to know there are governments face bad weeks and governments face really bad weeks sometimes. Well, this was probably closer to the really bad week than just the ordinary bad week for the Trudeau government. It just seemed

like every day there was yet another thing popping up. Let's start with the most obvious, and that was the Auditor General's report into the Arrive Can app, where it's clear that there were millions of dollars going out the door on this, and the accountability on it, who was checking it, where it was going, what it was being used for, why it was so over budget, or at least the original budget that was mentioned, is a puzzle. and there are real concerns about what may have been going on with some of that money and the government seems hard-pressed to give us a straight-up answer on this. Where do you, how do you see this thing Chantal and you know is it scandal of the week or is this one of those things that will haunt them for a long time?

Well, no, I think it has legs in the sense that this isn't a story that is going to go away. It's impossible to put a lid on it. If the Auditor General can't figure it out, it's really hard for the government to come up with answers because if the government had had answers, presumably it would have provided those answers to the Auditor General. And that would have been part and parcel of the report. I've read a few Auditor General's reports in my time,

but I've rarely seen one where the Auditor actually says, in my time, but I've rarely seen one where the auditor actually says, I can't find this. I can't figure this out. How did this go from $80,000 for an app to $60 million? What process led to that? Who is managing this, where and how. We're talking about an app here. We're not talking about an all-encompassing policy that crosses over many government departments. We are also talking about 80,000 to 60 million.

Any of us, if it were our money, would have said, whoa, stop this, a lot sooner than when it got to 60 million. So for the government, the really bad news is not just the bad news of this week. It is that this story will continue to haunt the government. And it will haunt it for a long time, because it may take months, if not years, before we get a definitive answer on who did what and how that was allowed to happen. grasp onto that is that no political actor, be it a staffer, a minister, an MP, has so far been found to have had his or her hands in this mess. It is at this moment, I say at this moment, at the bureaucracy level. But what does it do to the government despite all that? It shores up the idea that under the Liberals, there has been no rigor in the management of public funds and that, you know, anything goes as long as you get the job done or maybe you don't.

You know, let me try and put a little context on this before you leap in here, Bruce. You know, I think for a lot of Canadians, no matter their political stripe, they find it hard to just have a government slough it off on the bureaucracy and suggest that there's no political responsibility here on the one hand. On the other hand, and not to defend anybody in this situation. But I can recall, you know, a couple of years ago in the middle of the pandemic, the three of us would be talking about the huge amount of money that was being shoveled out the door for a variety of reasons, basically in the endgame to try and save lives.

But we were talking billions and billions of dollars went out the door. And you just have to look at the debt situation and the deficit situation to recognize that. But the issue was always, who's accountable? Where are you going to draw the line if and when we find out that some of this money didn't go the right way. And there have been other examples of this in terms of the money that the government handed out to businesses and individuals as compensation for lost work hours, lost jobs, etc., etc. But accountability is always one of these things when you're talking about the taxpayer's money that seems to be, certainly in this one, clouded. Bruce.

Well, first off, sometimes I've said things that are a little bit critical of the media and journalism around politics. And I want to say that this is a story that wouldn't have been as clear to the public, wouldn't have been pursued as much as is valuable for it to be pursued had it not been for good journalism being done on it. It's uncomfortable for governments to see stories like this happen. But the discomfort of government doesn't matter in this context. There clearly are some issues that need to be explored further, need to be exposed, and people need to be held accountable for whatever they did that didn't meet the standard of care. That's just one aspect of it that was applied. I think that there's been a period of time where people were able to look at ArriveCAN and sort of wonder,

well, on the app, you know, a fog of war against COVID, lots of things needed to happen quickly. And so, you know, overruns, maybe we should just overlook them a little bit. And there's a certain amount of merit to that, but not from 80,000 to 60 million. I don't think that anybody could conclude that. I've always been a little bit mystified by the notion that anybody felt that they could build an app for the government of Canada to do what the Arrive Can app was supposed to do for $60,000. If somebody came to me and said they could build that app for $60,000, I would not hire them to do that because I don't know much

about how to build apps, but I'm pretty sure that $60,000 is not going to be the right number for that. Whether somebody could have come and said, how about 60 million? What would I have done in that situation? Again, not being an expert on app prices, I would have said, I think I'll get a few other looks at this, right? I want to really explore who has a better mousetrap here. Anyway, I don't want to substitute my lack of expertise for whatever went on in the procurement of that app, except to say that even taking into account, even discounting the outcome with the fog of COVID war aspect, that doesn't look good. And it's a good thing that there are investigations underway to find out exactly what happened and those will come to fruition. And Chantal is absolutely right. The question of this company and this app is going to continue to be an important issue for the government

politically. I think that I would echo what she said that so far there has not been any evidence that this is about political interference in a way that we've seen in cases in the past. Perhaps we'll see some of that in the future, but usually if there is any of that, it comes to the fore fairly soon. And this story has been around for a good while now, but that doesn't change the question of whether or not it could be potentially very damaging to the government. A slow burn story about a huge amount of money mismanaged. And I'm not here just talking about the 60 million. It's the whole question of procuring services in the way that was done with this individual company. I don't know that the company did anything outside the rules, but it does seem, what's the safest word? It seems odd

that the government would do that much business with one very small company, even understanding that that small company was subcontracting others. It raises questions that need to be examined, and it's good that they're being examined. The smell around this was kind of heightened this week by the sense that some MPs who were being briefed on the situation raised the specter that there was a lot more to the story than we were being told at the moment,

that there was all kinds of potential for graft and corruption within the system somewhere that led to this. That's caused yet another level of concern and intrigue around this story, which would also suggest that it's not going away anytime soon. Did you have another thought on this, Chantal? Yes. There are two measures that the federal government put in place, major measures that created controversy.

One of those was vaccine mandates, but the other was the Arrive Can app. In both cases, the federal government doubled down and doubled down again and again on Arrive Can despite documentation of issues, which I suspect would have led whoever was in charge at the civil service level to double down on the company that was subcontracting to say, fix this, we don't want this bad publicity anymore.

But where the similarities end is that despite a federal court having found that the government was wrong or should not have had to use the Emergencies Act to deal with the protests that resulted from the vaccine mandates, Canadians are inclined to give the government a pass on this, a majority of them. But when it comes to arive Can, it couldn't be worse because the public already felt and already had sent serious signals that this app was one of the most unpopular creatures to emerge from the pandemic toolbox of the federal government. And that kind of makes it worse because people will say, well, yeah, they had vaccine mandates to protect people. You can see a direct link.

And they use the Emergencies Act because in the situation, it looked like the only thing to do. But when it comes to arrive, can, a lot of Canadians will be inclined to say, not only did they create something that ended up harassing tens of thousands of people who had absolutely nothing that justified it, but on top of that, they blew 60 millions on it. And I think that makes that story even more lethal to the government than it could have been if it was something that most people at the time had thought, this is a really good move. And, you know, when you look back, you say, well, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and more eggs than needed were broken. That's not going to happen in this case.

There will not be a pass from public opinion on the arrive-can mess to be acquired easily by the liberals. Is anybody politically in the crosshairs on this, aside from the Prime Minister who's always in the crosshairs? Is there a minister who is kind of like responsible for Arrive Can? It's odd, because with a scandal like this, I haven't heard a name attached to it. I think that there are separate questions about ArriveCAN. My experience

with ArriveCAN is maybe a little bit different than Chantal's in the sense that I agree with her that what probably happened here is that trying to put an app together to do what ArriveCAN was intended to do in the middle of a pandemic where rules and regulations and trans-border requirements kept changing. That's a pretty complicated thing to try to do. But once the government said that they were going to do it, everybody underneath the level of prime minister really does feel like they have no choice in a situation like that, but to keep on forcing fixes for the problems that naturally emerge. And it always feels like there's no time on the clock. So that does lead to decisions that add to the cost. And people in those situations

can be excused somewhat for saying we need to get this done because there are lots of people who are traveling and their expectations are being set by what's being telegraphed by the government as the rules of the road. So I can understand a bit of that. I do think Arrive Can, though, did become a bit of a symbol, like vaccines did, that divided people and that caused some people to feel that there was too much intrusion, too much effort by government to control their movements and to force them to record what they were doing. I think others ended up feeling like if you could sort of take the COVID part out of it, that the app has some valuable functions. I know I used it and felt like it had that aspect.

So I don't know where public opinion really is on the usefulness of the app. But I do think that Arrive can, will stick to Justin Trudeau in particular. I don't think it's really an issue for others in the government, partly as a symbol for those who think that, you know, maybe the government overmanaged the situation with COVID. Maybe they got carried away with some of the ways in which they approached it. But also, and maybe this is the more important point, can they manage the money? You know, we're heading into a budget where, you know, I think the biggest tug of war inside the government is really about, are we going to sound like we don't care any more than we have about the fiscal situation. I think for their political purposes,

they really need to look as though they're more preoccupied with not spending more money than is absolutely necessary. And so this is an extremely untimely story for them. And the scale of it, while very, very small compared to some other government spending, is something that people can relate to. An app, $ small compared to some other government spending, is something that people can relate to. An app, $60 million, way over cost estimates. Nobody seemed like they were able to stop that from happening or post hoc explain why

it did. Okay, we're going to move on to another story that caused the government all kinds of problems this week. And it is one of those stories where at the end of the day, you're kind of wondering, you know, was there a lot of there there, or was it, you know, clearly it made the headlines because of the sense that the government didn't care about roads. But the deeper you dug, you'd start to wonder, well, okay, was that really what it was all about?

Or was this another sort of federal, provincial thing? And I don't know. It's all around the environment minister, Guy Beaux, who certainly left the impression in a comment earlier in the week that the feds were getting out of any kind of road building, road construction, road fixing, anything. By the end of the week, he clarified his remarks to say major road work, which they're not involved in anyway. But it sure made headlines, and the Conservatives sure had a lot of fun with it. Bruce, you start us off on it.

Yeah, I don't think this is anything more than a minister saying something intended to be understood in a particular context that was then analyzed outside that context and used as a way to recharacterize him as somebody who doesn't kind of live with the same daily frustrations or needs that most Canadians do. So did Stephen Guilbeault get it wrong in terms of what he was saying? I don't think so really on the substance. I think what he was doing was saying essentially what the government's policy has been in the context of a conversation that was not about a philosophical discomfort with more roads, or he wasn't saying that he doesn't believe that Canada is going to need more road infrastructure in the future, that we're never going to drive cars again after a certain period of time. All of those things that are being attributed to him, at least as an attitude i don't think were reflective in what he said in this particular instance if there's a a lesson to be learned for the government

i suppose it's that if you if you're suffering with this uh wave of public opinion that perceives that you're out of touch that perceives that your pursuit of sustainability or other goals are so prominent in your minds that you don't really understand the day-to-day life of people and the challenges that they experience, then you have to be really aware of how you're going to say the things that you say. And I don't want to put a falsely high standard on Mr. Guilbeault here. I think he's a very smart individual, but he can be characterized by his critics as lacking a pragmatic understanding of how his environmental aspirations relate to people. And so I think for him, he probably has taken away a certain measure of, I need to be really diligent about

explaining the pragmatism of my environmentalist approach and making sure that context is part of the statements that I make, especially when they have the potential to be taken the wrong way. Chantal. I don't think Stephen Gilboault believed that he was saying anything revolutionary or new, which probably explains why this story, taken out of context, has made headlines in only one language in this country, and not in the French language. And no, it isn't because it got lost in the translation. It is because over the past six to eight months, every single Quebec federal minister has been explaining in the context of a mega infrastructure project of the Quebec government called the Third Link to link Quebec

City to the South Shore, that the federal government would only chip in if it had a public transit component. And for months, the ministers, not just Stephen Guilbeault in Quebec, have been saying, we are not in the business of funding car-only major infrastructures. We don't do that. We haven't been doing that. That doesn't mean that the federal government is about to rip up roads across the country. But it does mean that if you have a major new road project in this country and you want some federal money for it, then you're going to have to think of a way to find a public transit angle to it. Is that revolutionary?

Is that going to force everyone on bicycles in rural Ontario? Well, the reality is that the federal government has never been in the business of the financing or the building of most roads in this country. That's a municipal and a provincial responsibility. What the federal government does do is intervene in major projects such as the Confederation Bridge between PEI and the mainland. And I live right next to it, so I guess I would have noticed if Mr. Guilbeault had no plans to allow cars to cross the river. There's a new Champlain Bridge a few kilometers from my house. It was built under the liberals. It does have a public transit component, but no, it is not reserved to buses or tramways. Cars go through it

every morning. The federal government paid for it. It's a critical to buses or tramways. Cars go through it every morning. The federal government paid for it. It's a critical infrastructure, not just for Montreal, but for trade in this country that this works. And that is where the federal government comes into the funding. It doesn't have a say on whether you're going to expand. Both you guys would know this highway, Highway 50, between Gatineau and Montreal. It's sometimes single lane, sometimes double lane.

It took forever to get it. Why? Because the provincial government pays for roads like that. Now they're thinking of twinning it so that it has two lanes on both sides and it's less dangerous. That's not something the federal government has a say on. So you look at the coverage of this and you think, at some point there is a responsibility before you go for gotcha journalism to check basic facts and to provide context.

And this week, context was gone. It became a less score cheap political points at the expense of the environment minister, who, in hindsight, should have once again explained over again that he was in the context of the third link, explaining and restating a well-known government position that not everybody likes in Quebec, by the way. But it is the federal position, and it is defensible for the federal government to say, if we're going to put billions into a new road project, we want it to have a, and we want to finance a public transit section on it.

Well, whosever fault it was for letting the story blow up out of context, it was, as Bruce likes to say, a layup for the conservatives. They'll pound away on this for a couple of days, but it'll always be a part of their jargon, even in during an election campaign a year or two from now. They'll always use it. Yeah, I think that's right. And Pierre Poliev is especially effective, I think, at taking things like this and using them to raise money, to draw attention.

But, you know, if I'm Stephen Guilbeault, I think it's a lesson to take away. But I wouldn't overemphasize the degree to which, you know, what he was saying should be used as an additional criticism against him. I'm with Chantal on this. I think that this happens in politics that, you know, when I talked about journalism around the Arrive Can story, I think it was really quality journalism that made a big, that's made a big difference in the public understanding of this. This is a little bit more the other side of the coin,

the tendency to sensationalize, take out of context, certain comments fueled by partisanship that wants to, wants to do that. Yeah. As I say, I can, I think there's some lessons here for the liberals and Mr. Guilbeault, but I wouldn't overstate them. And I don't think it'll have a long-term impact at all. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. We have lots more to talk about. And we'll start doing that right after this.

And welcome back. Bruce Anderson, Chantelle Hebert, Peter Mansbridge here. It's a Friday episode of The Bridge called Good Talk. And we're going to move on now to our next segment. This deals with, well, it deals with the whole fallout from the Israel-Hamas story from October 7th, from Canada's position which, I don't know, seems to be adapting, getting closer and closer for calling for an all-out ceasefire. But they haven't yet. They're under tremendous pressure from both externally and internally within the party.

The party seems to be split on this. But there's something else happening too, and it's kind of the ugly nature of what's happening in different parts of the demonstrations and the threats, the, you know, attacking to a degree certain institutions, some institutions that are associated with the Jewish faith. Even Mount Sinai Hospital this week, just down the street from where I live when I'm living in Toronto. You know, a pretty ugly demonstration at a hospital. I was caught in a demonstration yesterday outside a computer store

where I was going to try and figure out how to get my printer working. But it's not just been places of Jewish faith. It's been attacks on Muslim mosques as well in the country. And some of the things that are being said about prominent Canadians who happen to be in one faith or another seem to be unacceptable to Canadian traditions. All this around what's happening on the other side of the world, and it's ugly what's happening there.

There's no question about that. And the failure of world leaders, including Prime Minister Trudeau, to try and convince Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel that he should stop bombing Gaza, and especially now the community of Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border. That's not happening. And there's tremendous pressure on governments around the world to convince Netanyahu somehow. But I guess I'm a little more concerned about what's happening

in terms of internally in Canada because of this issue. You know, new requests for protection for various political leaders in the country, the deputy conservative leader of Jewish faith getting protection now from the RCMP. What do we make of this? Chantal, why don't you start us on this? I'm a bit fascinated, and it's a bit off topic from your question, but I've been fascinated for the past few months at how Toronto has become kind of a ground zero for such protests, while my city, which has really identifiable Jewish businesses, neighborhoods, etc., including the Jewish hospital, has been not totally spared these events.

On the contrary, there have been vandalized MPs' offices, but ultimately a lot quieter. I can't explain it, but it has struck me because we are always presented with, you know, Toronto, this model of diversity and accommodation of differences and a very different side. I was raised in Toronto. My children were born there. I didn't expect Toronto to be like this in this instance. That's not the image that Toronto has in other regions of the country.

And I say this only in jest. Toronto has had, quote unquote, a tendency to lecture other regions of the country on accommodation and diversity. But I don't have an explanation for why they're not here, not somewhere else. Anti-Semitism is a reality. It's been a reality forever. And this is providing people who harbor such feelings an outlet, a way to legitimize, to find new friends in this by confusing Israel and the plight of the hostages with the current political government in Israel. And the same is true on the other side.

There are people who have targeted mosques and other institutions because they don't like Muslims. And I don't believe that when I see the defacing of a mosque in Montreal, Toronto, or elsewhere, I don't believe that I should necessarily assume that the people who are doing that are people who support Israel in its cause, rather than people who have found an excuse to do something against Muslims. What that shows you is the social peace in a country is a really fragile infrastructure. What I find encouraging is that despite the fact that many politicians have really strong

feelings about this issue, contrary strong feelings as we saw this week within the Liberal caucus, I don't think you can accuse any Canadian politician, at least in the House of Commons, of whipping up feelings for its view versus the other view. I have not seen examples that I would qualify as politicians putting fuel on fires just to score more political points with one community rather than another. But it is an uncomfortable place for a politician to be because I don't think any of the leading politicians in the House of Commons condone whatever is happening on either side of what we see in the streets. Bruce? I agree with Chantal about a lot of that, especially the latter part about the situation politicians find themselves in to some degree.

I think there's aspects to your question that relate to social peace and what's happened to our ability to kind of find or keep or maintain, you know, to protect social peace. I think there has been a coarsening of political debate over the last number of years. or keep or maintain to protect social peace. I think there has been a coarsening of political debate over the last number of years. I think in part it's fueled by what people see on social media and how people react to the way in which harder and harder and harsher arguments are made there. I think partly it's a reaction to the huge visibility of the Trump mega version of politics,

not to put all of it on that, but that it allows people to imagine that they can do things and say things in a way that they wouldn't have considered doing before had they not seen so many examples of it so often on so many different issues. So we've kind of lost those guardrails that keep people from expressing their views and the intensity of their views in ways that are harmful to social peace. And that's not a right or left issue. That's an issue that affects our democracy in important ways. On the substance of the issue, it's been clear for some time to me that there are three different pieces to it. One is the rise of anti-Semitism, which is a legitimate and great concern to the Jewish community and to people who care about the Jewish community. And a lot of people in that community want to see

more evidence all the time of support and pushback against anti-Semitism. And they don't see as much of it as they feel they should. And I think I understand why they don't, because I think that it is something that in the mix of all of the other issues that people are dealing with in politics, they don't pay as much attention to as one would if you lived in that community and you felt the risk that they feel. The second issue is Hamas and the horrible terrorism that it committed a couple of months ago, a few months ago. And what should be done about that? And how can Israel find a way to remove the risk of that ever happening again? And a lot of people care deeply about that and believe in that cause. But the third is the Netanyahu government and the civilian catastrophe that's happening. People have such strong feelings on this. Many people do. Some don't,

I guess, but many people do. And they have trouble hearing a conversation about anti-Semitism and Hamas and Netanyahu. And they're listening for is the finger on, you know, adding weight to one side of the scale and not the other rather than at the end of the day, Hamas needs to be condemned and its threat to Israel needs to be ended. Israel needs to stop being involved in such a catastrophic war that's killing so many civilian people. And it feels to me that the government of Canada has gotten closer to, as you say, Peter, that a position that a lot of people who are concerned about those civilian deaths want it to take. But it's a complex political issue that's not probably being handled in the most effective way by most governments. And it's a sign of the times that we seem to struggle to have a civil conversation about what to do about these issues without people deciding that.

If you're not talking enough about anti-Semitism, you're not concerned enough about the risks to the Jewish community. If you're not talking enough about the civilian deaths in Gaza, you're not concerned enough about the Palestinian population. These are very difficult issues, and I worry about them a lot. I guess what I'm also getting at is, have we, and I guess, you know, Chantal seemed to touch on a little bit in her answer, and that is whether we're, as Canadians,

we're kind of losing some of our innocence on these kind of big issues. We're great at lecturing others about how they should respect rights, human rights, and yet here we are in a tussle and a tug that looks at any moment that it could really get out of control in some of these demonstrations and some of these threats, some of these actions that are taking place. And I guess it's trying to define what's happened to us. Is this just a temporary moment or is this something that's trying to define what's happened to us. Is this just a temporary moment, or is this something that's going to change us, you know,

as a country for some time, if not forever? I'm not a big believer in us. So I, and I believe every country has, and Canada is not immune, those kinds of, and we've had them on other fronts, those kinds of tensions between people. Up to a point, they're a sign of a healthy democracy. We are not all, you know, white milk coming out of the same factory. And the clash of perspectives makes life more interesting. There is a difference between demonstrating for what you believe is right and targeting businesses, places of worships, hospitals, institutions on the basis of the community that they are identified with. There's a big difference.

It's totally okay to occupy the entire downtown of Montreal with a pro-Palestine have a ceasefire demonstration. That's normal. We have those things. And the reverse. I think the unease at this point is how easily some people feel that it's okay to target specific places that have really nothing to do with this conflict and no power over it, except for the fact that they happen to be owned or to be places where people of one persuasion versus another happen to work. in having a demonstration in front of Mount Sinai Hospital, except to say we dislike anything Jewish and we want to erase Jewishness from the Canadian landscape. Will it change us? Well, we're already in the process of being changed by events,

by what's happening to the south of the border, by the turn that U.S. politics has taken. But that's okay, because societies are only as strong as the challenges that they face. Society is sheltered and never challenged, probably has a better chance of protecting what you call the us identity. But that identity over time gets weak because it's never tested. I think every national culture can have its myths and its realities. And I think that Chantal alluded to earlier that anti-Semitism as an example has been around forever. And it's been around for a long time in Canada as well. And I think that even if I think back over the last several elections,

I can think of episodes where it was pretty clear that there were racist influences in those elections. And if we go back a little further in Canadian history, you know, there isn't a point in time where you can look at our cultural history and say there wasn't racism or bias or social tension around cultural divisions. It perhaps wasn't as prominent. And in retrospect, a lot of the time we're spending now saying it should have been more prominent. We should have a shameful history. And this has been some of the fight between the so-called woke and the anti-woke. I think that gets exaggerated. So I think that those tensions have always been there, and societies need to try to find ways to work them out. And I think Canada has, by and large, done a pretty good job of trying to recognize and deal with those issues over time, and largely continues to do that.

I do think that what's changed isn't so much a change that's just happened in Canada. I think you see it happening everywhere, which is this. The more people see the more violent extensions of their political views played out and almost celebrated, not in the sense of being praised, but being much more visible to the rest of the world, the easier it is for people who have these views and these tendencies to say, I'm going to do that too. And I think that's a much bigger phenomena than it has been in Canada. And it's shocking, I think, to many Canadians to see the degree to which people think that it's okay to imagine doing violent acts to people in political life, in public life, and to do some forms of demonstration that in the past we would have considered to be well across the line that we can accept. And I think in that sense, there has been a we, and I think the we is now kind of broken down. All right, we're going

to take our final break, come back with our last segment. I want to continue a little bit on this vein, but in a different direction. And we'll do that when we come back. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks. You're on your favorite podcast platform or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Wherever you're joining us, we're glad to have you with us. Okay, for our final segment, and we've got about seven or eight minutes for this.

But Peter, just before you do that, we have to leave time to at least pull on that thread of you telling the story of going to the computer store to try to figure out how to make your printer work because that's just a perfect little kind of vignette for us to understand more about the life. I know nothing about trying to make, I figure you plug them in, they either work or they don't. And when they don't,

you don't go to the store and go over a demonstration and you buy one. That is of course what I ended up having to do. And then I got the new printer home and I couldn't figure out how to get it on wifi. I mean, anyway, that's, that's a whole. That's a whole different story. My Friday is made. Good. Carry on.

Yeah, okay. A little bit of levity in a serious day is a good thing. Here's your final question, and it's about kind of where we place in this very confused, dangerous, upside-down world that we live in today. You know, we wake up today and we hear that Alexander Navalny at 47 or 49 or whatever he was, very young, is dead, the opposition leader in Russia. This is a couple of months after the last guy who took on Putin mysteriously died in a plane crash.

So we have that going on there. We have, you know, the bizarre scene of the various Trump trials going on in the U.S. You have the Russia-Ukraine war where Ukraine's taken it not well in the last little while. You have the Israel-Hamas situation, which we've talked about. You've got a widening war all over the Middle East. And then you have Canada. As we've mentioned before, Canada is a player on the international stage, but kind of a minor player on the international stage.

Occasionally, we step up, make a name for ourselves, but you've got to go back basically to Lester Pearson and Brian Mulroney on South Africa before you can find those moments. We live in a dangerous world right now. Do we recognize that? When we look at the Parliament of Canada this week, what are we talking about? Disagreement about who pays for roads?

You've got a scandal? There's no doubt it's a scandal on the Arrive Can app. Not a lot of, you know, we're at this security conference in Munich right now, which is talking about a world in some peril. But are we kind of whistling in the graveyard here? Are we not realizing what's going on in the, in the real world? Who wants to take a run at that? Bruce? Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll go. Look, I think that, um,

there is a degree to which the bigger the existential risk, the easier it is for people to say it's an existential risk. I don't know the answer to it. I don't know if I can influence. I've got enough stresses and worries in my life. I'm not going to spend that much time thinking about it. I think that's an aspect. But I think the more important one really is that there's so much uncertainty about, you know, what a lot of politicians refer to as the world order. And I think by that, they are largely focused a bit on

what is the role of the United States in helping set a stable world order? And what will it be after November? For good and legitimate reasons, Canadian politicians are careful not to inflame what might need to be a carefully managed relationship with the United States if Donald Trump wins that election. But in the meantime, it does seem as though there isn't perhaps as much discussion as would be helpful for people to understand the degree to which China and Taiwan, other tensions about a wider conflict in the Middle East and the aspirations of Russia continue to be much more significant geopolitical risks than we've seen at any time in the last number of years. So I think your point is right, Peter,

but I don't know that politicians have an easy way of making people kind of draw a beat on these and know what the answers are because the U.S. is such a big question mark in the middle of it. Chantal. About your list of the last time Canada played a role in a big international debate, I would still count Jean-Claude Tristain's decision not to go to Iraq as a major moment of a Canadian doing something on the world stage. That turned out, I think, by most people's evaluation to be inspired, but not the obvious decision at the time to have been taken. I mean, if Joe Biden cannot get Congress to fund Ukraine or convince the Israeli government not to engage

in what could be a really bloody humanitarian operation, it's hard to see how having Canadian politicians in the House of Commons debate something on which when it comes to the basics, there is general agreement.

We do not have a at this point very polarized debate on foreign policy in this country. So I still maintain that the most important political development of the next year, regardless of whether we have a federal election, and regardless of who wins the federal election, is the US presidential election. That is the event that stands to have the most impact on Canada for the next five years,

not just for our domestic policies or for our trade, the economy, but for what happens to the world order and where we stand in it. And it's not just Canada. The French, the UK is about to have an election. It's not going to be about all these things. It's going to be about more domestic issues. But France, like the UK, like Germany, is holding its breath to see what's going to be happening in the U.S. presidential election. But between now and then, beyond getting ready for worst-case scenarios,

it's really, really hard to engage on the policy front on those mega issues. And they are mega issues. There's no question about that um i don't know i i just sometimes feel that i hear what you're saying about what's the point of having a big debate in house comments about the international situation wouldn't necessarily lead anywhere or mean anything but it just seems to me at times that we kind of, we're not looking at the big picture of a world that's going to impact us. You're right, the American election will have a major part of that, but some of the stuff that's happening in Europe and in the Middle East and in the Far East is going to impact us as well.

Well, I think your point, Peter, brings us back to Chantal's question of who is we, because I do think there is a very sizable portion of the population that is quite worried. Some part of that population doesn't know what to make of it, what to choose to do, or whether there's anything that can be done prior to the resolution of the U.S. presidential election, at least as an important starting point. But I think there are people who are quite concerned. And so I wouldn't say nobody is. But I think that the breakdown in the way that the media work to bring people together around key global stories, especially stories that don't have just a personal or local aspect.

I think a lot of that has dissipated, that there just aren't the ways in which people consume that information, except those who have a demonstrative interest in it and who read the New York Times online or the Guardian or follow the BBC News or, you know, I mean, we talk about how the CBC used to play a role in that, a bigger role than it does right now. But I think a lot of that is lost and it's an important loss. All right. We're going to leave it at that for this week. You know, a good conversation about a number of topics, especially this last half hour is like

unusual for us to go off in that direction to discuss what we've been discussing, but I'm glad we did. Monday is a holiday in most of the country, family day in some parts, called other things in other parts. So there will be an encore edition of the bridge on Monday. Tuesday, really interesting gathering as we get ready for what will be the second anniversary, entering the third year of the Ukraine-Russia war. Ryan Stewart, who guided us through the first year, who's been off writing his memoirs, will join us on Tuesday with Janice Stein. We'll deal with both the military impact of the two years and the diplomatic impact.

So it'll be a great program with the two of them. Get the buzz tomorrow. Subscribe to it at nationalnewswatch.com. We'll give you some things to think about over the weekend. Thanks to Chantel. Thanks to Bruce. We'll talk to you both again in a week's time. Take care, you guys.

Bye. Bye. Bye.