The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- How Responsible Is The Media On The China Story?

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

At a time when trust in the media is at a low ebb, is the media's work on the China story helping or hurting its reputation? Chantal and Bruce have their thoughts, and then Chantal beats me up over the use of the term "traitor".  Just another day in the life of Good Talk!

Are you ready for Good Talk? Ah yes, Friday, Good Talk Day. Chantal's here, Bruce is here. I want to start off this way today. There's a lot of stuff we can talk about today, so we're not going to have any trouble filling our hours. We never have trouble filling the hour, but this is a good day for a number of different subjects. But I want to start this way, sort of back into the China story as Because, first of all, let me be clear, and I assume you guys feel the same way, is that I have nothing but respect for those journalists who are spending their time trying to uncover particular stories and spending a lot of time. And it's not always uh time that produces something

at the end of of the day and investigative journalism um sometimes it just doesn't produce anything and you move on to the next story but in that you have to evaluate the information you're getting where it's coming from determine whether the sources are reliable that you're getting them from and then you have to make big decisions when it comes around to agreeing to allow those sources to be anonymous, which often is the mainstay of investigative journalism. Not always, but often it is. So first of all, I have a lot of respect for those who do it. I've dabbled in it at times myself, and it's exhausting.

And it can be something that you end up having to defend aggressively on your own part in the days that follow stories breaking. So I say all that in light of the big stories around the China story have been investigative journalism that's been produced by the Globe and Mail, and specifically by Bob Fyfe, who's got like a 40-year history of investigative journalism that's been produced by the Globe and Mail and specifically by Bob Fyfe, who's got like a 40-year history of investigative journalism. I've known Bob, you guys have known Bob for a long time, and he has a reputation of aggressively pursuing stories. Also, global television has been in on this as well. You wonder at times, do they have the same source or their sources?

Are they the same people talking to them from inside the security services, namely CSIS? Whatever the case is, the stories have been huge and have dominated the headlines for a couple of weeks. I thought it was going to slow down this week. It hasn't. If anything, it's taken off in a bigger way with the allegations against Han Dong,

the former Liberal MP who's now sitting as an independent MP who was basically the allegation coming out of Global was that he was in cahoots with the Chinese consulate in Toronto, asking them to delay the release of the two Michaels. Anyway, that's a huge story, especially if it's true. That's kind of a qualifier here, especially if it's true. Well, you know, it is a big qualifier, right? Yes.

And it's one that, you know, the Globe says they had the story two weeks ago but chose not to run it because they couldn't see evidence. They couldn't see a transcript of the conversation that was clearly had been taped by CSIS or somebody. But they chose not to run it. Global did. Whether they saw proof that it was true or not, I don't know. However, the question that I'm finally getting to here from both of you

is sort of, you know, at a time like this, with this story dominating, what is the responsibility of the media? What should be guiding the media in pursuing and covering this story right now? Chantal, why don't you start? or brown envelopes, we used to call some of those scopes that come to you anonymously. And by the way, it's an urban legend that we spend our time opening those brown envelopes. They are few and far between. But ideally, anonymous sources would lead you to try as hard as you can to get something on the record from someone, not necessarily from those sources, but from some of the players that are identified in the anonymous source information. I'll give you an

example completely divorced from national security. I ended up at the receiving end of a brown envelope just prior to the referendum, that reported from a foreign affairs conversation with an ambassador from the EU, Jacques Paisot, when he was asked, then the premier of Quebec, when he was asked, what would Quebecers do if they voted yes in October and then changed their minds? And the story that the paper I was sent said, the premier responded by saying, ha ha ha, by then they will be like lobsters in a lobster pot, i.e. they're not going to be able to back off. It was obviously a very damaging story. And it came on official paper from the Foreign Affairs Department. So it looked really official. That turned out well because we held off for a number of days, and I ended up getting one of the ambassadors on the record to confirm what the premier had said.

And why did we go through all that trouble? Because Jacques Péguiseau was the Quebec premier. The story was going to be attacked. And frankly, before we did all that damage, we needed some certainty to assure ourselves that this was actually a true story, not some plan from the federal government to further the cause of federalism. This stuff does happen. And yes, the federal government's unity operation had sent the info, which was otherwise accurate. But that brings me back to this week and what happens when you have to do stories based on anonymous sources.

One of the arguments I put to bosses at La Presse back then was, it's my name that is going to be on the line when the story is published, my credibility. And I did get threats, you always do, from some of the parties that were unhappy about the story, nominally Mr. Peggy Zhou's office, that said your career is going to be over on Monday if you publish this story. So whenever you do this, you talk about Fife having a 40-year career, his credibility is part and parcel of the credibility of the story he puts forward. And whenever he does it, and that also goes for Sam Cooper at Global, he is putting his credibility on the line. Does your credibility always survive? Does it mean that you always make the right call on publishing? Well, this is the week of the 20th anniversary of Jean Chrétien saying no to the Iraq war.

He said no in the face of secret service information coming from that impeccable source, the United States, which has a sturdy Secret Service apparatus. We now know that this was either a massive Secret Service failure or a massive manipulation. So even when you are publishing, you should keep some context here. And in the case of the reporting of the past two weeks, context matters. What I find fault with the reporting and what is done with the reporting is not so much that it ends up in the public sphere, although I'm not sure that I wouldn't have come to the same decision as the Globe based on what has been put forward by Global

and held off, kept my powder dry for a while longer at least. But to present any information that comes from a CSIS leak or an RCMP leak or whatever as gospel is dangerous in a country where we have learned firsthand from the Maher Aar experience that personal and corporate agendas of security services are often allowed to get in the way of truth, even to government. I went back this morning to the inquiry into Maher Ara, this Canadian citizen who was deported from the U.S. to Syria, detained and tortured on the basis of inaccurate RCMP information provided to the U.S. authorities. And in there, you find some really damning

notes from Justice O'Connor, who presided over the inquiry. In particular, he relates at one point that the RCMP brass met with the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's office and omitted some information because it would adversely, I'm quoting him here, adversely impact on the RCMP. So this notion that if you see two sources with security background have said this and that, well, that's not Moses coming down from the mountain. And I think that context has been missing over the past few weeks. All right. Bruce. He's smiling at least. Well, I'm glad Chantal went first because, you know,

I'm not that critical of the media generally, as you know, but I do have a couple of things that I wanted to say that pick up where she left off, I guess. One is that over the 40 years or so that I've been kind of hanging around people in politics and people in the news media, there probably been about 25, just to pick a number, truly sensational stories that were told to me that I thought, boy, if that story is published or run, the world as we know it will change, the political world especially. And none of those stories ever came to pass. Now, that's not to say

that there haven't been sensational stories that were true and did change the political landscape, but it is to say that there's always stuff that some people are trying to get journalists to write about their political opponents or their life opponents or their grudges or what have you. And it's always been important for some news organizations to look at that stuff very carefully and to decide whether or not the standard of evidence is up to what it needs to be. And think about the motive and to come to a judgment about their, not just their legal responsibility, but to Chantal's point about the reputation of the organizations. I do have some concern these days that media organizations are so weakened financially

and from a standpoint of editorial resources that perhaps, and they're challenged all the time by the fact that stories could just end up being on Twitter and then you've sort of lost the opportunity to bring something to the public's knowledge before anybody else did. And so those are all tricky contextual changes that raise the risk that a story like the one about Han Dong could be wrong. Now, I don't know if it's wrong. I don't know if it's right. I don't know if it's wrong. But I know that as of today, in order to believe the global version of this story,

I need to believe two things. One is that this MP did something unspeakably bad in arguing or making the case that the Chinese should keep these two Canadian citizens in jail for a longer period of time for some sort of convoluted political upside. And the second thing I need to believe is that when the prime minister was told that, he decided to shrug it off and do nothing about it. Now, both of those things could be true.

But it's a lot to trust based on anonymous sources and no transcript. And it's also possible that the news organization felt like it was committed to this story, and it wanted to get that story out there. Another one had similar information and decided not to run that story. So I think that it's fair for people to want to know more before they come to the conclusion that this MP did this act and that the PM decided willfully to ignore an unspeakably bad act by one of his MPs. Because even the most partisan opponents of Justin Trudeau or the Liberal Party, they probably should think hard about whether both of those things really are true. Maybe they are. I guess we'll know in time. But it's a lot. It's a lot to trust. that the kinds of stories that I mentioned earlier that you hear about that never really come to the public's attention. Sometimes they're stories about corruption.

Sometimes they're stories about personal lifestyle and behavior and that kind of scandal. And then there are reasons, legal and maybe ethical, why those stories get dropped. But this is a story about national security. I kind of feel like there needs to be a, not necessarily a higher, but a different standard of care that's applied to that because the challenge for the government when these stories come out is that everybody who isn't thinking about it carefully enough says, well, government should just kind of blurt out all of the information that they have that could inform people about that. Well, that's manifestly an irresponsible idea. Government has to protect certain kinds of information for reasons that are in everybody's interest. That looks bad when they do that. It looks suspicious. So I feel like the journalism around this needs to accept that that's a

particular aspect of the story. And again, to be a little bit more careful, maybe to present the allegations, but not as fact, as allegations. And to leave open in the coverage the idea that there might be another version of this story uh and that we and i haven't seen maybe as much of that as i would like to see in some of those stories well you you know when you're calling when you're deciding you're going to run a story that basically calls somebody a traitor or or they're treasonous to their country uh you obviously want to ensure that what you're about to say uh is correct um and that you've gone through all the processes to ensure that you've done what you as an organized news organization need to do and you know chantal's worked for a major news organization, so have I. The Globe is one.

Global One Hopes is one, where you go through a process. Everybody's different. They have different kind of rules and regulations, but it involves the most senior editors. It involves the journalist having to defend his sourcing. It involves lawyers going through everything that is said i mean there's a lot of stuff it's not just some you know a reporter walks in the newsroom says oh here's a great story run this that's not the way it works uh one certainly hopes it may work at in that way at some you know

minor organizations but it certainly doesn't in a in one. I'll just mention two other things because I know Chantal wants to get back in here. But one, there is, you know, you're talking about the brown envelopes. The one difference between brown envelopes and the kind of sourcing we're seeing, certainly from the globe, is that with brown envelopes, you don't necessarily know ever who sent it to you, right? But the information, you determine whether or not it's real or not or whether it's authentic. With the kind of sourcing that it appears to be doing with the globe, and once again, like we don't know, but they know who they're talking to, right?

So there is a slight difference there. Here's my question, and this one totally puzzles me on this story. Why hasn't the director of CSIS stepped forward and said, okay, this is true, here's the evidence, or I'm not going to give you the evidence because it's secret, but I can tell you this is true or this is not true. The fact that there's silence emanating from CSIS doesn't make any sense to me. I don't get it on something as serious as this, that a member of parliament is a traitor to their country

is basically what this is arguing. And all the other things that have been released on this story. Anyway, sorry, Chantal. So let me first take issue with your two mentions of treacherous and treasonous behavior. There is nothing in anything that we have read over the past two days that comes even close to anything that qualifies as treason, which is an awfully big word. If you wanted to get closer to treason, you would have had a report that says that the government MP went to China and said, I'm going to help you make Canada flinch in the two Michaels saga. And don't hold off because the prime minister is wavering and may be setting free because that was the deal in the two Michaels saga is free Meg Wanzhou, this executive from Huawei. And he will,

it was never said like that, but that was clearly what the tit for tat was. That's not what happened. At best, and Mr. Dong denies that that was the case, at best, a really poor piece of political analysis was discussed in a phone or a conversation with the Chinese consul. The assertion is that Mr. Dong said, do not free them too quickly because that would help the conservatives. I can't think, and can you think of a day when it wouldn't have been a good day for the liberals to have the two Michaels come home? That was the other thing that didn't make sense in the story.

So before we go into big words like treason, let's agree on what has been reported, which has frankly nothing to do with what actual treason is. Even if you, like me, read a lot of spy novels, or if you do, you would know that. So, second matter. I just think when you are supposedly arguing to keep a Canadian in jail under terrible conditions, which we've now witnessed from the testimony of the former Canadian ambassador. Maybe it's not treason or traitor,

but I don't know what it is. It certainly isn't anything that's acceptable on the part of a Canadian parliamentarian. It's reckless behavior, for sure. It's a firing offense, if true, for sure. It's a firing offense, if true, for sure. It's the end of someone's career, for sure. But I think we should be careful with terms that have legal consequences. There is nothing that I have read and no expert that has come forward to say any law has been broken in any way, shape, or form in what was reported. And treason is something for which there are legal standards.

Okay, all right. I think there comes a time when people must be careful about the language they use, especially about something that is not being proven in a court of law that is probably never going to be proven in a court of law since nothing in the allegations is something that would warrant the RCMP arresting anyone. It's one or the other. Maybe I'm sensitive to the word treason, because it has been used politely in some quarters in Canada to talk about the Parti Québécois. But I have learned over time that it is always a good idea to just be careful

with big words when talking about issues like that, because they have a way of becoming the definition of what actually happened. I wouldn't want that to happen. Okay, well, I will back off using that word. I won't back off from the fact that this guy's life has basically been ruined by this accusation, right? Yes. Because of what? Because he's been made to look like somebody who wouldn't defend a Canadian. He's actually been made to look like someone who would use the life or the terrible conditions of a Canadian to advance a political agenda.

Exactly. As weird as that political agenda may be. But as for CESA's being silent, we don't know. But from the Globe and Mail's reporting today, for instance, that they had the story that they went to the prime minister's office with it, that the prime minister's office requested the transcript, that having seen the transcript, the prime minister's office replied that it was not actionable. They saw nothing in the conversation that was actionable. What I get from all that is the impression that the thesis initially never brought it to the PMO. If they had to ask for a transcript

two weeks ago, that's because in 2021, when I think this dates back to, the CSIS did not say, gee, we need to inform the PMO and show them the transcript of this conversation. So there are even more questions to ask CSIS, which I suspect the Prime Minister's office is probably asking by now. It's a really interesting point. And as we were getting ready for this call, this conversation this morning, I was noticing that even on Twitter, not the most reliable platform to gather information on something as complex and fast changing as this, there's some speculation that maybe somebody misinterpreted the word in a transcript or, you know, the translator got it wrong. And I have no idea whether that's true or not. But I do feel like the notion that CSIS would have

been aware of a conversation between an MP and the Chinese consul in which the MP said the things that he's alleged to have said and not have reported it to the PM or to political officials in the PMO, that's a bit of a stretch. It's hard for me to believe that they decided that was not actionable if in fact it was as reported in a global story. And then the second thing is that in the midst of all of the brouhaha now about Chinese interference or meddling, that when the transcript was requested by the PMO and read by them, that they too looked at it and said, there's nothing actionable. You could, if you were hyper cynical, say, well, they didn't want to take action because

it would have been embarrassing for them. Sure, that's true. That's plausible. On the other hand, you could more plausibly, to me anyway, argue that making the decision to do nothing when you were staring at a transcript where that MP said, don't release the Michaels, there's a lot of political risk in that. That's a pretty stupid political calculation. And I have to challenge in my own mind the assumption that they would do that, that they would have asked for that transcript, read what the global story says was in there, and said, we're not going to do anything about it. Nothing about it.

I need more evidence to believe that they would make that calculation. And it sort of takes me back to, well, the globe didn't write the story because they didn't see the transcript. CSIS didn't do anything even though they did see the transcript and the PMO saw the transcript and said there's nothing actionable. At some point, I need more on the other side of this scale to feel like this is real. Actually, it goes a bit further than that. The Globe and Mail decided not to write it after the PMO read the transcript and told them they saw nothing actionable. That begs another question. I mean, if you're the Globe, you're happy to have the PMO tell you we've read the transcript.

It's not actionable. It goes in the story, as you know. A denial that actually goes beyond no comment is always great for a story like that. And having all that, they decided, no, this is not solid enough ground to venture forward. I hope that at some point we have more clarity on the story. I don't hope that only for Canadians to know who did what, when, and this file, but also for the MP in question. And the sad fact is that it's always headlines when you are fingered, but it's rarely played except in the last paragraph.

Let me make a prediction. Should it turn out that this story was not on as solid legs as it should have been, the vast majority of the media will have or will feel no responsibility towards that story and will put it in the last paragraph because it wasn't their story and the only excuse that the CBC, Radio-Canada, the Globe and Mail, the Star found to publish the story was the fact that Mr. Dong stepped out of caucus and that gave them a lead to use the anonymous reporting of Global in their story.

That's what happened this week. I'm not saying they shouldn't have, for sure. But if the story, the Global story had stood alone yesterday morning or the morning before that, most outlets, the Globe, Radio-Canada, CBC, the Globe had a story of its own on this. The others would have said, well, we can't just, you know, drink global's bathwater based on anonymous sources. They would have pursued it, but they is going to have to give it a major play. But the others, based, for example, on Patrick Brown's experience with CTV, Patrick Brown lost his job over allegations of improper behavior. It turned out in the end that there were faults in the reporting,

and the CTV had to deal with that. But did you hear a lot about that vindication in the other media, whose story and embarrassment it was not? Not really. Okay. I want one quick final round on this, but we'll take a break here first, which we will do right now, back right after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday edition. Good talk. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge. And I'm watching the two of them very carefully, hanging on every word they say. Just like you are if you're watching on our YouTube channel,

or you can be watching or listening on SiriusXM channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Okay. Just a final go go around on this story. And not only just the way the media has been playing it, but also I'm still puzzled. Maybe Bruce, you have an answer for this. Chantel kind of, she kind of passed on it but this issue of of why cesis isn't really saying anything about this i mean this is their backyard right this is to one assumes of their i don't know senior analysts or you know somebody at a level that

gets to see confidential documents i mean the one thing we know from that exchange between the PMO and the Globe is that there actually is a transcript. So there was some kind of conversation. But why wouldn't the CSIS, what would the argument be, if you were advising the CSIS director, what would the argument be, don't get in this, stay away from it. Well, I do think that there's, you know,

a natural instinct in that organization to say that what we do, people may comment on it, but if we respond to some stories about it, we're inevitably either going to be saying, well, we can't do it about this, which is not a great response, or we're going to tell you something about it, which can carry some consequences for the work that they're doing. So I think it's one of the particular awkwardnesses of this kind of story is that the organization, the trustworthiness, the effectiveness, the reliability of is under a cloud now. We'll have to, I think, at some point, take steps to address its reputation. I'm sure that there are steps being taken already to address the internal trauma that these stories are causing. I'd be completely gobsmacked if that wasn't the case. And some people will look at that and say, well, chasing down whistleblowers, I'm not there. I think no matter what, an organization

like that has a responsibility to find out who is making decisions to take secret information and put it into the public domain. And they have to deal with that. And, you know, it'll be for the rest of us citizens at some point to judge whether the leaking of that secret information was so important to the public interest that it outweighs the notion of somebody breaking the law. But I think that standard should be pretty high. And I haven't seen enough evidence. And frankly, today, I'm less convinced than I was two days ago that it might have met that test. I'm more skeptical now.

And so back to your question about CSIS, will they have to at some point say something publicly to defend the operational integrity or the ethical standards? Yes. Will they or should they get into a point by point rebuttal of these stories? I doubt it. I doubt they should. I know that it'll make them look worse in some respects, perhaps if they don't. But there is a question of what's the responsible way to deal with this. And the responsible way to deal with it might not be the most politically advantageous or the most media friendly, it just might be the responsible way to deal with it.

And then people will be a little frustrated with that. I can see. Sorry, go ahead, Chantal. Suppose that CESA shows up, has a news conference. One of the first questions will be, when did you tell the prime minister or the PMO in this case? If the answer is, well, we didn't, why didn't you? Suppose that the real answer would be because we decided to see where we had this MP on our radar. We wanted to see where this would lead.

At this point, we didn't have anything actionable. So warning the PMO was kind of risking to send the MP. So you can tell I read a lot of spy books and watch series. But another question would be, you have a transcript. So who were you taping? Were you taping one of Canada's elected officials? Do you tape other MPs? Are you taping some of his ministers' conversations?

How about the leader of the opposition or the leader of the Bloc Québécois, since we talked about sovereigntist and treasonous behavior? I'm not happy to answer, but supposing that the answer is, of course, not. Oh, then you're taping conversations, private conversations of diplomats on Canadian soil. Is it just China? Are there others? Are we taping Turkish diplomats? Polish diplomats? diplomat, you can see why CSIS will not be giving a news conference to account for all these, because it's impossible to do so without clearing up one worm, without letting a bunch of other worms come out of that can. And any good journalist would actually really want to go. I suspect you would rush from wherever you are away from Ottawa just to watch this news conference. It would be unique. And think of our allies watching CESIS giving a news conference to talk about its operations. Oh, great.

That's great context. You're correct. All those, as frustratingly as chantal often is correct um that that's another one i guess the the it's not the difference but the the thing that makes this unique is that this wasn't some outside critic of cesus claiming something happened this is somebody inside cesIS who has chosen, at least one person, perhaps there's more, who have chosen to leak to at least one news agency, if not two, information that is really damaging to certain people and to the government of the day.

And not only leak documentation anonymously, but also then to write anonymously a column for the Globe and Mail on why they did it. So it just puzzles me that, although you really explained that well about CISA's position, but you'd think they'd find a way to get out somehow that this isn't true or this is, you know, you're misreading this because it just feels like there's an onus on them to say something about the accuracy of what's being alleged. Well, it's probably a great temptation, but I need to step in because

careful listeners will think that they heard you say that it's frustrating when Chantal is right. And I know that you didn't say that. I didn't notice that. I'm not sensitive to comments. Yeah, I did say that. And I know that that's not what you meant. It was sort of frustrating that she's almost always right or always right. I think you should just let it go. I exonerated you.

Both of you and I have been slapped down in the past. Today was my turn once again. I'm dragging you to shore. Yes, don't resist. Don't drown Bruce along with you. He tries to save you and bring you to shore, basically. That was Shantel's right. I mean, the right answer for CSIS is that their work needs to be treated.

The government needs to be accountable for everything the government does. That's for sure. And CSIS needs to be accountable to the government. But it's part of the business. And I, like Chantal, have read a lot of spy novels and watched a lot of spy series. By the way, A Spy Among Friends, if you haven't seen it. Oh, it was great. Very good.

It was fantastic. Very good. Yep. series by by the way a spy among friends if you haven't seen it oh it was great very good very good yeah but the work of that organization as awkward as it may be for them right now or feel that way for them right now it it needs to be concealed this the whole point of it is that you're trying to gather information under a cloak of secrecy. And I think the more urgent priority for them is not to manage the external reputation, but to deal with the internal dynamics that are creating these leaks. But then I have just found a purpose for David Johnston. Is he not allowed to see anything that he wants to see? Yes.

So as of this week, I fully expect him to not only want to see the transcript, but to hear about the transcript in context from CSIS. And I totally expect him sooner rather than later to shed light one way or the other on what he has seen. There is also this committee of parliamentarians who have the power to ask CSIS those questions. And although they can't discuss in public what is being said, surely if what they heard did not go the way of what has been reported in public, they would want to find some remedy to Mr. Dong's reputation. Or the alternative, they would want him out of the House of Commons. So I understand that CSIS will not have this dream news conference that so frustrates you by its absence. But I suspect that CSIS will not be able to keep the lid on that can.

There are at least two can openers at the disposal of parliamentarians and the prime minister's office. And then the chips will fall where they may. But I also think the events of this week probably make a public inquiry more inevitable politically than it was even a week ago when it was already pretty inevitable. Well, we shouldn't rule out also the possibility that the defamation lawsuit that Mr. Dong has said that he's going to launch, if the news organization publishes a story and is in receipt of a lawsuit, they've got an early decision to make before they decide to spend all of the resources fighting the lawsuit if they don't feel that the story holds up to the standard that the court will apply.

I don't think we know how that's going to go. And it's kind of easy sometimes for people to say, well, I'm going to sue. But again, if we go back to the fundamentals of this, this MP, a public figure, is being accused of doing something that's unspeakably bad. And he says, I didn't do it and I'm going to sue those who said I did. He's got to feel like he's got a pretty good case. Otherwise, he's going to have to back off that lawsuit, and that's another point of embarrassment. So if he's going ahead with a lawsuit, it doesn't mean he's right,

but it does, again, add a little bit more onto one side of the scale. And rather than cease to show its receipts, I feel like global is under a lot of pressure right now to be able to add more evidence to support the stories that they're putting out there. Yeah, well, we will see how they respond to some of these concerns that have been expressed. There is something that I always used to argue when I was being threatened with a suit on defamation or whatever it might be, which was, okay, when you actually sue, we'll deal with it, right? And we'll report it. And that is what you expect a news organization to do. You can't authorize a story on Wednesday and start backing off when the word lawsuit is uttered. Otherwise, you are making a fool of yourself and opening yourself up to questions from your own staff.

Once you say yes to a story like that, you need to back up the person who was on air with the story until you can't anymore. That's right. And, you know, let's face it, threats of lawsuits are pretty common in our business, right? Happen all the time. But actual lawsuits, that's a lot less likely, as it usually turns out. Okay, we're going to take our final break. When we come back, we'll talk about something different for a few minutes. That's right after this. All right, we're back. Peter Mansbridge here, Chantel, Bruce.

I used that final break to pull the knives out of my chest here. And the one great thing about Chantel is the knives weren't in my back. You know, she comes like right at you. And it's a, you know, it's a refreshing feeling. It kind of opened up that way. Right. The last person who told me that was someone who worked for Paul Martin. Okay.

It just brought back painful memories for the Martin crowd now. All right. Well, as we speak, Joe Biden is sitting in his limo listening to the bridge right now because he wanted to be up to date on what was actually happening in Canada as part of his whirlwind tour. He's in and out like a flash. What's the end game on this? Or not the end game. What's the end game on this? Or not the end game, what's the end result? What's the headline going to be that's remembered a week from now?

Anything? Bruce, you go first. Well, I think that I suspect that one will be the story that was already broken yesterday about Roxham Road. It's a very important story, and it's especially important and topical in the province of Quebec, as Chantal has talked about a fair bit. And so I'll leave it to her to describe what she thinks that the lasting impact might be. It's a little bit complicated what the government has agreed to do, but it does feel as though after months and I guess years really of pressure building up around that situation, there's some solution. I rather suspect that what happens today is going to be a little bit more about economic cooperation and the relationship between the U.S. government and this Canadian government, I'm hesitant always to say the relationship between the U.S. and Canada because I don't think the U.S. is a single entity. I think that one of the things we learned in the Trump era

is that you can change the government, and all of a sudden the relationship can go to hell without having done anything. Remember, Trump was really angry with us about milk, which a lot of people never really heard that as an irritant before. So there's idiosyncrasies on the U.S. side that make it a less stable relationship than it used to be. But I think that the message probably coming out of the Biden-Trudeau agenda, especially since both country leaders are going to be with a number

of their cabinet secretaries in the case of the United States and ministers, they're going to be talking about economic portion and critical minerals and transition to a cleaner economy. I think that'll be the big story that lingers. Chantal? First, a word on this Roxham Road issue and the apparent settlement that Canada and the U.S. have come to. That's, at least for today and for the next few weeks,

that's a clear win for Justin Trudeau. What have they agreed to? They have agreed to extend the safe third country agreement that allows Canada and the U.S. to turn back people to the U.S. or to Canada if they have landed in one or the other country that is considered safe on their way from Mexico, Venezuela, go down the list. They have agreed to extend the application of that to the entire Canadian-U.S. border. And the government's thinking on that in the short term is that it will make Roxham Road moot in the sense that people who show up

there will be turned back. But we are not going to ever police our entire border. Neither the US nor Canada has the means to do that. And that means that we will be pushing people to use other ways to enter Canada or the U.S. from Canada and the U.S., which we may or may not catch and at greater possible peril to themselves as they do so. Will it diminish? That's the federal thinking. And the thinking in government circles is in any event, this will diminish the flow. It's going to make it harder to go through this process. We'll see. It's an imperfect solution to a problem that did not have a perfect solution. Canada, in exchange, has agreed to take 15,000 more migrants from the Western Hemisphere, i.e. the Americas. That's not a big number. And I think it will be interesting to see if there are other giveaways that Justin Trudeau has traded for this Roxham Road political win, which was not on the radar actually a month ago. coming at this meeting. What happened in the interval is that President Biden found some

cover in the fact that the issue of people using irregular points of entry to go from Canada to the U.S. came to the forefront. I suspect we may have helped some of that. And the agreement allows him to say that he has strengthened both borders rather than given Canada a win. AT is going to come up for sure. The White House would like Canada to lead a multinational force in AT. We don't want to. I think part of what will be left of this meeting, we will see next Tuesday in the Freeland budget. We know that the United States

feels we should up our defense spending on NORAD, on the Arctic. The budget is on Tuesday. We will see on Tuesday how we are responding to that demand, which is not new, but has become more vocal over time. So that's one of the things that will be left by, I think, and Bruce is right, by America, economic circles in this country are watching for that side of the discussion. But I think by and large, what you're going to be ending up with is this was a great meeting and we get along fairly well. And let's hope that we don't have to live with the alternative again in a couple of years okay last quick we've only got a

minute or so uh left so a last quick thought um stephen harper hasn't been back to ottawa much since uh since he lost in 2015 but he was back this week with a big speech at what used to be called the Manning Conference. It's, what's it called now, True North or something? Or Canada Strong, I'm not sure. Anyway, he had a big speech, advice for Pierre Polyev not to give away any of his platform ideas until there's actually an election, and talking about the need for a conservative renaissance. Quick thought on Stephen Harper back in Ottawa giving a speech this week, and sorry, but we

really only have about 30-45 seconds each. Chantal? It's both a blessing and a curse for a leader to have a former prime minister come and provide free advice on a public stage because it curtails your options and it inspires nostalgia and comparisons. So I don't think Mr. Poitier would want that to happen too often between now and the next election. Bruce? Yeah, I don't think that Mr. Harper's intervention really helps Pierre Poitier. I think it sort of reminds people that maybe of the things that they don't love about conservative brands sometimes. Mr. Harper was unpopular when he was defeated in an election. I don't see anything that he's done that would have changed that between then and now.

And I don't think that Mr. Palliev is really carving out the same space for himself. So, you know, it was a bit discordant, but that's the way these meetings sometimes go. They had a terribly discordant note from a consultant, a U.S. consultant, who talked about how he was so close to Justin Trudeau that he could have killed him multiple times. And, you know, that's just kind of ridiculous. And it shows the folly of some of these meetings sometimes when you bring people who have, well, let me leave it there. All right. We will leave it there. Good conversation today.

Had its highlights. There's no question about that. Everybody's going to remember when you said it's probably if Chantal's right. I'm a treason to his cause. I'm a traitor to his cause. Okay, we're going to leave it at that.

Thank you both. And Monday when the bridge is back, we're going to talk a little climate change based on the many requests to me that we talk about it for a little bit. So we've got a special guest on Monday. You'll enjoy that. Thanks, Chantel.

Thanks, Bruce. Talk again soon. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been Good Talk right here on The Bridge. We'll be back on Monday.