The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- How Costly Are Holiday Slip-ups?

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives appear to have stumbled in the holiday season and the question now, is will they pay for the slip-ups? Trudeau in Jamaica, again -- and a Conservative frontbencher calls for Canada to withdraw from the UN. Bruce and Chantal handle both of those issues and more as Good Talk kicks off the 2024 season.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Chantelle Ebers in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. Lots to talk about on this first edition of Good Talk for 2024. So let's get at it. And we're going to start in Jamaica because, hey, that's where we'd all like to be, right?

I certainly would, as it's starting to be winter, at least in Stratford. A little bit of snow on the ground, not much. Jamaica because, obviously, the report came out yesterday that the Prime Minister has been vacationing with his family in Jamaica, and in fact, a friend is paying for it, a friend who owns the resort that the prime minister and his family are staying at. In terms of airfare, the prime minister has to fly on a government aircraft out of the rules. That's the way other prime ministers have traveled as well.

But he's paid the equivalent in commercial tickets. That's nothing like the expense it costs to fly a whole plane down, but nevertheless, that is the rule. Those are the regulations, and he's followed them. But the question has become, as it often becomes on prime ministerial holidays, and I know all three of us have had trouble over time dealing with this issue, trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong. But there are certainly a few howls out there about what's going on.

Tell me more about this family that's paying for everything. They've been family friends for a long time. Is it right? Is it appropriate? The prime minister should travel on somebody else's hook or at least stay in a resort on somebody else paying for it all um bruce why don't you start us on this uh and tell us whether is this a story worthy of consideration or not sure happy new year and for listeners not watching on youtube we should let you know that peter is dressed like the edge uh of the rock band U2.

He's got some sort of weird cap on today. Anyway, it's very entertaining. But you're being too nice about looking like this person from the edge. He actually looks like he just was chopping wood in Stratford. And that's just for, you know, a short hour with us. That's right. He's not paying the heating bills down there in Stratford and then just come in just for you know a short hour with us that's right he's not paying the heating bills down there in Stratford yeah okay so look Peter I think on this on this uh Jamaican trip here's where I come down I I first of all I'm never one really to um be that critical of um political leaders prime ministers who take holidays I think

these are tough jobs. They're under scrutiny all the time. They need some time away. They need some time to relax. And it's too easy to be overly critical about them. But I think there are a few questions that are separable here. The first is, did he do something wrong by doing this? And I think the answer to that is probably no.

I mean, I assume that they cleared it with the ethics commissioner, that this is somebody who has been a lifelong family friend. I think they've stayed at the same place before. So on the, on the substance of it, I don't think there's anything there on the optics of it. Well,

I think that's a question of political management. If you were sitting in the prime minister's office now or in his entourage and you were looking at your situations being 14 points behind in the polls in the middle of a situation where Canadians are really feeling the pinch in terms of the cost of living, is this the choice that you would have made? Is this the choice that you would have counseled be made? Is it a choice where you would have said, you know what, do we have to do this? Does this have to be the nature of the vacation at this particular juncture in the political life of the prime minister and of the country? That's a second question. put it that I would assume that there'd be a little bit of a debate about that because it's hard for that to land well with people in the time that we live in and in the political circumstance of Justin Trudeau right now. And then the last thing is the whole question of why did there have to be two different stories or the appearance of two different stories anyway

explaining the situation the first one being that he was paying for the vacation himself and then the second one being that it was that there was no charge to him i don't know that if they had started with this was a gift that he was being invited to stay at a friend's place that that would have been necessarily a worse story but i think it is a little bit of a of a stumble a fumble if you like in terms of the management of it which makes the size of the story a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit more problematic for Justin Trudeau at a time when he didn't really need to start the year with something that

that looks and feels like this. Any rumblings that you heard in Ottawa from Liberals themselves? I mean, they've had a pretty good couple of weeks in what's been a disastrous year for them. This thing kind of raises the specter once again of arrogance, ignoring the issues that are facing real people, et cetera, et cetera. Any rumblings there that you've heard, Bruce, before we get into showtime? Well, look, I don't know. I was just, as you said, they've had a pretty good couple of weeks.

I was trying to remember what it was that made you say that. I'm not sure they've had, I mean, other than we've all had Christmas, those of us who celebrate New Year's in a few days off, those being good things. I don't know that they've had a good run in particular. There was a better but still bad poll around the middle of look, I don't think that there are very many liberals who feel great seeing this story. I think that there's an anxiety about their situation. There's an anxiety about whether voters see them as being out of touch and living a kind of a life that's not accessible to everybody else, not preoccupied enough with what it costs for everybody to live.

So you can't be an active, sentient politician, and they are, without having a degree of discomfort with this being a story, even if your discomfort is really with the question of, did it need to be handled this way? Because I don't really think that there are very many who would take issue with the idea of the prime minister and his family going on a vacation and staying at a friend's place in Jamaica in the winter. Chantal. I'll start with hours of outrage. Well, it wasn't so long ago at the end of last year

that there were hours of outrage because the prime minister apparently takes a day off every weekend, which adds up to less days off than we've taken over the same period. So I don't think Justin Trudeau could have gone anywhere without hours of outrage. I don't think he can cross a street these days without being blamed for something that happens on the wrong side of

the street. I'm not even convinced that if the news had been the prime minister is paying his way, which would add up to with plane tickets about $100,000 for a vacation with his kids, that it wouldn't have been a story. As in, look at this prime minister is disposable income to the level of he's forking out 100,000 bucks to spend the week between Christmas and New Year in Jamaica. So it's kind of a lose lose. I'm like Bruce, assuming that there's nothing ethically wrong with this in part because my understanding is that this is where Justin Trudeau and his family went last year. So if there were issues, the ethics commissioner would have had more than enough time to raise it. I'm also assuming that Justin Trudeau is very prickly about his vacation time, including to his own staff. And why am I saying this? Because I don't believe

that the people in the prime minister's office did not try to make sure that they got it right the first time when they issued the news that he was off to Jamaica, would be paying his expenses out of his own pocket. And then to have to come back with a second statement a few days later to say, well, as it turns out, he's not having to pay for lodging because he's being hosted by a friend at this resort, which kind of put the focus on where the prime minister is vacationing. But at the end of the day, if Justin Trudeau wanted to go to a club medley, much cheaper with his entire family. The conditions that are required to secure his security would have him commandeer the entire Club Med just for himself for a week.

He can't do that. So basically, he's stuck between the, I'm taking no vacation, or I'm staying put at the government-paid cottage in the Gatineau Hills, or I'm going to get flack for whatever I do. Do I believe this story has long legs? No, I don't. Does it go to a perception that Justin Trudeau doesn't vacation where the rest of us do? Looking at your retired Peter, it's obvious that he's in a different league than we are.

We're all home today. We don't look like we have a big suntan. But that's not news. And I have not covered the prime minister whose holidays did not come under scrutiny at some point. I think the Toronto Star once sent a colleague of mine to Florida to follow Brian Malarone and his family around. So that's basically where the story is at. And if the liberals are feeling uncomfortable about that, well, good news for them. If they lose the election, it will not be over Justin Trudeau's holiday in Jamaica. It will be over a whole lot of other issues.

I think if I remember correctly, when we were doing the year ender, you were saying what was a piece of advice you'd give Pierre Poliev? It was take a holiday. That he doesn't take holidays, or at least if he takes them, we don't know about them. We don't find out about them. But it sounds like he doesn't take them. At least not. I don't remember Stephen Harper necessarily giving the location of his family vacations. And I don't think all prime ministers ever went through. I don't remember Jean Chrétien telling people where he was vacationing.

So it may be that Mr. Poitier has decided to opt for the more discreet way of going on holidays. Or maybe he stayed home and had Christmas with his kids. I'm sure that's a good way to spend Christmas too. By the way, you know, you're constant jabs at my attire today and trying to, you know, stay warm. This is my, you know, my challenge to drop the carbon tax on on natural gas you see some some people some premiers like to disregard the law i just like i just turn the heat off and and put my royal dornick hat on and and away go. So that fireplace that's going in the background, is that just an aesthetic thing?

That's his TV. That's the television. That's the TV fireplace. That's AI. You think there's a fireplace there, but really there isn't. It's just keyed in there. Okay. Moving on.

Dr. Leslyn Lewis, She's a doctor of law. She's a conservative MP. She finished third in the, I think it was the 2020 leadership race. She's the critic for infrastructure, I think. So the shadow cabinet minister for infrastructure in the House of Commons. She had an interesting statement this week, or signed a petition, that is an interesting petition, calling for Canada to withdraw from the United Nations. Now, clearly the Trudeau thing is going to bubble there for a couple of days anyway, and won't necessarily look good for the Liberals. Does this look good or bad for the Conservatives that they have someone who appears to be a front-bench Conservative calling for Canada to withdraw from the UN?

Now, Chantal, we'll start with you because you picked Laszlo Lewis as the one person in the year-ender that you wondered aloud whether Pierre Polyev wish wasn't in the caucus. Does he wish that any stronger today as a result of this? I don't know, but he certainly should. For one, the shadow cabinet, as it is called within the current Conservative Party, means that there are shadow ministers. She's not the shadow minister for foreign affairs.

Someone who seems to have disappeared off the map, called Michael Chong, is the foreign affairs critic. On this, as on other recent foreign policy issues, he's virtually got silent. It's as if the cat got his tongue. I'm not sure that I understand why or how the Conservative Party can have a frontbencher championing the notion that Canada would pull out of the United Nations. For one, we participated, and at this point of pride with many Canadians, we participated in the creation of the UN. For two, we've all covered governments of both stripes who paid a political price for not managing to get Canada onto the Security Council. We've never had prime ministers pay a political price until now for being UN supporters or for participating fully in the UN. So what this says about the Conservative Party's foreign policy is increasingly obscure in

the sense that, you know, first there were these votes on the Ukraine-Canada free trade agreement that saw the Conservatives repeatedly vote against the free trade agreement that Ukraine saw as a sign of Canadian support for Ukraine and its battle against Russia. And now this suggestion by a frontbencher that Canada should leave the UN, which it won't under any circumstance, by the way. Who is in charge of foreign policy within the Conservative caucus? Does Pierre Poiliev have any thoughts about foreign policy? Why does he have a foreign affairs critic if that person goes missing

every time there are questions about the party's stance on foreign policy? And no, I don't buy the, this is all part of a great plan concocted in the leader's office to get the vote of the people who want Canada to pull out of the UN. Because if there is one issue where I'm sure that there are more votes to be lost for a loss of credibility, rather than to be won, it's the suggestion that the Conservative Party would champion, in any way, shape, or form, the notion that Canada would withdraw from the United Nations. Bruce?

Yeah, look, I think on Lesley Lewis, Dr. Lewis, she had, by most accounts, relatively successful leadership runs. I think there were two of them, right? She's the infrastructure critic. That tells me something, and it's not to diminish the importance of infrastructure, but it tells me something about the way that the victorious leadership candidate feels

about how prominent he wanted her to be on his front bench. I think there are reasons for that. I think that she appeals to a part of the conservative base that Pierre Poliev and his strategy to win would rather have be quiet right now. Right. The notion that there's an anti-globalist segment of the conservative base isn't a surprise. Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.

It's there. But I think Pierre-Paul Lievre is astute enough to know that if it's too prominent, that it is going to be a problem with mainstream voters coming to the conclusion that, yes, it's time for a conservative government again led by Pierre-Paul Lievre. Leslie Lewis would have known of this dynamic, it would be her everyday life, basically. So for her to popularize this petition is a shot at her leader. And it's a shot that he ultimately is going to have to choose to respond to, in which case he's going to have to clarify that he would not pull Canada out of the United Nations, which then creates a story about he's got a front bencher who's, you know, he's kind of he's got friction with.

Or if he if he says, well, we'd be open to that and all we're really doing is gathering information on petition. That's a problem, too. I mean, there are 193, I think, member states of the United Nations. And there's lots of room to say that the United Nations should do better in a number of ways, accountability, financial management, effectiveness in certain areas. But it is the thing that the world has built to try to deal with global issues, which I think by most reasonable person's observation are becoming more difficult, whether it's climate change,

whether it's migration of population from some parts of the world to others, whether it's conflicts like those that we see in the Middle East potentially spreading, whether it's the rise in the importance of China, whether it's Russia and Ukraine, there's no shortage of global issues for which an entity like the United Nations, you would think is an important thing. So you could propose something better than the United Nations, but just to propose removing Canada from the United Nations in the interest of achieving some sort of sovereignty,

which is, I think, what the essence of this petition is, is that Canada has given up too much sovereignty by being part of this organization, which implies that the other 192 countries have also surrendered their sovereignty. It doesn't really make much sense. So it's a, is it going to be a problem for the conservatives only if it's the kind of thing that keeps on happening, only if Pierre Poliev doesn't find a way to deal with it and kind of put that instinct in the party to rest and say, this is not who I am. This is not the government I would lead. It's always the fear. affairs critic that is widely respected, that you would want to hear and see a lot more often than has been the case over the past three months. That's who you want on top of files like that,

because it does inspire confidence that whatever happens, a conservative government would have a strong hand at foreign affairs, that there is a team there that is professional and well-informed. You do not hear anything from Michael Chung, but Lesley Lewis is green-lit in some way, or certainly not, you know, there are no red lights flashing that anyone can see, to go on social media in the middle of a time. Let's be serious, guys. We talked a lot longer about Jamaica because it's the post-Christmas break. And yes, we have a lot to talk about, but we don't have as much to talk about

between Christmas and New Year than we will have in two weeks. So in the middle of this drought of news, where things attract more attention, like the prime minister's holiday, you have a frontbencher go on social media to publicize a petition to pull Canada out of the UN, and that is allowed to happen. Now, my understanding from various caucus members is that the rule is to not do or say anything unless you have the approval of the leader's office. So how things like that are allowed to happen and why you would waste a strong foreign affairs critic in favor of less than the voice boggles the mind. And it leads me to believe that maybe Mr. O'Poliov did take a vacation.

And that while the cat was away somehow, well, some mice have been having fun. Okay, well, let me just ask one last question on this issue. And it is about Michael Chong. You know, and I agree, he's extremely well respected. That goes back to the days when he actually walked out of cabinet, in the early Harper days when he felt very strongly about an issue that, as far as he was concerned, went against his principles.

So anyway, he left cabinet then. So he's in the shadow cabinet for Pierre Polyev as foreign affairs critic, which as you quite rightly say, is one of the top posts one can achieve, short of being the leader. And so the question becomes, if Pierre Polyev wasn't on holidays, was Michael Chong gagged? Was he told not to say anything? Because you're quite right. He hasn't entered the fray on a number of issues that would normally be foreign affairs issues over the past few months.

What do we suspect there? I don't think he was gagged. I'd be surprised if he was gagged. I think that this is, you know, I think that the conservatives have yet to figure out exactly what position they're going to take on these issues of international relations. I think that they're animated or they have been animated in the run up to the Christmas break, mostly by the day to day combat against the liberals in the House of Commons. And I think that they're the ferocity with which they approach that agenda caused them to make a mistake on the Canada-Ukraine trade deal. And they realized that it was a mistake

because they thought that they were making a point about carbon pricing and the rest of the world who observed it thought that they were making some sort of a point about not wanting to support Ukraine anymore, because there is a movement among some conservatives in Canada, but particularly visible in the United States in that direction. So I think it's been chaotic. I think it has been to Chantal's point. And I guess the point that you're making,

one of those things where if you were the foreign affairs critic for the conservative party and you were as smart as Michael Chong is, you'd be saying this can't continue. And you'd be in the leader's office today saying this isn't going to continue if I'm going to remain your foreign affairs critic. That's the kind of work that has to happen all the time in politics. There's a somebody spill something. There's a cleanup on aisle five. This is one of those situations. And it, you know, it'll be interesting to watch whether or not we start to hear more from

Michael Chong and nothing from Leslyn Lewis on issues of foreign affairs or anybody else for that matter, unless they've been authorized to speak on behalf of the party. And I don't believe that she was in this particular instance. I don't believe he was gagged either. But I believe that if he'd spoken his mind in both cases, Ukraine and the UN, he would have had to contradict the way that the party voted on the Ukraine free trade deal or to describe Lesley Lewis's petition support for what it is, which is ignorance combined with some dose of, I'm not going to try to find a word for that. But I don't buy the fact that the party is silent because it has not decided some of its foreign policy decisions. I agree that they have not decided all their foreign policy decisions. I agree that they have not decided on their foreign policy stance,

but I don't believe that they're seriously debating whether they will support continuing to be part of the United Nations or whether they will continue to support Ukraine in its battle against Russia. That would be like saying the party does not flesh out its economic agenda and maybe it doesn't really want NAFTA anymore. Well, we know that the Conservative Party will support NAFTA when it's in government. It's not a matter of let's wait and see for the election campaign where we come down on those issues. So clearly there is a discipline, and I agree with Bruce, think further than today's vote in the House of Commons to what it says in the larger picture about what kind of a government-in-waiting you really are. appear to have a clear runway ahead to victory, somebody steps offside or says something that doesn't really fit the agenda as you would like to see it on that takeoff and how you handle that.

I mean, we all remember Harper was iron-fisted on this stuff. You don't talk about this, you just don't even ever raise it. I'll be the only one who addresses issues like this. That clearly on this hasn't happened. So we'll see whether there is fallout and what kind of fallout that, that is. Okay. We're going to move topics, but first, we're going to take our first break. Back right after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to Good Talk right here on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or you're watching The Edge right here on your special YouTube channel for Good Talk. Shantelle Berry's in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. You can't turn on any source of news information these days without hearing the latest update on, you know, which state is trying to kick Donald Trump off the ballot or which courtroom is going to hear which appeal on which case and whether the Supreme Court is going to do this, that, or the other thing in terms of Donald Trump, which raises the question, and some have talked about it

quite a bit in the last little while, about the impact the 2024 U.S. election campaign, with all its intricacies, may have on the political situation here in Canada. So I want to get a sense from each of you of how you see the year ahead on that front and how much of an impact, if any, the U.S. election can have on what is clearly a run-up to a Canadian election, either much later this year or sometime next year in 2025. Chantal, you felt eager to talk about this, so away you go. It will impact on the Canadian dynamics. It is impossible to figure out how, because that would presume that we know the outcome of the American election

and how it will play with voters. With voters in the face of, and it's hypothetical at this point, a return of Donald Trump to the White House, they run for cover behind the prime minister who was in office while Trump was also in office? Or would they feel that Pierre Poiliev and the new team are better equipped to deal with the fallout from a Trump return? Question mark. For sure, to go back to our earlier discussion, it does suggest that in any scenario,

the Conservatives have an interest, as do the Liberals, to be as professional and as solid as possible on foreign policy and Canada-U.S. policy between now and the end of 2024 in the election. But I would go further than gaming what the U.S. election will do or not do to the political dynamics to argue that many things will happen in Parliament and in Canada this year. There will be conflicts,

apparently, between the Western provinces and the federal government, etc. Boards will say things that will likely trigger reactions. But I don't believe that any political story in 2024 will matter as much to Canada than the outcome of the presidential election in the United States and its possible impact on our trade, our economy, our place in the world. The list is endless, including the debate over the place of the rule of law in democratic societies. So everything else becomes a bit secondary. Imagine that this time next year, Trump is about to be sworn back in. Do you think we're going to spend a lot of time on wherever the prime minister spent his vacation?

Or even on Leslie Lewis's tweets over the Christmas break? No, we won't. Because the results of that or the impact of that will be so major that we will be trying to figure out where all this goes from here, possibly on the eve of a Canadian election. But between now and then, the other interesting thing is if you're watching Joe Biden, he's basically doing in the U.S. what Justin Trudeau will likely do in an election campaign, that is trying to focus on his main, his opponent, to say this guy is not your average, we're going to have a change guy. This is someone who is actually willing to take some of the pillars of our democracy and shake them to the point of breaking them. I'm not saying Trudeau would go as far with Poilieva

that he would have the material to do so, but it will be interesting to watch what happens to Joe Biden and the challenge, the real challenge that the Republican nominee will pose to his re-election for a second term. Bruce? Yeah, I think that I certainly agree with Chantal that this is going to be a big story. It's going to be a big story for the world to watch. I think what we're witnessing is a struggle wherein which America is continuing to define itself or redefine itself. But it's an unsettled piece of work right now. And a lot of people who are kind of counting on America to be some sort of source of stability in the world can look at that country now and say, we don't know exactly what it is. We don't know what it's going to turn out to be.

So there's a self-definition aspect for America that's going on, which is going to mean a lot to us. But it's also a there's a defining of what it means to be conservative or what does conservative mean in the modern context? And you can see it is a focus of this incredible tension between traditional Republicans in the United States and MAGA Republicans. So just watching this play out over the last 12 months or longer, Some of the most interesting and heartfelt and difficult conversations that I'm watching in U.S. politics are between people like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and others who come from a different place in what conservative means looking at MAGA republicanism and say we don't recognize this as being who we are as republicans or what we should be as a country and we see the leadership especially in the house of representatives kind of looking like it doesn't necessarily like it

but it's going to go along with whatever it is that the base, the MAGA base wants. So bring that into Canada. And you do have a question. And it is related to the Leslie Lewis issue that we were talking about before. How much MAGA is there in Pierre Poliev? How much is there in today's conservative movement? Let's imagine that the polls, which are pretty wide right now in favor of the conservatives, but let's imagine that the polls, which are pretty wide right now in favor of the conservatives, but let's imagine that they, they narrow a little bit. Um, there's, you don't have to be a math genius at this to figure out that at some point, Pierre Pauliev desperately wants to keep that people's party vote down to 3% or 4% or whatever

it is right now, but not up around eight or nine. Um, and that's what we're talking about. We're talking about if he doesn't say enough to animate that base, does Max Bernier start to tweak that up? Does the noise coming from the United States about the U.S. election and Trump inspire people here to say, we want more edgy, anti-traditional conservative? And if that happens, how will Polyev respond? And if he does respond in a way that kind of gives some sort of license to that, is

that going to imperil his prospects in Canada? So I think it's a it's a there's definitely going to be a contagion effect of how U.S. politics plays out into the Canadian political scene. And a lot of people will be watching it with a great deal of anxiety, I would think. Let me ask the question this way, because as Chantal mentioned, we don't know what's going to happen in the U.S. election. One assumes it could go either way, depending on how the year unfolds. But if you're a liberal strategist, if you're a Trudeau liberal strategist,

would you prefer to have the election before the Canadian election, before the U.S. election, or after? Before, obviously, the threat of a Trump re-election exists, and you can paint, as it seemed Trudeau was doing in some of the interviews he gave, especially the Terry DeMonte interview around Christmas, that one of the big issues is going to be whether the drift in Canada occurs the same way that it's happened to the right in the United States.

So the question then is straightforward. Before or after, or does it matter? I'm an after person. I don't believe, and so far my experience has been that they don't work. I don't believe that you can win re-election in the current dynamics based on a fear campaign. The boogeyman will be back in the White House and you want us to, if that happens, you want us to be there.

I'm always reminded of the notion that the liberals had in the last election that if they went all out on the vaccine mandates, they were bound to win a majority. And that didn't happen because it looked too much like a political game. We're going to play with your minds and then you're going to give us a majority mandate.

Now, I think this would be seen as exactly that. Would, I'll take it a step further. I believe that even liberal strategists who desperately want to play the game know that whatever happens, the best outcome for Canada is the re-election of the Biden administration, even if they may get some advantage from a Trump victory. Bottom line, this is not your usual political game where you say, well, if X wins, it's better for Y.

I think for Pierre Poiliev or Justin Trudeau and for Canada, the only outcome that is good is the re-election of the Democrats. But to go back just briefly to Bruce's point about the Republicans splitting up and the meaning of what it is to be a conservative. Yes, there is always a risk, which I believe is exaggerated to Pierre Poiliev's not trying to the base enough and allowing Maxime Bernier to go get some of his extreme right flank. I believe that risk is more than offset by the notion that there are conservatives who are looking at this conservative party and who risk saying this is not my family.

And I say this having watched Quebec's finance minister, Eric Girard, who once ran for Stephen Harper, say, well, I'm not interested in running for Poitiers because his values are not my conservative values. And now the liberals who have recruited for an upcoming by-election and former conservative leader Aaron O'Toole's Ontario writing, a person who initially wanted to run on Pierre Poitiers' ticket in that by-election and who is now saying, well, in the end, I don't feel that this Conservative Party is my Conservative Party. So it's not a big movement,

but the seeds of that possibility of Conservative voters, middle-of-the-road Conservatives saying, I don't feel like belong in this Poiliev party, are at least as big as losing votes to Maxime Bernier in the margins. Bruce?

Yeah, I think you could walk around this town, ask every liberal that you run into, and you'd be hard-pressed to ever find one who would say, you know what, I think it would be better if Donald Trump were to win, because it would set us up more effectively for the next election. I don't think that, you know, they're cynical people in politics, but I don't find that cynicism can run that deep very often. Most progressive people, I think, see the possibility of another Donald Trump presidency as a very serious problem for America, for Canada, for the world. On the timing question, I don't think it matters in a sense,

because I think the right thing to do for the government is to stick to the plan that it has laid out, which is to govern the country with the support of the NDP until the time of the next election, which is ostensibly in 25. I think they would have learned from past experiences, Chantal has indicated, that when you try to over-manufacture these scenarios, it doesn't always work out. People sort of end up feeling a little bit frustrated that they're being manipulated, and it's better not to do that unless there's an absolutely essential reason that lesson should be relatively freshly learned and imprinted and so if i'm the government i'm going to plan for that 2025

election i think that if trump wins um it's going to create more problems for the Conservatives in Canada rather than opportunities. That's just the way that I think it'll play out. If Trump loses, I don't think the Trump phenomena goes away that day. I think that if he loses, who knows how much he loses by, how big a story will be it was stolen again uh how big a story will be you know he was under 91 indictments because the establishment didn't want him to be competitive like i just don't see that tension uh dissipating because people go okay well the super bowl is over and and the other guys won so let's move on to baseball season. It's not, I just don't see that happening. So I think the same tension and anxiety about MAGA Republican and Trump influences is still going to exist and will still be part of the framework, even in the scenario where Trump

loses. And the last point for me is, I think that in a way, the challenge for Pierre-Paul Lievre leading a conservative party in Canada at this moment is to understand that in the past, when Canadians wanted to turn to the Conservative Party, they wanted a party of reassurance. They didn't want stability, who think that stability is the artifact of old school Republicans. They call them rhinos. And so they they crave change and disruption. But for conservatives to win in Canada, that's not usually about change and disruption. It's usually about let's get back to some basic things. Let's not spend too much money. Let's not allow the size of government to increase too much. Let's keep an eye on the taxation levels, all of those kinds of things. And I think

when Pierre Pauliev is doing well in the polls, it's because he's focusing on those messages. And when he gets into a little bit of trouble, it's when he sounds too much like a flip the table over sort of guy. All right, we're going to take our last break. When we come back, we'll talk about polls. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. The first episode for this year. Chantel's Montreal, Bruce in Ottawa.

I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. All right. Bruce, you've come up with a new poll that's being published today. And the numbers are basically in line with other polling operations in the country with a spread of sort of in the 14-point area between the Conservatives in the lead and the Liberals in second place. But you also went deeper with questions, and if those numbers weren't worrying enough for the Liberals, where you went in doing a kind of a deep dive into those you talked to and they were thinking,

that should be even more worrying. Do you want to give us the overview of that? I'll chat about it. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, though, on the horse race numbers, it's a 14 point advantage for the Conservatives That's pretty significant. The conservatives are ahead of the the liberals are trailing in every region of the country now. And in Quebec, it looks like the BQ is ahead of the conservatives and liberals and the liberals and conservatives numbers fairly close together, which would be quite disconcerting, I think, for the Liberal Party. All of which is to say, those are not obviously good numbers. I went back to the first election that I voted in, and I looked at 16 elections since then. And what I saw was that in any election where the Liberal support level was below 33%, they lost all of those elections. And they're at 26% now. So they've got a fair bit of ground to recover between now and the time of the next election. And the second

thing that I did is test some attributes that people associate with the two principal leaders, the two leaders that most people are focused on, Pierre Poliev and Justin Trudeau. And I wanted to find out a couple of things. First of all, the relative size of the negative perceptions of Trudeau and Poliev, and clearly there's more negative perception of Justin Trudeau than Pierre Poliev. And that sort of reinforces the idea that in the period of time that he's held this role, Pierre Poliev has succeeded to a degree that his predecessors haven't. He's kept his negatives down. He put some positives on the board and he's out competing Justin Trudeau on a personality test basis in terms of how people see these individuals. Second thing is that what are the negative attributes of Justin Trudeau that popped from my standpoint? There are two or three that I really sort of noticed.

The very top of the list was spends a lot more than is needed. The Liberals have a budget coming up. There's a lot of people who think that the Liberals have been looking at the federal treasury as, that was almost kind of limitless in its debt. And sometimes when I hear liberals talk about the conservatives and saying, you know, if they win the election, it's going to be austerity. I wonder if they're not helping the conservatives in that sense, because I think there are a lot of Canadians who are saying a little bit of austerity wouldn't be a bad thing. People don't want programs to be slashed,

but they do want to sense that there's more discipline on the spending side. Divides people and likes to preach to people about how they should live. Those are two other negatives that popped a little bit for Justin Trudeau. And the divides people one is interesting to me in part because, you know, one might have thought two years ago that if pierre poliev was the leader of the conservative party and justin trudeau was the leader of the liberal party that that trudeau would be the leader on uniting people and and a problem for poliev would be the sense that he's divisive um those numbers are flipped now uh poliev leads on uniting people trudeau has a problem he's seen as somebody who's divisive,

fairly or unfairly, and that's accumulated to him. But this preachiness thing, I think, is a bit of a chronic liberal brand problem for this government right now, and they really need to be careful how they talk about issues so that they're more aware of the fact

that Pierre-Paul Yves Wins on the question of cares about issues that matter to me, wants to help me improve things in my life. That's a vulnerability for the Liberals because they sometimes can sound as though they're talking at 35,000 feet about issues that are a bit esoteric. And some of the time they're telling people how to live and how to think and what's good and what's deplorable. And that's politically risky territory. So some interesting findings on our website about the attributes of the two leaders. Okay. Chantal. I haven't seen the regional breakdowns in the polls, but on divisiveness, I would be curious to see if part of the advantage to Pierre Poitier of being less divisive

comes from massive perceptions in the prairies that Justin Trudeau is divisive rather than something that is split across the board in Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada. I believe that a lot of those character numbers are driven by the fact that Justin Trudeau is not an option for many, many Western Canadian voters, which is not good, but has strategically not been the biggest liberal problem in the sense that it does not, you know, if Pierre Poilievre could trade the extra votes that he has in Western Canada for votes in Ontario or Atlantic Canada or Quebec, I'm sure he would do so tomorrow because those surpluses are certainly not helping. But otherwise, there is a lot of romanticism about balancing the books these days. I was looking over the Christmas break at, you know, what looked like stories about how Paul Martin did such a great job of balancing the books. And I was reading those titles, even as I was listening to reports of overcrowded emergency rooms and people not being able to access

basic medical care. And I know that memories fade quickly, but we did not have a Medicare and a health care crisis before Paul Martin did this great feat of balancing the books. Because in part to balance the books, he slowed down or moved the tap on transferring money to the provinces for health care. And then it cascaded down to provincial governments who in turn to balance their books offered early retirement there was a time when if you were my age at that time in the four in the early 40s and you were a woman and you were at the cottage it happened to me i would be asked are you a nurse or a teacher

because so many nurses had been offered early retirement in Quebec and not just in Quebec. So I think on spending, on federal spending, Canadians are basically in the same place as they are on climate change. They would like the federal government to tighten the purse strings, but not on their backs in the same way that they want to fight climate change. But for many, many people, that does not translate into anything that would impact the way that they live. They certainly wouldn't spend their time as you are, Peter, bravely sitting, hosting a show with all your winter clothes on. So do I take these numbers to be the definitive numbers on what would happen in an election? Like Bruce, I don't think he is, and I am not either. I came to Ottawa in late 86. And in those days, Brian Mulroney was behind on the polls.

And if you had asked about character issues, you would have found John Turner to come out with a lot more pluses than Brian Malarone, except that two years later, Brian Malarone was prime minister and John Turner was an embattled opposition leader. So there is lots of time, but I think over the next year, we should pay a lot more attention to regional breakdowns when we look at conservative numbers okay yeah we're gonna have to we're gonna have to leave it at that we're tired right out of time a great conversation and i know we just we are you know there's a lot of time taken up with you making fun of my hat next week next week that's why next week i'm going to do this program in shorts and a t-shirt, but we're already well over time.

So listen, thank you both. Enjoy the weekend. We'll get deeper into January in a week's time. Bruce and Chantel with us for good talk. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again.

Bye.