The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Has The Summer Changed Anything in Canadian Politics?

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Bruce and Chantal join me for a wide open discussion about the politics of the summer of 2024.  Everything it seems changed in the United States, but did anything change in Canada?  

Are you ready for a little end of summer good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. End of August, summer good talk, our second special for this summer. It's been an interesting summer, and we're going to get right at it with Bruce Anderson and Chantelle Hebert and trying to determine what, if anything, has actually been accomplished this summer in terms of national politics. So, Chantelle, why don't you start it? Has anything actually changed since when we met near the end of June, signaling the beginning of summer? Has anything really changed? Fundamentally, no.

And anecdotally, not really. I'll give you my explanation for why I think that's the case. It's not just the polls that basically show the same trends as they did when the summer started. But also, I noted at some point, you know, by the time August came around, lots of people talked to me. I traveled in a variety of places. People talked to me about politics, as they do to you or Bruce. And I noticed that for five or six weeks, none of the people who had chats with me mentioned the name of Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre, Yves-François Blanchet, or Jacques Bitsing. They did want to talk about politics, but the only names that they talked about were

Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and eventually Kamala Harris. Everywhere I went, and that includes Francophone Quebecers, Anglo Canadians, and I do think that it was a really compelling political summer for many, many Canadians. But I don't think that Canadian politics is such with the riveting spectacle that the federal political parties would like to have had. And the show next door was just too big to ignore and just too eventful. And so here we are with September coming around. I'm starting to hear a bit more about Canadian politicians. But often, and I'm sure Bruce has had the same experience,

often with the same names coming back, i.e., will Justin Trudeau do a Joe Biden? Can he do a Kamala Harris? So I think until November, a lot of attention is going to be sucked away from the federal scene onto what's happening in the U.S. Well, there's no doubt it's been a fascinating summer to watch south of the border. Before I ask Bruce in on this, can I just push you on one thing? How unusual would it be for francophone Quebecers to be focused on what's happening south of the border?

Not very unusual. Francophone Quebecers were equally riveted by the first Trump term in the White House or before that by Barack Obama. And let me just remind you that to this day, the federalist forces in Quebec will tell you that they believe that Bill Clinton's comments about a united Canada had a significant impact on the outcome of the 1995 referendum. So, it's more than usual, but that is true across the board. I think if you're going to find one political feature from coast to coast to coast, no Quebec distinctive, it's going to be about how people are watching this particular U.S. presidential election to a higher degree than usual. But I don't think Quebecers are suddenly more tuned in than they've been in the past versus people who live in the rest of the country.

Okay, Bruce. Well, this is a heartbreaking start to the morning. When Chantal started her answer, I thought, this is great. She's making a mistake. I'm going to have a chance to have a better answer. What a great summer this will turn out to have been. I can't wait. And of course, as she went through her answer, I was like, oh, she's saying all the things that I was going to say. She just started the answer slightly different way. She said, no, the fundamentals didn't change in Canada, and then went on to

describe all the interesting things that did happen, which is where I was going to start. So I do think that the, you know, that the boat intention dynamics clearly haven't changed very much. And I think the big message for me in that is that if you're Justin Trudeau, you entered the summer knowing that you had a steep hill to climb and that you were running out of time to climb that hill and that you needed to find both the opportunity to regroup, to re-energize yourself, to get a little time away from politics, to talk to people outside of politics or adjacent to politics, to try to figure out what you want to approach the fall with as an agenda because he keeps saying he wants to lead the party into the next election. So for me, one of the most important observations about the summer

is that I don't see the evidence that he's done that. I don't see the evidence that he's kind of doing something that's notably different, that reflects that kind of sense of his batteries recharged, his energies focused in the right area, his party more rallied behind him. And so in that sense, I think because I think he needed to try to use the summer that way or much of the summer that way, I think that's an important takeaway. Second thing I would say is I absolutely agree with Chantal that Canadians have been tuned out of Canadian politics, but tuned into US politics if they're watching politics at all. And a big change I think did happen. Biden to Harris was a huge billboard for Canadian political junkies to see what happens if you have an incumbent that looks like a headwind for your party.

And then the party decides to do something about that. So whether or not the situation is completely analogous, Biden to Trudeau, it's nonetheless a story that anxious liberals will have been watching and will have been wondering, well, what do we make of this? Our guy is not faced with the same challenges that Joe Biden was faced with. But there are clear signs that people aren't really stress testing his opponent, in part because they're just tired of Justin Trudeau and they're not sure that they're willing to vote for him again. So I think that's been important.

And I guess the last thing for me is generally one of the things I see in what Harris and Walz are doing is they're tapping into this idea that politics has become really frustrating and antagonizing for a lot of people. And they're offering not a version of, well, you know, by my friction, by my argument, by my attack, they're saying, what if we found a place in the center where people could kind of hear politics discussed, where people could kind of compare ideas and come to some sort of compromise solution, because maybe we're just tired of all the divisiveness and the polarization. Now, I don't know whether it's going to work or not, but it looks like it's working so far for Harris and Wells. And I do think that the polls in Canada, well, it's easy

to look at the conservative number and the liberal number and the NDP number. The stuff that I'm watching is just how many people are on the center of the spectrum, center left a little bit, center right a little bit, and a little bit more center right than would have been the case 10 years ago. But they're on the center of the spectrum and they're looking for politicians who will speak that language, who will look for those kinds of solutions. And so I think the culture is kind of looking for something. And the U.S. showed us what might happen when people think they found it. Well, if they think that's the way out, is there any indication that Trudeau has moved closer to the center or even to the center right? I think so.

Yeah? I think some of that has been happening. I'll give you two examples. I'm not sure if it's called moving to the right or moving onto policy ground where the Conservatives do not want to have a fight for a long, long time after Pierre Poiliev became leader, the liberals tried to distinguish themselves by being left of him. We're for, you know, child care and dental care and he wouldn't be, or we are, you know, we defend the right to abortion and possibly wouldn't, etc. That didn't work very well, by all indications. And I think now they're trying to find policy grounds where the conservatives would have little to say except that they

concur or they would do better, but they can't fight them on this. And the two examples I have are the changes to immigration, and more of them will be coming. And if you've noticed all those announcements that temporary foreign workers, students, et cetera, you have not heard a very loud clamor from Mr. Poliev saying this isn't the way to go or they're incompetent and look at what they're doing. I also think the precedent that this government decided to set and the way that it sent the railway workers back to work is a change from past behavior. This is a government that cast itself as a friend of labor and union workers and that has now set, we'll see what the courts make of it,

but that has now set the precedent that to all intents and purposes does tilt the balance in favor of at least some employers. It's never been done before that you order or you instruct a board, the Labor Relations Board, to tell union workers to go back to work. We have always proceeded with legislation when that has happened. Now, I'm going to quote Lisa Raitt, who was Labor Minister under Stephen Harper, who said, well, you know, if someone had told me I could do this, I would have used it. And I don't think that Justin Trudeau two or three years ago would have gone that route. And I don't think that they went that route just because it's so much trouble to call Parliament back and have the House of Commons debate and maybe didn't have the votes or

maybe they did. I think they did that to show that they are decisive, but they're also not lefties in the Canadian sense. I think there might be a price to pay for that, regardless of what the courts make of it at the end of the day. But I do think it signals a change in focus. And by the way, I am still waiting to read a single tweet from the Conservative Party and its leader on the railway strike lockout and its resolution. Not a word, except for yesterday. Mr. Poiliev was asked about this yesterday. And his answer was that he didn't have to answer because if he'd been prime minister, it wouldn't have happened.

Because no one would have gone on strike because there would have been no inflation. Right. Yeah, that's like there would have been no war in Ukraine if Trump had still been president. But anyway. Yeah, look, can I just jump in on that? Yeah, absolutely look at it. Can I just jump in on that? Absolutely. Go ahead. Yeah, I think that the big change for me, we could start to see it in the polling data coming out of the pandemic. And it has been a really important dynamic, not just in Canadian politics, but clearly in Canadian politics. And I think it caught the liberals by surprise a little bit. I think that Mr. Trudeau had built a kind of a liberal ship, a big, powerful ship that was kind of steaming hard left. It was basically kind of focused on how do we almost eliminate the NDP from the political equation in the future. And what happened at the same time is that the public just found the economy and the sense of opportunity so grinding

coming out of the pandemic that they started looking for politicians who would say, not abandon the kind of the social environmental aspirations, but can you dial that down a little bit and make sure that the price of uh of of craft dinner isn't out of control and that has been um important fuel uh for pierre pauliev and the conservatives absolutely critical to understanding the canadian dynamic now and it's been a problem for the ndp as well it's a problem that you see mirrored in the state of the labor union movement, where you've got leaders who are champions of, you know, left wing agenda aspirations and good for them for being those champions. But sometimes the workers aren't quite there.

The workers are looking for a different emphasis. And so we see these tensions within the voting population. And I think it's been particularly hard for Justin Trudeau, who built a cabinet and built an agenda around how do we the fact that there was a growing number of voters who characterize themselves as a little bit more center right, who are looking for something that feels a little bit less inflected with that 2015 liberal aspirational mood. We've been doing a bunch of research lately where we ask people, how did you vote in 2015? How about 2019? How about 2021? And what are you going to do next year? And we need to have some caveats around how we look at that data. And I'll send it to you both

afterwards. Because people don't always remember correctly, they don't always answer honestly about that. But even when you control for those factors, what's clear is that liberals have lost about half of the people who said that they voted liberal in 2015. Now, the Conservatives only lost about 14% of their 2015 cohort. The NDP lost 33%. Those left of center parties have watched as some of their voters have tiptoed over towards the Conservative Party. Both the NDP and the Liberal Party have seen that happen. It hasn't really gone the other way. And so that isn't really about people over time saying, I kind of like Andrew Scheer. I like Aaron O'Toole a little bit better.

And I really like Pierre Polyev. Sure, some of that has happened. But really, I think it's about the Conservative Party no longer toying with things like snitch lines on barbaric cultural practices, being careful how they talk about issues like immigration, and watching as the liberals in the NDP seem to be out of step with the really pragmatic focus of most voters. Okay, so, and I totally agree about the out of step on the left or side of the spectrum, and about the Biden effect on Justin Trudeau. But I also believe that over time, the change in tone of the Democrat campaign, and the more positive tone of it, should be seen as a warning signal to

Pierre Poilievre that he needs to work on tone. The consequences are not just on Justin Trudeau's side. People who have been watching, Canadians who've been watching, have been saying this is a glass of fresh cold water, what's happening and the kind of discourse that the Democrats have decided to espouse under their current ticket. And that craving means that many could be led to reflect very poorly on the kind of tone that Pierre Poiliev has been sticking with, including in the news conference he gave yesterday, where he called Jagmeet Singh a sellout

and went on and on and on about how there isn't going to be an election because Mr. Singh wants to collect a fuller pension come next spring. This from the guy who I think was, if not the youngest, at least one of the youngest person ever elected to parliament to actually qualify for a full pension at the age of 31. And under a regime, because it's the old regime, where he will qualify for that pension as of age 55. The new regime under which Jagmeet Singh operates

is 65. So it's kind of rich when you live in a glass house to be drawing so many bricks. But I do think that increasingly, the stone stands to turn people off. I think in Quebec, where a poll this week showed the Conservatives in third place, six points behind the Bloc and four points behind the Liberals. The most striking number that I saw in that Léger poll wasn't those horse race numbers. They're not all that different from what we've seen over time. It was the answer to the question, which party would be your second choice? And so the liberals, the Bloc and the NDP are 16, 15 percent. That's the answer of people who would consider them as a second choice. When it comes to the conservatives, that number is 9 percent,

which basically means people who are currently saying they're not going to vote conservative are not looking, have ruled out for now the conservatives. And when you ask them why, and increasingly what you hear in Quebec is, I don't want to vote for a jerk or a bully. And that is how he comes across. There's also been this great, great strategy of the, I'm being sarcastic, of the conservatives in Quebec, the new one this summer, to talk about the Bloc Québécois, the liberal Bloc. Well, as you know, if there is one dividing line in Quebec politics that everyone is aware

of, it's the sovereignist, federalist line. Nobody buys the notion that the Bloc Québécois is in any way, shape, or form in bed with Justin Trudeau's liberals. And saying it and repeating it only makes the people who are doing so look incompetent or desperate. So I think the Tong issue, it's not going to go away. Okay. We're going to take our first break. But before we do, let me just tell you one little quick anecdote from this past week. I was invited down to Orlando in Florida to speak at a major convention of an international union. There were 1,700 people there.

A couple hundred of them are Canadians. But they wanted to talk about and discuss this issue of the similarity between some of what's been going on in Canada and some of what's been going on in the States. And in particular, this movement on the part of all parties to try and attract a Labour vote. Because we've seen it in Canada with the Conservatives pushing for part of the labor vote because we've seen it in in canada with the conservatives pushing for part of the labor vote and we've seen it in the states with donald trump trying to do the same thing there has been success on both fronts up until this summer i mean some of the americans

talk to me about you know you use that phrase sort of tiptoeing across to the right-wing side, if you will, in terms of some of the Labour vote, and that has been happening in the States as well. But this summer, they've noticed a tiptoeing back on the part of some of their people as a result of all the changes that are being made in terms of Harris for Biden. It was an interesting discussion, an interesting situation in one of the similarities that we've seen going on. What's happening here? I'm not so sure. We may find out in our next block, because we're going to have a good discussion right now, about the vulnerability.

I want to pick up after the break. I want to pick up on that point that you were just making, if I can, Peter. It's very interesting. OK, good. We'll do that. And then we'll also talk about the vulnerability of the NDP right now. How vulnerable are they?

Polyev pushing, let's have an election now. We'll have that discussion when we come back. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk, the summer edition, the final summer edition as we approach the Labor Day weekend. Sanderson, Chantelle Hebert with us, Peter Mansbridge here. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform or because this is our Friday Good Talk.

You can also see us on our YouTube channel. You can get the connection for that at nationalnewswatch.com. Okay, Bruce, you wanted to pick up on this point about the somewhat similarity between the situation in the States and Canada on the Labour vote. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this. I mean, you know, there's an important event coming up, which many people may not be aware of, but Liberals are, which is they're having a national caucus retreat in Nanaimo in not very many days. And I think for the caucus, remember, this is, you know, this is a lot of people who on the basis of today's polling numbers will lose their jobs next year.

And this is the, you know, they'll have another one of these next year, but it'll be with like two minutes left on the clock to try to do something. So this is a really important point of reflection for them. And I think that if they're looking at their situation, they can see a few things that should be pretty clear by now. One is that there's nothing magical about Pierre Poliev's offer. He's not loved by Canadians, not hated by Canadians. He's kind of, he's remarkably, not so much for close political observers like us,

but for a lot of other people who don't pay much attention to politics, he's a little bit tofu so far. He doesn't, he has the kind of the shape and the sense of focus that you want him to have. People pay a little bit closer attention. I agree with Chantal. The tone issue is important.

What does he know about the things that he didn't learn outside of politics because he didn't spend very much time outside of politics? Those are good questions. And how much is he kind of concealing an agenda that might be what his base wants to do? And if he gets into power with a massive majority, will become policy in the land? Those are all important questions that can be prosecuted when you have a dynamic, a political dynamic that the liberals don't have right now. What they don't have right now is a consensus on why have they lost so much vote, not just among men, but among women? Why have young people drifted away? Why are they 30 points behind in BC? Why are they almost 30

points behind in Atlantic Canada? Is the economy really that bad for that many people? The answer to that is no. Is Justin Trudeau, has he done so many things that have so annoyed people or injured them? The answer to that is no. Part of their problem is Justin Trudeau's voice doesn't carry right now, doesn't carry anymore. Let me put it that way. It's possible, I suppose, that he could find a way to do that, but he would need to break something in the way in which what he says comes across to people. So they pay some attention to him and they hear him prosecute the case against his opponent or against the conservative idea for Canada. But right now that's not happening.

And then the question, I think, the liberals is, if he can't make the argument effectively, is there some other way that we can do that? Because if they can't find a way to do that, what we do know is that young people who have been drifting towards the conservatives, especially men, but not only men, can be brought back. And this is to your point about what you heard in Orlando, is that Pierre Palliot right now, there is no Project 2025 equivalent. There's no document that sits out there that if you're a young person, you might look at and say, wait, I'm not interested in that. So that's a tricky bit for the Liberals in Canada, if they're going to try to make the same argument against the polyof conservatism.

And the second thing is that when Biden left and Harris and Walsh came in, they took up this idea that conservatives are the finger waggers who want to take away your freedom, not liberals. A remarkable shift in the political chemistry in the United States, which could be a little bit useful to the liberals in Canada. Again, if they can find a way to regain share of voice in the conversation, because right now our polling continues to show that if it's Justin Trudeau making the case, there's just too many people that tune it out. Okay. All right. Let me raise the point that uh poly have raised yesterday which is um calling on uh jagmeet singh to end his relationship with the liberals and the

partnership with the liberals that they haven't delivered and the rail strike is just the latest thing that would suggest that uh the ndpDP should feel vulnerable on that partnership. And, you know, we didn't mention it, but there's an incoming transport labor situation with Air Canada, which is going to cause potentially huge problems, you know, across the country. And how will the government react to that? And how will the NDP react to the government's reaction to it. Is there, Chantal, I want your thought on this. Is there any chance that Polyev is going to spend this weekend going, you know what, maybe it really is time to pull a plug on this. First, let me set aside whatever it was that Mr. Polyev was doing yesterday. It was anything but extending a hand to the NDP to say for the common good, let's get together and find some common ground to defeat the government. If I put an offer like that in those terms to anyone,

accusing them of being a sellout, it was basically the bully in the courtyard approach. I would put that letter in the shredder and move on. Not only that, but the reasons that Mr. Poyev put forward, which are his reasons, and fair game for the conservatives, i.e. cost of living, etc., economics, are not the reasons that could drive the NDP to say we're moving away from our agreement with the liberals. Far from that. So he gave absolutely no in to the NDP to start buying into the notion on those terms of bringing down the government. If anything, he probably made it harder for the NDP to break the deal with the liberals. But then move on to this labor situation. I mean, under previous liberal leaders, NDP leadersers and a number of industries.

But the setback that this precedent sets in place for collective bargaining and for unions offsets any gains on the strike-breaking front. I noted that just before the Labour Board ordered the end of the strike, Mr. Singh had threatened to bring down the government over its approach to ending the conflict. But then when the Labour Board ruled, he went mute. I could find no evidence. I thought Mr. Singh had gone on holidays or left the country. I could find zero evidence of a reaction to that until he surfaced at some summer feast in British Columbia

where he did not address the issue. And it was left to Peter Julian to say, well, our deal with the liberals is always on the table. And it was left to Peter Julian to say, well, our deal with the liberals is always on the table. We are not married. We could divorce tomorrow if we wanted to, but that's kind of a generic answer. But if it comes to Air Canada,

and the government takes the same approach, and there is no reason to believe that the government will let a strike at Air Canada go on for days, what is the NDP going to do? There is a lot of unrest within the labor movement. And if you set that precedent and repeat it, imagine what a less union-friendly government could make with the precedent that is being set by the Trudeau liberals. The Labor Relations Board did not say it was constitutional to direct the board to end the conflict. The Labor Relations Board said it was not within its competence to rule on the constitutionality of the move, but it also was not

authorized to ignore a government instruction. So this is where things stand. But this being said, you know, I've looked at Jagmeet Singh's numbers, not his pension numbers, but his performance number electorally since he became leader in 2017 when he inherited 44 seats. He now has 25. One is in play on September 16th in a by-election. But I went through all the by-elections that have taken place on Mr. Singh's watch, some of them in ridings where the NDP didn't have a shot, others in NDP writings. And I found that the NDP share of the vote went down in 21 of those 22 by-elections. That's quite a track record, including NDP seats, some of which were lost. But also the one exception is the seat Jagmeet Singh won for the NDP. So I've come to believe that it's not only Justin Trudeau who faces a big test when the by-elections come,

because the liberals need to hold, can't lose a Montreal seat when they've just lost a safe Toronto seat in St. Paul's. But I think Jagmeet Singh absolutely needs to keep that Winnipeg seat that is in play. And that the NDP is only lost when the conservatives are riding high. 2011 and the Harper majority, that's when Elmwood Transcona went to the conservatives. I don't think Jagmeet Singh's moral authority on his party can survive a loss of that seat. One of the things that I find that very interesting, I think one of the challenges that the progressive politicians

are experiencing is, and I've not really seen this before, is how the cost of living issue is starting to affect the attitudes and the preferences of what would normally be considered a pretty important voter block of progressive oriented voters, young people in particular. And what seems to be going on is that, you know, incumbent politicians can be like, I don't know, they're sitting in a boat and water is coming in. And that water is the cost of living issue. And they can take some solace in the fact that, well, maybe the flow of water into the boat is slowing down, but there's time that I can recall, are saying,

when governments spend a lot of money, I don't know that it really helps me very much, but I do think that it ends up adding to inflation or the cost of government and eventually taxes. And because the price of everything seems so high, they're hypersensitive to anything that sounds like it might increase those prices further and that government is responsible for. So when progressive politicians talk about the kind of nation building or equity achieving ideas that they have in the past, those land a little bit differently for a good number of young people who say, I don't know if that's really going to work. I think it's going to cost a lot. It might end up increasing taxes. I can't pay anything more, whether it's

in the form of prices that grocery retailers are charging or taxes that are on top of those things. And so the toxicity of the cost of living issue for a progressive politician is really quite noticeable. And it also means, conversely, just a super big opportunity for conservative politicians to say, ask the tax, we're going to bring the cost of everything down, whether they can or they can't, is kind of immaterial in a way, because they don't really need to debate the social or environmental aspirations. They just need to sort of speak the language of people who are saying I can't afford the groceries and if I buy the groceries I can't afford the holiday and if

I don't have the holiday uh and I can't afford you know even to go out to a restaurant um I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna look for a different government or a different political party to support one that sounds like it's more focused on those issues you know i um i find this conversation fascinating for all the normal reasons i always find it fascinating fascinating listen to you too but if we circle that september 16th that's the date right the by-election date if we circle that that date there there are two things that could happen on that night. Both the Liberals could see a setback in Quebec. The NDP could see a setback in Manitoba. If those two things happened, both those leaders are in serious, serious trouble.

And we'd have something unlike anything we've seen before in this country, where you've got the two parties that basically are the governing parties of Canada at the moment. Well, if those two things happen, one would assume that that would mean the Conservatives have taken Winnipeg, which would translate into panic, full-fledged panic within the NDP caucus. But it might also presume that the NDP has won a seat in Montreal. That's possible. Because the Liberals have to lose to someone. They could lose to the Bloc. The Bloc came in second. There are so many ways you can look at what might happen in Verdun, which is why at split between the NDP running a stronger campaign than the liberals,

it allows the Bloc to move in. The NDP can hope. It's a riding that's got a lot of younger people. Didn't the NDP win it in 2011? Is that right? What the NDP won in 2011 is kind of irrelevant to anything that's been happening in Quebec for the past seven years in the sense that, you know, they won most, a majority of Quebec seats. But that doesn't give them a shot at a single seat in the next election, except the one that they hold. But in this case, they're running a municipal councillor.

But I also think they're hoping to ride the um the palestinian issue uh at the expense of the liberals and try to get some of that youth vote based on uh this issue in particular the conservatives are not in play in in that montreal writing uh and they have expended very little effort. So it's hard to know, you know, how the outcome you talk about would actually play out in real time. What I do know is that already a number of liberal incumbents have decided to not run again and that they have for the most part been asked to hold off until January before they make their intentions public. Why? Because then that would avoid the scenario of more by-elections. But I suspect that a loss in Montreal would probably drive even more of them to be looking for new opportunities or more time spent with family rather than go on to a defeat. And there has been a bit of an exodus from the NDP caucus already with a number of frontbenchers declining to run again.

So I think you would, at the very least, see a faster walk to the exit for many incumbents on both sides. We've asked this question before this year, but there's been kind of a lull in the discussion of it over the last few months. But how vulnerable is Singh's situation now at this moment? Well, if he left tomorrow, I'm not sure that there would be a long period of grief within the NDP ranks. And the excuse would be we need to move fast to a new leader. I'm not sure what that new leader would look like. But I'm not sure there is a process in either party to drive a leader out at this late stage in the game.

Don't weigh in on this at all, Bruce? Well, the NDP has always been a bit of a mystery to me that it does from time to time look like a party that knows how it could win or it could as though the price of success is compromising too much on some fundamental principles, or it is the Canadian version of half of the Democratic Party in the United States. In other words, that it's kind of got these internal tensions in it that would make it really difficult for it to become a much bigger success in Canadian politics. Regardless of those issues, it has tended to be, with the exception, I guess, of Tom

Mulcair, kind of a little slow to solve problems in its competitiveness as a political party. And I think that has been to the liberals' advantage, by and large. But I think the corollary is also true. When the liberals are slow to solve their competitive issues, it's to the conservatives' advantage, because there will always be a chunk of votes, notwithstanding all of the initiatives that Trudeau undertook to try to win those NDP votes. He's lost more votes to the Conservatives than to the NDP, but he's lost more votes to the NDP than he's pulled from the NDP over the eight or nine years of his project. So I think the NDP is a kind of a fixture in the national horse race numbers. But I don't think that it is.

Obviously, this is different on the provincial level, but at national level, I think it hasn't figured out either how it was willing to try to become one of the two strongest parties or whether it's willing to do that. It's not as if there wasn't a formula available to the NDP. And that formula has been applied in BC and Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba with success to this day in the case of Manitoba and BC. But one of the problems that the federal NDP is going to have, or one of the assets that Jagmeet Singh will have, regardless of his numbers and his results, is that for the next few months, NDP resources will be massively invested in the upcoming election in BC and the upcoming election in Saskatchewan. And as you've seen, under Nancy, the Alberta NDP is thinking of breaking away from the federal NDP. End of story. We still don't know.

It doesn't seem to be on. We still don't know whether Premier Ford is still thinking of an earlier election than the set date. But that would basically mean that minds and hands will not be idle or focusing on Jagmeet Singh for the next three, four months at least. Good example of the conundrum, I think, for the NDP. I was watching the CNN interview with Kamala Harris last night, and the interviewer went at her pretty directly about,

what is your position on fracking? Which, you know, as I think most of our listeners or viewers know, is the technology that you use to extract natural gas these days. And she had been against it. And then she was part of the Biden administration, and the Biden administration had a different policy. And so now the question is, you were against it, now you're against it. And then she was part of the Biden administration and the Biden administration had a different policy. And so now the question is, you were against it. Now you're for it. What's changed? And I thought her answer was a reasonable one. And I don't think that she's going to pay

any significant price for the suggestion that she flipopped her position. But if you transpose that issue into the federal NDP in Canada, that would be a really, really tough one. And it's tough because within the NDP at the federal level, the adhesion of the environmental movement with the NDP is so strong that it makes the party take positions that are hard to square with public opinion. The public wants action on climate, but it also wants the cost of living to be controlled. It wants environmental protection for sure, but it cares about stability in the economy. That's a hard thing for the federal NDP to grapple with. It's hard for the liberals, but the liberals have more history of figuring out how to try

to thread that needle. So I think any new leadership in the NDP in order to achieve better success would have to figure out how to deal with the fact that they draw support from people who have very firm views that are hard to square with centrist public opinion, let me put it that way. Yeah. And the NDP has seen within their own ranks that divide on issues like that one, and that we saw during the re-evaluation of Tom McCurris' leadership very much so. And as for Kamala Harris on fracking, she may have dodged it last night, but the issue is still huge in Pennsylvania, a major swing state for her,

and it'll be interesting to see how they react to what she said last night. You're correct on that, Bruce. Okay, we're going to take our final break. Then we'll come back, talk about the elephant in the room that we've ignored this so far today. Back in a moment. Are we visiting? And welcome back.

Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Bruce Anderson, Shantelli Baer, Peter Mansbridge here. Okay. We managed to slip through the first 46 minutes and 38 seconds of this program today without once raising the question of whether or not Justin Trudeau's leadership can survive through until an election or whether he'll go or whether he'll stay or what exactly would happen. What is new, if anything, on the liberal leadership story, rumors,

backroom maneuvering, you name it? Ask Bruce. Chantel, you name it. Ask Bruce. Chantal, what do you think? Bruce. Well, no, but this is normally where Chantal always goes first. And I'm a traditionalist. I believe that that's the right way to. He's really dodging it.

What a wussy. What do I think is going on? All right. Wait, we've lost the audio. We've lost the audio feed. Nothing else. Nothing wrong with the technology. Look, I think it has to be the case that any party that is so far behind is thinking constantly about what is it that we can do to to improve our prospects.

I think that these are rational people in the Liberal Party, including around the prime minister, including at the cabinet table and around the caucus. I think they have looked at a series of initiatives that have been undertaken, whether it's a budget, whether it's a cabinet shuffle, whether it's new policy initiatives. And all of the ones that they've tried haven't really changed the trajectory of the numbers. So, you know, I think that we're still in this movie of Justin Trudeau saying this is what I want to do. I believe I should do it. And people are very respectful of him inside the party. They're very disinclined to do anything that's disrespectful of him, especially publicly. But I think that the conversation doesn't stop just because he says, I'm staying. I think the conversation is real. I think there are people who are campaigning for his job, including in his cabinet. And I think that actually is normal. I don't think it should be seen as being completely unexpected or inappropriate to do.

Politics is a marketplace and it works best when it works like a marketplace where people, where there's a competition for ideas and the direction and where people are trying to improve upon a situation that isn't working that well. Let me stop there and see what Chantal has to say now. He fudged that for three minutes. That was pretty good. Yes, he did. When I came back from holidays, I did the normal rounds of where things are at, spoke to various people who are identified with, call it a change movement under one shape or another. And I came up with the word that I heard most was resigned, making their peace with the fact that Trudeau will lead the party in the next election. I'm guessing that Mark Carney, who is being identified as someone who is interested possibly

in the succession, has gone on holidays because his last tweet after a period of hyperactivity goes back to July 31st. So he's either gone silent or he's gone on holidays, whatever the choice is. It basically does not send the message of, I'm active in the wings and pushing for this to happen. What people tend to forget is that Justin Trudeau is not just a leader who won three elections

and brought the party from what it saw as the brink in third place, but also that he controls the party apparatus. This is Trudeau's party. There is not, you know, within the liberal machine, a group of higher ups who can behind the scenes pull him off. There is also the absence of someone who would be demonstrably better than Justin Trudeau in an election. But a new rationale has started to surface over why Mr. Trudeau is staying or should stay. And it is the fact that if the party is going to lose badly, it will do so under anyone who leads it. So better for him to take the loss so that it makes everyone happy, on the contrary, than notions that there is a powerful machine being put in place to replace him at a moment's notice. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. Listen, I hope the two of you have a great final weekend of the summer.

I look forward to being back on our regular track next week with Good Talk next Friday. And I look forward to everybody else having a good weekend too. It's the final weekend of the summer. We're back Tuesday with The Bridge. Janice Stein will be with us to talk Ukraine and the Middle East. Until then, bye for now. Enjoy the weekend. Great to see you both. Take it easy.

Bye.