The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Has The Media Blown The US Election?

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Rob Russo of The Economist subs for Bruce Anderson today, and we get all of this with Rob and Chantal.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Hebert, and Rob Russo joins us today. Rob's filling in for Bruce, who's off on this day, and Rob, as you can recall from his previous appearances with us, is the Canada correspondent for The Economist. So it's pretty nice to have a little kind of world-class journalism joining us here. Thank you. You've been slumming it up until now, right? Yeah, yeah.

So listen, we could start on the Ottawa drama for the six week in a row or what have you. But quite frankly, I'm kind of bored of that story. We'll get to it a little later perhaps and have a few words on it. But I want to go to something else. And having Rob with us gives us this opportunity to get into the whole issue of news organizations endorsing candidates. There was a big fuss in the United States over the Washington Post choosing not to endorse last week, at least its publisher choosing not to endorse, and the flap that has caused inside the Washington Post amongst its journalists. This issue about endorsements is not just a Washington Post thing.

It's not just a U.S. thing. It's kind of a discussion that takes place every once in a while in newsrooms around the world, quite frankly. But it has been certainly up there in the last week. The reason I find it interesting to have Rob with us today is the Economist has today decided it is endorsing Kamala Harris for the U.S. presidency in Tuesday's election, saying that the Trump presidency is just too much

of a risk. I don't want to talk about the endorsement per se, but I do want to talk about this whole issue of a risk. I don't want to talk about the endorsement per se, but I do want to talk about this whole issue of endorsements. So why don't you start us, Rob, on this? Because it's been quite a discussion over the last few days and seeing as now your news organization is, you know, I guess in a long-standing way has endorsed a candidate in this particular election. Was there any internal discussion about this? Are you comfortable with it? What's your sense of this?

I'm not privy to the discussions that were held in London. I think that if you look at the coverage of The Economist or The Washington Post or The New York Times or almost any other quality broadsheet, they have made a case in their coverage for not voting in favor of Donald Trump. There is usually very, very sort of strict supervision or division between the editorial pages and the reporting pages. The Wall Street Journal is one of the best at this. Completely different teams. You know, they report on Trump's sort of chaos and craziness. The editorial page often goes a different route.

So what is the responsibility of a news organization at a time like this? You know, a lot of people believe it's something called, you know, both sides, both sides ism is what I call it, right? There's two sides to everything. The truth may lie somewhere in between. Um, and so, but if you're, if you're not endorsing both sides, it doesn't mean that you're trying to evade the truth. I think not endorsing a candidate, particularly in this election, is craven. It ignores facts. And I think I'm I'm old. And I remember as a kid, Edward R. Murrow. I remember that notion of Edward R. Murrow having a profound impact on me.

And the kind of Murrow doctrine was, in effect, that if you see a politician engaging in dangerous rhetoric as a journalist, it's your responsibility to point that out. So I'm not sure how a news organization like the Washington Post, like the LA Times, which are quality news organizations, could report what they've reported on Trump and not come to a conclusion. And so what have they reported on as far as Trump is concerned? Well, what has he said? He said that he's going to prosecute his rivals. He's going to engage in mass deportations. He's going to play politics with disaster assistance. So shouldn't we believe him when he says that? Shouldn't we report that? And if we don't, in effect, take a position on what that means for democracy, not that whether he's going to win or not,

not the stakes, but what are the odds for democracy? I think that we're failing in our jobs. And so failing to endorse, failing to take a position, a coherent position on your editorial page, after you've been doing it for months on your news pages, I think is irresponsible. Okay, well, you some context on my experience. I worked for three newspapers in this country, Le Devoir, La Presse, and the Toronto Star. And every instance, the editorial decision to endorse was publisher-driven, not driven by the newsroom and not even driven by the editorial team. It was a given that Le Devoir would endorse, for instance, in a referendum, the 1995 referendum, it was a given that Le Devoir would endorse the yes side, and it was a given that La Presse, a federalist paper, would endorse the no side. The Toronto Star usually endorses liberal candidates in a federal election until it doesn't, as in the case of Jack Layton in 2011. But in all instances,

this was what the publisher wanted. Most of the time, I would say that that happened with the agreement of the editorial team. There have been instances in Le Devoir's history where Le Devoir, in a previous life, endorsed, in the first editorial team, was allowed to write the opposite on the same page. Interestingly enough, when La Presse stopped being owned by Power Corporation, it decided it was no longer doing the endorsement thing. Now, our friend Andrew Coyne, in 2015, resigned as the editor of editorial content for the newsroom, and the publisher. I suspect in the case of the Washington Post that Jeff Bezos maybe thought that he was avoiding the worst. I didn't think he could get as far as endorsing Trump. So he figured, I'm going to go the middle road. We're not going to endorse anyone. Now, something about editorial endorsements, they usually don't matter. And that's been the case for more than a decade. No one would have noticed that the Washington

Post endorsed Harris. I don't think it would have moved a single vote. The truth is, and I know my friends who write editorials never like me saying that, but they have the data to show that columnists have a much larger audience than any editorial page writer. So in the end, if you're going to make a difference to the outcome of an election, the chances are that if you're a columnist, you are going to have a tiny bit more influence. And I'll give you my last example as to the value of endorsements. And we all covered something called the Charlottetown referendum. It was a referendum on a constitutional accord that had the agreement of every single premier and all the parties in the House of Commons except for the Bloc Québécois. Only two papers editorially told Canadians to vote no.

Both were in Quebec, Le Soleil and Le Devoir. I agree they're prestigious, but they don't have a lot of influence anywhere else in Canada. that did not prevent all these pro-editorial endorsements, did not prevent the Charlottetown Accord from becoming the constitutional Titanic of our times. It sank, and it sank to the bottom across Canada. So it says more about what people who have a lot of money and control the media would like the outcome of the election to be versus the reality of the reporting. Me, I think that in this day and age, it would probably be a good idea overall to get rid of endorsements, but not in the context of this American election. This is a decision you take outside of the heat of an electoral war. If we didn't want to have endorsements collectively in the next federal election, now would be the time to decide that this won't be happening.

Not a week before the vote when suddenly you are about to cast a ballot and the owner says we're not endorsing. And by the way, it leads to awkward scenes. Michael Ignacev came to do an editorial board in 2011 at the Star in the last week of the campaign. Not everyone, but many around the table already knew that the Star would not be endorsing the liberals as they usually do,

but he didn't. And I think his staff from conversations I had with them after the event saw something in the body language that got them to question that assumption. But in theory, you're not supposed to tell the person across the table, talk all you want. We're not going to endorse you whole idea is kind of antiquated. The fact that nobody really is affected by them in the sense that it doesn't sway votes, or at least that's the appearance, that it doesn't sway votes. Especially if you don't sign them. Yeah, look, I don't think the Washington Post editorial or the L.A. Times editorial, had it gone ahead, would have made a difference in Michigan or in Wisconsin. I don't think that that's true. I do think that if you take that line to it to all and extend it all the way out, if you don't want to lead readers, viewers, listeners in a certain direction, how far are news organizations prepared to go? Should we not do investigative reporting because it leads viewers, listeners and readers to a certain conclusion?

I don't think that that's true. What about colonists? Don't they lead readers, viewers and listeners? No, they don't. My problem with Bezos goes beyond that. Yes, he made this decision a week before the election, but he, I think, adds to the distrust deficit or the trust deficit that reporters have. Why? Because his newspaper did make endorsements at state and local races.

Why was an endorsement good at that level, but not good at the national level? Is it because it affected his business? Is it a coincidence that his heads of his companies were meeting with Trump or with his officials in the days before this? To me, that stinks like a beached mackerel in the moonlight. So that's not a good smell. Yeah. So I do believe when there are times if you sort of apply the Murrow Doctrine, when politicians get involved in dangerous rhetoric and fundamentally undermine the basic pillars of our democracy, that needs to be called out. I think this is one of those cases. And I don't think that by staying out of that, you're doing anything except suggesting that both sides are equal. This both-sides-isms is not something that I think can apply. I think Trump is sui generis. He is above the normal in so, so many ways.

That has to be flagged by responsible journalism. I don't disagree with Rob's take on Trump. It's hard to argue. And I gave up a long time ago. We're used to normalizing politicians, and that's what we should be doing, not letting our own or context at any given time get in the way of saying, wait a minute, you know, take off all the rhetoric and you're left with a body of politics and policies that is not extreme radical. I don't think on character and on policy that Donald Trump can or should be normalized. I will take a shot, though, at some

of Rob's arguments on editorial endorsements. Investigative journalism is about bringing information to light. It is not about the collective thinking of someone in an editorial office, usually faceless in the English language tradition, coming from the pulpit to say, this is what our collective wisdom tells you that you should be doing, which I think goes against or contributes to the credibility issue of the mainstream media. The second you do that, one way or the other, everyone else who works in that newsroom is suddenly a, I'll use Canadian examples, a conservative or on the payroll of the liberals, etc. As for columnists, most respectable mainstream media try to go out of their way to have columnists that have different perspectives.

That's why you put together a newspaper so uh so that you you're not you know it doesn't become a propaganda arm where you only always push the same button so i i think it's completely different from the editorial endorsement thing which i think reflects a time when newspapers believed, and maybe they did have that influence, but liked to believe that they had as much influence as the priests used to have on Sunday when they were preaching from the pulpit that you should vote. The phrase in Quebec was, the sky is blue and hell is red, which was an endorsement back then of Mr. Duplessis' conservative government in Quebec. And I do agree that in the case of the Washington Post,

this was not the time to have a conversation about the value of endorsements. It was a time to reflect reality and that the cop-out tells you something about what happens in back rooms. I'll add just one thing. There is a cautionary tale here for all of those who are arguing that government bailouts of mainstream media outlets will not have political consequences, that none of the politicians who will come forward in this country in positions of power will ever try to lean on publishers who are getting government funding to help

them stay on their feet. Because if that's what you believe, forget it. It's not true that Canadian politicians are, when they're in a bind, more respectful of the independence of the people that they subsidize than American business people and American politicians. Okay. And this is where I think Bezos had a point. And it's an important point. Trust in media is plummeting and has been plummeting for some time. And we in the media business do bear some responsibility for that.

We did chase clicks for 10 or 15 years. And we learned in the media that rage does engage. And we made errors that way. We made errors in not acknowledging our errors in a prompt and open way. We made errors in not acknowledging our errors in a prompt and open way. We made errors in not allowing readers to call for corrections and have those corrections dealt with in a timely and transparent way. We made many, many, many errors. And as a result, the trust in media went down. But nothing that Jeff Bezos said in his op-ed, I think, will do anything to prevent that plummet from being arrested. If anything, his reasoning, I think, will accelerate it. And I think that that's borne out by the fact that a quarter million subscribers with the Washington Post. Okay. I want to pick up on that point because this is an important conversation and it does have, you know, it could very well have an impact here next year

or whenever it is we're going to have an election in this country. So let me pick up on that. But first, we'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk, the Friday edition of, what's this program called again? The Bridge. And you can hear it on Sirius XM channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Or you can watch us on our YouTube channel. Okay, back to this discussion. And it basically comes down to this issue of trust in media and trust in media on, in this particular example, on the Trump issue. And this is where I find something that happened this week really interesting. There was an article in New York Magazine.

It was New York Magazine. Not the New Yorker, but New York. And it's been picked up and kind of floated around a little bit. It's a discussion about how the media has done on this election story. And most people seem to agree that it's done better than it did, certainly in 2016, when Trump first ran. And that they've done well in terms of describing what a Trump victory could mean on Tuesday,

the chaos attached to that, the expected attack on the rule of law, the fight for democracy, all of that. If that's been the picture that's been painted in a lot of the journalism, the sort of accepted solid journalism that's been conducted in these past few months. This article in New York had this, a quote from his attorney, it doesn't say who it's from, but it's a TV executive in the TV news business. And this is what that person had to say. If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president,

and that's what the polls show, right? Somewhere around 46, 47, maybe 48% say they're prepared to vote for Trump. If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they're not reading any of this media that we're putting out, any of this journalism that we're doing. And we've lost that audience completely.

A Trump victory is the conclusion of this TV executive. A Trump victory would mean mainstream media is dead in its current form. True? False? What do we think of that? Well, if I were a TV exec knowing what's happening to evening newscasts or dinner newscasts in the case of the US, I would certainly think that way. Because I would be equating the fact that people aren't tuning in to mainstream TV if they still have TV sets. I say that as someone who doesn't. And the way that they used to during the Vietnam War. We are long past that.

And for sure, any TV exec will tell you that they're going to have to find a way to reinvent their format if they're going to keep a following. But that being said, it seems to suggest that everyone who wants to vote for Donald Trump is doing so in total ignorance of the possible consequences. That, you know, 46 or 50% of Americans are so ill-informed, that suggests, that they are walking blindly to vote for Donald Trump. I believe some people are. There are always voters who vote in ignorance. But I also believe a fair number of the people who are voting for Donald Trump do want the kind of tomorrows that he is promising to bring. They could be misguided, they could be wrong, but I think many of them are voting with their eyes wide open, for one. For two, I don't believe it works well for any mainstream media to say we failed to educate what would have been for their own good.

I actually think, you know, you go back to Rob Ford's election as Toronto mayor, it always goes back to the sense that the media, the mainstream media knows better than the deplorables who will not do what the mainstream media believes is best. So I don't think these comments are terribly helpful. And they come from people whose glasshouse panels have long been broken by the reality of technology. I just wonder whether that's what they're saying, that they're not listening to us, versus they don't trust us anymore. But why would you exact trust in the sense of docility from viewers and audiences? I don't write columns to convince people. I write them to inform them. I then let them make their own decisions. And if they don't decide in a way that suits me, that's my problem. But it is not my job to have the credibility to convince them.

It is my job to do my job so that they have as much information as possible to make whatever decision they make. And there's a fundamental flaw in this assertion that it's because we don't have credibility. Give me a break. Who appointed you to have credibility over how people vote? No, listen, I agree with that. But there is a difference in this argument about that they don't even watch or listen or read certain elements of the legacy media because they don't believe it anymore. It's not a strike against individual journalists. It's about the business as a whole that they don't believe it. And, you know, like you can read some of these comments, you know,

in the comments section for whatever that's worth. And I agree, it's not worth a lot at times. But there's a difference there in terms of not believing and not trusting. And I just wonder whether the point being made in that quote, that it's dead in its current form. First of all, let me agree with Chantal. There is a difference between opinion and insight. I can be crude.

I won't be crude. I will say that all of us have belly buttons. That doesn't make belly buttons interesting. All of us have opinions. That doesn't make them interesting. What Chantal might have is insight based on people she's spoken to, based on her knowledge of Canada and Quebec and politics. And putting those two together, you're going to get something from her that you won't be getting from anybody else.

It's not an opinion. It's insight. That's a very, very important distinction. So a TV executive who says we've lost 50% of the audience, any TV executive who would say that, I would hope that he would realize that if you're getting the other 50%, you're doing very, very well in broadcast linear television. Nobody's doing that. To your point, Peter, though, is that people, your point being, is it true that people don't trust us? I think that that's absolutely true. And as I said before, we bear some responsibility for that. And I've outlined some of the reasons

why I think that's happening. I also believe that taking government money has not helped us, has not helped our credibility. We took this money ostensibly because it was supposed to save jobs in Canadian journalism. And without this, there would be more news deserts, or there's a lot of news mirages out there as well, where there are newspapers that really aren't local newspapers. They're stuffed with stuff that comes from Toronto or someplace like that. That hasn't happened. We're still shedding jobs in journalism, and we have got none of the benefit of hanging on to the jobs and all of the baggage of taking government money. When there was another possibility, there was another way

of solving this problem that they didn't look at. And I hope another government looks at it. But we do bear some responsibility. That being said, I'm very, very lucky. I look at what is growing. What is growing in terms of media? The New York Times is doing very, very well. The Washington Post is doing, was doing very well until this last week. The Wall Street Journal is doing very well. I work for The Economist. That's doing very well. Those news organizations are all growing. Why? I think quality sells. If you aim for a certain elevated standard, you're going to do well if you can deliver that journalism. There are two ways you can succeed in journalism. You can go high in terms of quality,

or you can go low and you can succeed that way. But I think quality sells, and we have gotten away from quality. We've tried to cut our way to success, and it hasn't worked. And it's led to some of these news deserts and news mirages. Quality works, explanatory journalism works as well. You know, this program that we're on, it does pretty well. This didn't exist 10 years ago. You know, I look at what Paul Wells is doing in a form that didn't exist five years ago either. That's doing very, very well. Quality sells, and we've allowed the quality to run down. And by the way, I don't know how much of a government subsidy you're getting for this, but I suspect it's zero. So the thing is, the government money is basically going to preserve structures that

I believe are doomed over the long term. It was a valiant effort, but what was wrong about it was that it was based on the notion that you could transfer the old print model onto the internet and it would be the same. But that's kind of like saying I'm going to keep my horses and still use them once in a while to deliver some milk, even if I now need a milk truck. It's not going to work. People still want you to deliver milk, but that doesn't mean you can find a way to use your horses to do it. Does it show that one of my great uncles was a milkman who had to make the transition from horses to delivery truck? It was tough. God, I'm old enough to remember when horses delivered the milk to our our house in the early 1950s. Just to tie the knot on this conversation, first of all, I have some sympathy for those executives who were trying to manage

the incoming internet in terms of the impact it was going to have on their business because at the time that was starting to happen, nobody knew. They had no concept of what could happen. To some degree, we still have no concept of what's going to happen within the next five years as a result of all this information technology that exists. But I hear all the suggestions you're both making on this.

We are almost certain to have an election next year, if not sooner. What are the lessons in this and what we've witnessed south of the border in the discussion and debate about the media? I mean, you've given us some sense of what you think needs to be done in terms of making this relationship better between the media, between journalism and the public, really. But are there lessons we can take from what we're witnessing in those states, or is it because of Trump and his particular kind of style and impact on an electorate,

is it kind of a one-off? Or are there lessons here? I think that there are important lessons. You know, the country is divided now in ways that it wasn't. When we were baby reporters, the primary divide was between Quebec and the rest of Canada. There are divisions that we see now that just didn't exist 10 years ago. And one of those divides is over facts. You know, are vaccines good for you? Well, that has become a source of division in the country. And as far as I'm concerned, there are not two sides to facts.

Facts are immutable. They're stubborn. They are persistent. And yet, in this country, we have debates still about whether or not facts have two sides to them. And I think that we need to understand that our role is to fact check and to do so fairly and to do so without fear and fact check all sides as well. Fact check the government, not just the opposition. And I think that we can do better at that. Fearless, without favor, fact-checking, I think, is an important role for a serious media to play. And be transparent about how we're doing it. We used to hide behind the curtain like we were the wizard and show people, tell them exactly how we're coming to the conclusions that we're coming to.

The great thing about the information superhighway is there's no word limit on it. You can put as much information up there as you'd like about how we come to our conclusions. Don't be afraid to pull back the curtain. Chantal. So, let me preface this by saying, yes, what is happening with Trump in the US is not being replicated here. And you'll get all the mail that you get, and I know what it's going to say. And that's BS, to be polite. Since I'm a Francophone, I could actually not use the abbreviation.

But that's how I feel about anyone trying to copycat the US election and put names and labels on the main characters. That would be the first sign that this election coverage is going to be way off and missing the mark. Second, if facts don't save you and you're a journalist, I don't know what will. And you cannot have elastic facts. Climate change is real. Not going to entertain as a basis on the one hand, and on the other hand, on issues like that.

Just a word about the Quebec-Rest of Canada divide. It is true that it may not be as obvious, but I do note that the only region in the country that is resisting the appeal of Pierre Poiliev big time is actually Quebec. So that divide is still very, very much there. I think the one temptation that journalism in this country has to avoid in the next election, especially those who have editorially an inclination for one outcome versus the other, is pearl clutching. The way that you write about how awful this and that is, those are not facts. Those are feelings, impressions. If you want to demonstrate how awful something is, do it with facts. You think it's not a good idea to give a break on the GST on homes that are new and cost less than a million dollars?

Well, find the facts to argue the case. Don't just say, oh, Pierre Poilievre is going to cut this program to do that program. Demonstrate why it may not be the best choice. But once you've put the facts forward, let people decide. Don't say he's going to ruin the entire country by doing it. That's not true. It's a choice. All choices are debatable, but they should be debated on the basis of facts and not on the basis of, I don't like this guy, so let me go after him every second day.

A lot of good advice there. I like all of it. I especially like, in these times, a degree of transparency on the part of media, journalism, about the way it does its work. I think it's more important than it's ever been because of this issue of trust that clearly does exist at some level. And some of that can be dealt with by us being much more transparent

about how we make the decisions we do, how newsrooms make the decisions they do, but what they cover, what they don't cover, why they're focusing on such and such an issue and not say on something else. And the way they treat things like polls, what their policies are, what they should say and not say. I don't think we do enough of that, and it doesn't take a lot of time to occasionally, you know,

stop the train and say, you know what, we want to explain to you why we're doing such and such a certain way. And I think that helps. And I know some news organizations have been trying to do that in the last couple of years. Not enough would be my argument. Okay. Good discussion.

I know it's not what we usually do, but I shouldn't say that. That makes it sound like we don't usually do good discussions. We always do good discussions because it's good talk. It starts with that you now have a world-renowned guest for once, and then you go on to, for once, we have a good, yeah, we're doing great here. Wait till Bruce listens to this. If you keep this up, I'm going to get chapped lips from kissing my mirror. I think we'll just leave that.

And take a break and move on for a final segment on where things are with that coup, counter-coup, failed coup, bogus coup, whatever it was, whatever it is. We'll get the latest on that right, then. Welcome back to Good Talk for this Friday. Rob Russo sitting in for Bruce Anderson this week. Rob is the Canada correspondent for The Economist. Sean Tilly Bear is here, of course. I'm Peter Mansbridge. All right.

Well, you know, I think a lot of people were getting bored of this story over the last few weeks. It had its moments of deep drama, and then it just kind of sort of fizzled a bit. But it's still kind of bubbling along. What's happening on the coup? I know we had an argument last week about whether we could ever call it a coup. It wasn't really a coup. It was a kind of revolt.

Even that is a strong word. Yeah. It sat down to him. So where is it at? I mean, there was this attempt this week on the part of some of these liberal MPs who were not happy with Justin Trudeau to have a secret ballot. That didn't seem to go anywhere. At least it hasn't yet. Is this thing, let me ask the same question I asked last week. Is this over or is it just kind of sitting on the back burner? It's kind of losing momentum, to tell you the truth.

I think this week, much of the caucus meeting revolved around the pre-election expose from the new national director, the person who's going to coordinate the election. And my understanding from some of the MPs who wanted that secret vote and never got around to kind of having even the discussion on it was that some of their colleagues were reassured by the presentation or probably felt they were moving on. So it seems to me that increasingly liberal MPs are coming to the realization that Justin Trudeau is determined not to go anywhere and that any further attempt will increasingly amount to shooting yourself in the foot because you are kind of hurting your own re-election and the party's re-election chances by continuing to push

this envelope. So some MPs have already said they're moving on. I think others have also decided that. I'm not convinced that, you know, it's negative momentum is what I'm seeing from the outside? I think the plastic pitchfork rebellion endures. I think that it's been diffused. It's been split up, atomized in some ways. There's a group that's working on having a secret ballot and another group that's working on trying to get the leader to just leave in a quick and bloodless way. But there remains no single person that they're gathered around. There remains no mechanism to do what they want to do. There remains, it seems, no desire on the part of the guy who has his hands on the levers still, the prime minister,

to actually lead. And so that being said, I'm reminded of that great political philosopher, some of us might remember, Roque La Salle, who after the vote that Joe Clark had when he won two thirds of support from his party that, well, yeah, he won. But the leader has buckshot in his wings is what he said. And I think, yes, I think the prime minister probably has similar support. Let's say two thirds support of his caucus. It's more than 20 or 25 people who actually would like to see him go, because I talked to some MPs and they say it's the number one thing people say on the doorstep. You got to get rid of your leader. That being

said, he has, let's say, supported two thirds. That's still not great. And it's not going to get better. It's only going to get worse. He may stumble into a campaign, but he's really going to have to dazzle for it to turn around. 67 percent. You're right, is what Joe Clark had in that, whatever it was, 1981 leadership review. 83. That's why they won't have a secret vote, not because Justin Trudeau would lose it, but because he might not get, and you have to assume cabinet ministers, even in secret, may feel bound to support the prime minister. So 66% result wouldn't be all that great. But if they want to keep hearing about it on the doorstep,

they should continue to pursue this since it's not resulting in the outcome they want, but it's only proving the people who are saying that on the doorstep that They should continue to pursue this since it's not resulting in the outcome they want, but it's only proving the people who are saying that on the doorstep that they are right to say these are unelectable under the current leader. So at some point, it's a fish or cut bait moment for many of them, I believe. You know, we all know that kind of short list of names, you know, that if he chose to leave, Justin Trudeau chose to leave, there is that kind of short list of names. Christopher Freeland, Mark Carney, Jolie, there's a number of them. You know who really impressed me this week? Sean Fraser, the Minister of Housing.

Young guy, Atlantic Canada background, but, man, he was good in the house. He was, like, toe-to-toe, head-to-head with Polyev. And it was pretty impressive. Please ask any Quebec MP if he or she wants to run under Sean Fraser or Justin Trudeau, and the answer will be unanimous. Yeah. He's been working on his branch, and I don't think it's there yet either. No, no, no.

That's jello that is far from jelling. Yeah, but I guess what I'm saying is there are more names on that list than the ones we tend to look at. I mean, there are younger names. I agree with you on this. Mind you, you could probably put almost anyone up against Justin Trudeau in Quebec, and they're not going to do that well. No, no, no.

I think you're pushing Sean Fringer to the limit of credibility at this point, in the sense that he is totally unknown in Quebec. He carries a lot of baggage on immigration as the former immigration. That's true. in Quebec. That wouldn't be true of Christia Freeland and all the other names that we've named. You've just picked someone whose French is uncertain, who has baggage on an issue that is sensitive in Quebec, and who is virtually unknown. It's hard to think of a more losing combination. But other than that, it's pretty good, right? Yeah, right. It is true that Mr. Fraser seems to be able to counterpunch Poilier in a way that's folksy and effective. That being said, when I ask conservatives who they wouldn't like to see in the leadership, a couple of names come to the fore. And when I ask liberals if they could do a bloodless switcheroo, one name appears more often than others these days.

And there's a crossover with one of those names between who conservatives would fear and who MPs would like to see in the bloodless switcheroo. Any guesses as to who that person might be? Dominic LeBlanc. Not Sean Fraser. Dominic LeBlanc. Thank you very much. I finally won something. It certainly would be an easy yourself.

Yeah. Conservatives also put François-Philippe Champagne on that list. They see him as somebody who knows business, works hard, can connect with people. But Champagne is the name that crosses over for both conservatives who wouldn't like to see him at the top of a Liberal ticket and a knot of Liberal MPs seem to say he's the guy who could probably quickly bring us together and win or hang on to the Chateau Fort or the base in Quebec,

win in Atlanta, Canada as well. That's Leblanc. That's right. But the Conservatives, there are many Conservatives who also fear Mark Carney, more so, immensely more so, Dominique Leblanc and Mark Carney than Christian Freeland, who is so closely identified to Justin Trudeau that the conservatives, what they don't want to lose Justin Trudeau to the point where their leader this week said it wouldn't be fair to replace Justin Trudeau on the part of the liberals. But if they were going to

have to lose Justin Trudeau, they would be happier to lose Justin Trudeau to Christia Freeland than to Mark Carney or Dominique Leblanc or François-Philippe Champagne. That Polyes statement was like statement of the week. Yes. No self-interest there. No, no, no, no. You can't do that to us. We got a couple of minutes left. Mr. Singh.

No election this year. That's what Mr. Singh basically is telling you. And I think it makes a lot of sense from the perspective of not only Jack Mead Singh and the NDP and their position in the polls and their financial state, but also from the perspective of the people who at this point want to vote NDP. There aren't very many NDP voters who are going around saying, let's just deliver the House of Commons to a majority conservative government. And I would agree with that. And I would say that there was some NDP success in provincial elections in the past week or so. And it's generally agreed that that was in spite of what's happening with their federal cousins rather than in any way because of it.

And there were lessons to be derived, I think, for all party leaders in terms of what we saw in the provincial elections this week. All of them should learn something. There was something sobering and something that they could all pull away from that. Number one that I could see is people want their problems fixed. They don't want to talk about pronouns. They want to talk about their problems, solve my problems. And those who did that had a better chance of winning or of doing better. There's also, in that vein of my problem, my number one problem now is shelter, affordability. We saw an NDP premier doing some brisk backpedaling away from a carbon tax, away from safe injection sites. That is something that the federal cousins would have to take note of as well.

Last point on the liberals, the disgruntled liberals, the unhappy liberals. Would they ever vote against their party on a confidence motion or anything like that that could force an election? I can't see that happening. I can't. That would be political suicide. You're basically saying you want to precipitate an election that you will lose running as an independent? There is no kindness out there for independent MPs. Financial suicide for anybody whose pension is not fully vested for another several months. So that makes the Jagmeet Singh statement even that much more meaningful, right? There wasn't, you know, when the Bloc Québécois

had this news conference to say that's it, that we're going to bring down the government. I have to say that I didn't hear or I didn't spot a wave of enthusiasm in Québec at the prospect of an election tomorrow or the day after and a Pierre Poiliev victory. So I think somehow the bloc is probably quite relieved. And I suspect, you know, nothing that Pierre Poiliev is doing suggests that he is trying to make a pact with the other opposition leaders. He needs to bring down the government. he's doing everything short of that. He's insulting them. He's running ads against them.

And that's not the way you bring down a government, particularly in this parliament, where no one party holds the balance of power. I remember Stephen Harper working very effectively with Doucette and Jack Layton to bring down Paul Martin. That's not happening this time. All right. Good point to end on.

We'll have lots to talk about next week because we may know, and then again we may not, who the next president of the United States is going to be. But that's next week's Good Talk. Thanks, Rob, for filling in this week. It was great to have you with us. And Chantel, as always, thank you. Both of you have a great weekend.

And to all of you out there, have a great weekend as well. You can pick up your copy of The Buzz if you subscribe to it tomorrow morning, 7.30 in your inbox. We'll be back on Monday. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.