The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- "I'm Right Here 'Bro".

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

A wild week for Jagmeet Singh from a byelection victory to an apparent challenge to Pierre Poilievre to put up the dukes as we used to say.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there. Good Friday morning, Friday afternoon, depending on where you are in the country. Peter Mansbridge here with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. And we got a lot of things to talk about. This was, as we predicted last week, it was going to be a lot of things could happen this week, all related to what happened on Monday as a result of the Biden elections. But let me start this way. It was back in 1993 that people were shocked,

more than 30 years ago now. People were shocked after the election that night when the Conservatives only ended up with two seats. The Liberals won a majority government. But the sub-headline to it all, and for some it was the headline, was that the official opposition was going to be the Bloc Québécois, a party that only runs in one province, a party that's determined as one of its central core ideas to leave Canada, to break up the country. So here's the question, Chantel.

Are we close again to the possibility of the Bloc Québécois after what we witnessed this week, the Bloc Québécois once again becoming the official opposition? Yeah, just to back away a bit to that comparison, in 1993, we were in the wake of successive constitutional failures, the Meech Lake Accord, the Charlottetown Accord. And it was quite clear that sovereignty was running high. And the only thing that was preventing sovereignty from expressing itself in a referendum ballot was the fact that the Parti Québécois was not in power in Quebec.

Remember back then when Lucie Bouchard led the Bloc to official opposition, the Bloc was only going to be on Parliament Hill until after the referendum, and then it was going to go away. So here we are 20 years later with sovereignty running at, you know, around 40%, not high enough for a party to believe that you could win a referendum. But are we in the elements of a replay? Yes, we could see them fall in place one after the other. What the Monday's by-election, which feels like it happened a decade ago now, with all that's happened since then, but Monday's by-election in La Salle et Mar, Verdun, says a few things. The Bloc Québécois carried it with very few votes, around 200.

But it is a writing that the Bloc and most Quebec observers never believed that Le Bloc could win in this by-election. And one of the reasons that Le Bloc won is a split in the federalist vote between the NDP that did do better and the liberals. But it comes at a time when, and I'm not sure that the Liberals have completely factored in what's happened to them. Yes, the national polls still show the Liberals 20 points behind, as they did on July 1st. But over the course of the summer, what has happened to the Liberals, really, is that they have started to lose Quebec, which was the last place where they were holding their own, not against the Conservatives as much as against the Bloc.

But three polls over the past week and a half have shown that the Bloc now has a real lead on both the liberals and the Conservatives. The NDP is still very far behind. And that result in Nassal-et-Marard, it's not just a one-off or a split vote. It is a sign of things that could come to the Liberals across francophone Quebec, where it is much easier for the Bloc to win. Now, why is that happening? And I will come back to your question. That is not happening because Quebecers believe that they want Mr. Trudeau gone and replaced tomorrow by Pierre Poilievre. It is the opposite. Pierre 44% of Quebecers believe that his victory in the next federal election would be the worst case scenario. 34% think Justin Trudeau reelected would be the worst case scenario.

And as Quebecers have realized that the rest of Canada is dropping Justin Trudeau, Quebecers who have not caught a nun to Pierre Poievre are falling back on their defense option. And that's called the Bloc Québécois. And I have seen and I had seen over the past two or three weeks a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggested to me that there had been a change in tone, tone that people were now talking about how to avoid the great menace of a Poiliev victory, as opposed to Justin Trudeau going to leave, he's having a hard time. So would that get the bloc to official opposition? Possibly, if the picture is the same whenever the election comes. Would that be followed by the possible election of the Parti Québécoise to government, as it was in 1993-94? Possibly. The PQ is still leading in the polls in Québec.

Would that lead to a third referendum on sovereignty? And we're really building a house of cards here, whose foundations can be blown away. Yes, technically it could lead to a referendum because the one thing that this current PQ leader, Saint-Pierre Plamondon, is firm on is, come hell or high water, he will be holding a referendum on sovereignty

if the Parti Québécois forms a government. Now, could he win? The numbers say no. But what the impact of a Pierre Poiliev conservative government would have on Quebecers' mindset on sovereignty versus federalism, I can't tell you. But I can say that if I were a sovereignty strategist at this point, I would think I'm seeing the window starting to open in a way it has not. What Lucien Bouchard used to call the winning conditions starting to add up as they have not since 1995.

Gee, it was just a yes or no question, Chantal. Yeah, well, the next question will be, I don't know. Just kidding. That was a great view of the landscape and the possibilities. Bruce, do you want to weigh in on this? Yeah, I don't mind saying a few things. One is I think that it is fair to say that the passion in Quebec for the idea of federalism has not really grown over the last couple of decades.

Maybe that sounds like an understatement. It is intended to be an understatement. Nobody has really been making much of a case, not just to avoid another referendum, but to love federalism in Canada. And so over time, that really accumulates in the minds of people. I think the second thing I would say is that separatism, the idea of sovereignty, is either a political construct or an attitude. And I think the attitude of sovereignty is fairly well established among Francophone Quebecers as almost a fact of life

in the way in which politics and public policy evolves. And I think that I would add to it that I don't think that this version of the Conservative Party puts much effort or energy into making the case against separatism or making the case for federalism, I think they've got a kind of a calculus that says, if we don't fight that fight, we don't look distracted by it to voters in other parts of the country. And maybe all that happens is there are more BQ seats and fewer liberal seats, and we hold our own in the province. And that's not a bad outcome if you're Pierre Polyev in this particular instance. The last thing I would say is that it has become clear over the 20 odd years that Chantal referred to that a vote for the BQ is not the same as a vote to separate.

It's a vote for a voice that feels more consonant with your values than the other votes that you could choose. And so there is less risk to a BQ vote. There's less sense of combustibility. There's more feeling of nothing bad will happen to us. And maybe something's good will happen to us. Maybe our leverage will be greater in this context rather than in another. And it should be inspiring fear among all of the other things that should be inspiring fear for the liberals. I read Aaron Wary's interesting piece on the CBC yesterday, and he was going back in time to 1979. And, you know, it's an interesting piece. And I really only, in my mind, had a criticism of one point, which was a 1979 election worked out better than maybe people had feared for the Liberals. But the only reason it did is that they

won 67 of 75 seats in the province of Quebec. Other than that, they would have been annihilated. That's a very unusual scenario, which is in no way comparable to the situation that we see today for the federal liberals. So, yeah, Chantal is absolutely right. This is bad news for the liberals in the province of Quebec, piling on top of bad news that they see everywhere else. Okay. And if I can add something, if I'm right, and Quebecers are turning to the Bloc because they figured out

that the people in the Rock will want to vote for Pierre Poitier, but not Justin Trudeau. Trudeau and his liberals cannot come back in Quebec without showing signs of more life outside Quebec. And that, as we know, has eluded the liberals for the past year and a half. Yeah, Peter, I'm so glad you started with this question. You know, I was really apprehensive because if you start with a question about quebec and the federal political calculus in quebec there's nothing but tension that fills my body

there's everything to fear about a conversation where chantal is going to kick it off and i was so excited to you know for the youtube watchers you'll enjoy this as much as I did. I was saying my things, and I got Chantel's head nodding several times, so I felt like this is a pretty good start to today. Yeah, but, you know, you've got to be careful. Self-esteem really needs work. Yeah, but you've got to be careful. I've had her nod at things I said, and when she comes on, she totally destroys them.

Just cuts you to the quick. Exactly. Harsh. Yeah, all totally destroys them. Just cuts you to the quick. Exactly. Harsh. Yeah, all right. Okay. All right, let's leave that. Although, you know, I can just see certain parts of the country shuddering at the fact that it's even possible

that a party that only runs in one province and who's, you know, raised on debt, or at least, you know, most of the time is to break up the country, can end up as the official opposition. Can I interrupt to point out to those people who must be very young that the Reform Party came within, what, one or two seats of being that official opposition, and they only ran

candidates in western canada so right and then they eventually they eventually did become the official opposition right when they did uh but i think by then they were running candidates at least they were trying across the board so that's uh. I listened carefully to the words that François Blanchet said yesterday, and he said them in English. He may have said them in French as well, but he said, we are here to advance the interests of Quebec, and where they also are good for the interests of Canada, that's fine. And I also happen to personally believe in sovereignty

for Quebec. Now that structure, you know, to your point, Peter, yeah, there will be some people who will find that uncomfortable or offensive, but a lot of other people will just listen to it and say, well, that's not a clarion cry for a referendum to break up the country. It's not that dissimilar to the kinds of things that Danielle Smith says as the Premier of Ontario in terms of the kind of representation she wants to see in the House of Commons. Actually, interestingly enough, the first key demand of the Bloc to continue to support the Liberals is a bill that would see a 10% increase in old age security. Not just in Quebec, across the board. The way that bill is crafted is crafted so that everyone 65 to 74 would get the same amount as those over 75 who have been getting 10% more on the basis of a rationale from the government that by the time you're 75, you have less savings to counter inflation than before you reach that age. So that black bill

that Mr. Blanchet is insisting on is meant to bring parity to anyone over 65. But it's a bill that has support from the conservatives and the NDP, something that also gets lost in the shuffle of the past few days. So it is not a Quebec only, we're going to grab the money and run bill. It's a bill that has majority agreement in the House of Commons from three different parties, including the Conservatives. Okay. We're going to move on from the block. Who would have thought it that we'd start on the Black Quebec? I thought you wanted this to be a Quebec show today.

I thought that was a good idea. We could talk about my premiere at length and the beating he's taking editorially, but let's move on. Let's move on. I want to move on to the NDP, but this is a good time to take our first break so we'll do that now be right back all right welcome back you're listening to uh the bridge uh the good talk friday edition the Good Talk Friday edition. Bruce, Chantel, and Peter here

for discussions on SiriusXM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or in your favorite podcast platform, or as Bruce mentioned, we're also available on our YouTube channel. Okay. I want to talk about the NDP now. Because it was an interesting week

for Jagmeet Singh. Listen, he held on to the Transcona by-election in Manitoba. He did not badly in the Quebec riding. He had a lot of votes. He was only, what, a couple hundred out of winning that riding. So, you know, you could stand back and say, you know, not a bad week for him. This is just days after saying he was pulling the plug on the NDP-Liberal agreement.

But just days after the by-election, he signals, along with the bloc, that they're not going to defeat the government in a confidence motion next week. So from that, we go into this sense that Jagmeet Singh was battling protesters outside the, one in particular, outside the parliament buildings one day this week. It was a kind of a significant amount of verbal abuse. And he looked like he was, Singh that is, looked like he was really ready to get into it. It appears that who wasn't ready to get into were the parliamentary security people who stood by and kind of watched this happen, which was a bit of a surprise. Then we see in the House of Commons, I think it was yesterday,

you know, a back and forth between Polyev and Singh that got tense. Let's use it that way. There was a point at which Singh moved out of his seat and into the aisle and, you know, shouted out at Polyev, I'm right here, bro, which I guess you could take any number of different ways. I chose to take it as like, come on, buddy, put up the dukes, let's go. It was a lot of tension in both those exchanges.

And I'm wondering what all of that says about any number of things, parliamentary decorum, security outside the House, and what's going on amongst the leaders themselves. And in particular, Mr. Singh. Bruce, why don't you start this round? Yeah, look, I think the first thing that occurred to me is that there's an issue of parliamentary decorum that is there all the time these days. But this is also this the first episode of this week. That front was really about social decorum, the idea that you can accost a politician and you can say whatever you want to say in whatever colorful terms you want. That's more in evidence than it used to be. I think part of that is the coarsening of conversation about politics that we see all the

time on social media. But I don't want to overstate it. And I don't want to pretend that there was ever a period where people didn't have strong opinions. I remember seeing some of the protests for Justin Trudeau's father when he was prime minister, and they were pretty vigorous. People had a lot to say, and they said it fairly colorfully. And as you both will remember, he got angry too. So I do think it was a situation where some of these kind of convoy adjacent protesters, I guess they're referred to, are hanging around every day. They're taking shots at politicians verbally, and it can be a bit much. And at some point, you know, every politician, you got to expect they have a boiling point. They turn around, they say something back. I don't know that it was a situation where the security should have gotten involved any more than they did.

It felt to me a little bit like if it was going to turn into anything, it was going to turn into something bad for the guy who was criticizing Jagmeet Singh. Jagmeet Singh didn't look like he was looking around for security to step in between him and the other person and make sure that he didn't get hurt. It looked kind of more like they didn't know what to do because if it had escalated, they might have had to try to protect the citizen. In the House, I think there's something else. I don't think it's a stretch to say that a lot of people who aren't in the Conservative Party and who sit in the House of Commons don't like Pierre Polyev. They don't like the way that he conducts himself. They don't like the language that he uses. They don't like his body language. They don't like his attitude. They find him obnoxious. And so the fact that in the same week, Jagmeet Singh found himself getting taunted by Pierre Palliev and felt frustrated by that. I don't know if it means that Jagmeet Singh's fuse is shorter now than it used to be.

Maybe. But it could just be that politics is getting more and more heated. And you had a combination of two somewhat different events that showed themselves this week. One in the House and one just at Sowie. Chantal? I'm going to flip this and start with what you started with, which were the by-election results. And yes, the NDP did hold on to Elmwood-Transcona, but with a much, much reduced lead that if you translate it into other more vulnerable ridings, the rise in the support for the Conservatives doesn't bode very well. And it's not good enough to just hold on to a seat when you want to claim that you

are the party best place to block the Conservatives in the next election. About the Montreal riding, yes, the NDP did better. The problem with that riding, though, is it's not a typical Quebec riding. It is not a riding where you would say, this is the typical francophone writing and the rise of the NDP is the start of something. It looks more like a one-off. We'll see. But I wouldn't build a big house on the foundation of the third place finish in La Salle Marvelda. And Bruce is right. We have seen over the years people come and scream things at politicians. When Brian Mulroney was in government, there were people who would stand outside Parliament Hill, outside the door, sometimes with bullhorns, screaming crooks at every MP who was a conservative

who was coming out of the West Bloc. So that's not new. I believe it's the first time that an NDP leader is subjected to that kind of treatment. In my experience, I can't remember Alexa McDonough or Jack Layton or Thomas Mulcair or Ed Broadbent ever having to endure those kinds of insults. I think in part it is because Mr. Singh is very visible for obvious reasons. So he is more of a target and we've seen that in the past. But I also believe that what's been going on in the House is over and above anything we've seen, even when Brian Mulroney's MPs were being called crooks outside or Justin Trudeau was being heckled by grain farmers and the likes. And the tone in the House of Commons is very much set and has been very much set for the worst by the Conservative Party. There is no way to get around that.

It's very personal. Some of the stuff that Mr. Poiliev was saying about Mr. Singh in the house yesterday went to his personal integrity. And it just went on and on and on. Now, you guys were around when Jack Layton and Stephen Harper and Gilles Sepp agreed to bring down Paul Martin. And one of the reasons that happened is because Stephen Harper had built bridges, unlikely bridges, with both Gilles Sepp and Jack Layton. More so with Gilles both Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton. More so with Gilles Duceppe, actually, than with Jack Layton. But this week, when Mr. Poiliev came up with this opposition motion to bring down the government, there were no bridges. There were no hands extended to the obviously needed allies in the Bloc and the NDP.

It was more of a series of slap in the face, verbally. And I don't know what that bodes for the rest of the year in Parliament. The liberals seem to think that they have to harden their tone. But so far, and people make equivalencies, you know, the liberals are fighting back, so they're on the same level playing field as the conservatives. But that has not been the case. It is one thing to fight back with facts,

and it is another to call people names. And at this point, the liberals are inching into name-calling territory. I think they would be wise to inch back to where they were previously. But what's been going on in the House is seriously hard to watch every day, including for people who don't have a dog in that fight. It's not for me to feel for Mr. Blanchet and Mr. Sain. But if you're sitting on the opposition benches and the leader of the official opposition just goes after your character for minutes on end when you should be asking the government questions and you can't answer, at some point, I'm guessing any human being would say enough is enough. Let me try and play the devil's advocate a little bit on this. If you're Polyev and you've witnessed the leaders on the other side, and Singh in particular, just go through the whole promotion of the fact he's ripping up the deal with the Liberals,

just days before a by-election, where he's saying they've now got to pay the price. They haven't delivered on the deal we had made, and so I'm pulling the plug on that deal, which would leave most people to believe that they would, given the opportunity, they would end up voting against the government if there was a confidence motion of some kind. This is if you're a polyev. You're thinking that way. You're assuming that all these people are thinking in good faith

about each other. That's quite an assumption for a devil's advocate. Would you have predicted either one of you the week before the by-election, after he ripped up the deal, so to speak, that if there was a confidence motion? He would support the government? Yes, I would have. I actually predicted that time and time and time again.

I think we said it last week or the week before, too. Or the week before or somewhere else. I don't think there's anything surprising to me anyway. I hear you that it's good to stress test this. But I actually think that and I thought at the time that Jagmeet Singh was going to pay no political price for saying that he had gotten a lot, not that it hadn't worked, but he had gotten a lot from his deal with the liberals. But now was the time to put an additional layer of stress on the liberals and add to his leverage. I thought it was a rational political

calculus that only gets irrational if he then turns around and triggers an election where the conservatives are poised to win a supermajority. So the right way for him to use his leverage, if we're just looking at the coal political calculus, is exactly the way that he has set out to do it. I think Chantal's point about Pierre-Paul Lievre, if you're not going to build any bridges, you're never going to be as able as you might be to influence the timing of that next election. And if you really want an election with Justin Trudeau, there's going to be a chance that there's a leadership change somewhere along the way here. And so building those bridges rather than torching those bridges is probably a better strategy. But I don't think he's built for it. And I think that what he's doing right now is kind of enjoying this ersatz popularity, is what I would say.

I mean, he's not unpopular like Justin Trudeau is, but he's not popular in a kind of an absolute sense of what that term means. He's just sitting with a 20-point lead because the incumbents are so deeply disliked at this moment in time. So the things that he does that look harmless to him politically right now might actually be creating more scar tissue that becomes difficult for him if the liberals ever arrive at a point where they become more competitive again, which is a big if, but I think he's spending political capital personally with no chance of it creating upside for him.

The MDP was always going to think twice about bringing down the government quickly, not only because it's not ready, no poll shows that they would greatly benefit from it. There's a long list of practical political reasons, but also because one of their big victories, at least the way they cast it, is pharmacare. And the pharmacare bill is in the Senate. So it will be passed. The government is not pulling back, as far as I understand from that, but that has not happened yet. That being said, I don't know, we argue all the time, we often disagree. There are ways for Mr. Poiliev to disagree with the NDP and to demonstrate the weakness of his narrative without calling him a sellout. There is absolutely no reason to call

any of the leaders in the House of Commons a sellout. And I say this coming from a province where that word has been really loaded and used over the years and decades past to talk about federalist politicians. If you were a vendue, it's because you were not loyal to Quebec because you wanted to stay in Canada. You don't hear it anymore. We're still having that conversation, but people do not call each other a sellout. It's a loaded word. I think there are better ways and more intelligent ways for someone who aspires to be prime minister to talk about people who do devote time in public life. And yes, we'll be collecting a pension in the case of Mr. Singh, although not on par with the pension that Mr. Poiliev has accumulated since he's become an MP. Interesting that Poiliev is called Singh a sellout.

He's called Trudeau a traitor. I'm not sure that he's called Blanchet anything. Maybe he just doesn't have the opportunity. He tried to call him a liberal, but sadly, it doesn't really stick very well. It doesn't seem to. And now he's calling the Bloc a centralizing party, which is, I understand that in Quebec, we really like, you know, in the bubble to talk about centralization, overstepping jurisdictions. But when I talk to people, that's never what they talk to me about.

And that's been a fact of life for decades. What did this week do for the liberals it's interesting that uh you know like monday night was a disaster for them um vote wise in the by-elections and the result wise but at the end of the week what's their situation like how would you describe where they're at given the results, given the polls, given the continuing discussion about who should lead, who shouldn't lead,

who's working the back rooms on preparing campaigns for leadership and who isn't? How would we describe the situation for the liberals right now? Who's working the back rooms to prepare for an election that seems to be closer than it was? I'm still waiting to see. Not an election, a leadership campaign. I understand that. But the one thing that is as unavoidable as that and taxes for the liberals is an election within the next six to eight months.

I'm still waiting to see a national campaign director appointed. The Quebec lieutenant has now left. And there's a strange mood in the cabinet vacancies the way they that uh mr kate's vacancy at transport was filled was by doubling up anita and answer burden from of treasury board with transport it's just the kind of thing you do when you're about to dissolve the house to go in an election or something else is in the offing. I left all the leadership stuff to Bruce. You noticed that?

Well, they haven't stopped. Look, I think where the liberals were in a bad place at the end of last week, they're in a worse place at the end of this week. And worse not just because of the verdict of the voters, especially in Verdun. Worse, because they seem to be stuck in this very strange situation. You know, in our political party system, each party can have a different way of dealing with it. But we've always had this kind of difficult tension between not wanting to have a situation where leaders can be challenged too often from within the party or a caucus, but also knowing that it's a problem if it feels like only one person gets to make the decision about who the leader is going to be. And I think that's where the Liberal Party is right now

is that they are over indexed on this, this reality that only one person gets to say gets to choose. The political careers of many, many, many other people rest on that person making that decision. There are some who think that the future viability of the Liberal Party is so imperiled that the future of the Liberal Party rests on that one person's decision. And I think that's a hazardous place for a party to be, to find itself. But I get that Justin Trudeau re-engineered the Liberal Party. It's got a lot of his DNA in it from an organizational standpoint. And that there aren't very many people who want to challenge him. And that's putting it mildly, there seemed to be almost nobody that wants to challenge him publicly. However, one of the things that I was looking for coming out of a bad result like that on Monday,

on the heels of other bad results, including St. Paul's earlier, and just a sense of Chantal that laid it out that the liberals were kind of losing pieces of their vehicle along the way and not really putting together the case that they were regrouping. I haven't seen an army of vocal supporters saying not only something soft like, well, Justin Trudeau deserves the right to make the decision, which is what most of them have been saying. But where are the ones who are saying he has to stay? We need him to stay. It's important that he is our leader in the next election. It is the only way that we can win and we will win with him. I hear him saying that, but I do not hear a chorus of Liberal Caucus members or even Liberal Party members saying that. And the last thing I'll say is that it has been clear in our research for some time that Justin Trudeau personally is seen as a bit out of position with those centrist Canadian voters.

He's seen as having done a lot of good things by a lot of people. And I happen to think he's had a lot of good policy that he's brought forward, deserves credit, more credit perhaps than he gets in the public opinion polling data. But there has been a tendency on the part of the public to move a little bit rightward over the period of time. I don't want to overstate it. It's still the case that only 25% say they want a right of center government, but only 13% now that say that they want a left of center government. And those numbers used to be reversed. The bulk of people are still looking for a centrist government, either with some social

and environmental tilt or with a fiscal and economic tilt. But Justin Trudeau is seen as three times more to the left than the number of voters who are there. So he's out of position. But when he has an opportunity to tell people why he wants to stay, This is my point, and I'm sorry I'm taking a little while to get to it. He says things that sound like, I just want to keep on doing what I'm doing. And if you are trying to build a case to have another mandate, first of all, you have to ask for it. You have to avoid saying anything that sounds like you expect it because you have that job now. And second, if you really want to be competitive, you do need to acknowledge that people are looking for you to do some things that are different or in ways that are different than

you have been doing them so far. And he seems really uncomfortable or unwilling to say things that sound like that, despite the fact that he's so far behind in the polls that people in his party, I think quite rightly, wonder if he's making the right decision on their behalf and on his own. So you asked about leadership campaigns, organizing, not organizing. It may well be that many of those who want and plan to run for a succession have now come to the conclusion that they do not want to be Kim Campbell,

that they don't want to pick up the pieces and be the loser of the election. And then, you know what happens to leaders of the Liberal Party who do not succeed on their first campaign. John Turner tried to stay and he did stay, but what did his back look like after those four years of staying? You could have filled your dishwasher with all those knives, and they all came from Liberals. So I think a number of the people who would want to replace Trudeau have now come to the conclusion that he's going to have to take the loss. Bruce's point is well taken, though. The liberals are looking at a result that could be worse than 2011 when they fell to third place. They are not looking necessarily at a Campbell to Seat result, but they could end up

in fourth place. And in that scenario, rebuilding is going to take a while, especially in the face of what I predict will be a new NDP leader. And who knows who that leader will be. But I do not believe that Jagmeet Singh has another election after this one in his leadership tenure. And that should inspire the liberals to think long and hard about going down with the ship and Trudeau to the depths of fourth place. Because what if the NDP ends up with a really inspiring leader? What if they have the better leader or someone who inspires? That is not completely out of the realm of possibilities. Now, Bruce says, you know, the center is still where people are,

and we're closer to center right than center left these days. That's possible. It's usually the pendulum effect. If you have a government that you perceive to be a bit left, you go right. And when Stephen Harper was in government, Canadians were more hungry for something a bit left. But what I hear a lot, or the subtext of a lot of what I hear is people are looking for adult leadership.

And they're not finding it in Pierre Poil for adult leadership and they're not finding it in Pierre Poilievre and they're not finding it in Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, to the point where some English-speaking reporters felt actually great about going to an Yves-François Blanchet news conference this week because he is a straight talker. He doesn't want to be prime minister, but he just tells you what he's going to do and does what he has said. And I don't think people, voters these days, see Justin Trudeau as an adult prime minister. I think they see him more as still the Peter Pan-ish image that he used to have when he was in opposition.

Don't knock Peter Pan-ish image that he used to have when he was in opposition. Don't knock Peter Pan. I'm trying not to. I was named after Peter Pan. Poor Peter Pan did not have to run a government. My sister was named after Wendy. We were Peter Pan and Wendy, my God. Anyway, we've got to take a break. I do want to follow this up with another quote, a real one.

But we've got to take our final break. Back right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantal Hébert, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here. Bruce mentioned in that last segment, and I believe him to be correct on this, and I think many people have said it,

the majority of Canadians want to be in the center. That's a significant number. What, 60, 65% of times, right want to be in the centre. That's a significant number. What, 60, 65% of times, right, Bruce? Something like that. That's right. So why isn't there a party that's representing the centre? I mean, there's this new party, the Canadian

Future Party, I think it's called, out of Brunswick. I get maybe like one letter a month from somebody saying, why don't you do a show on that new party? Tell us more about it. And I'm going, well, maybe. Don't make it a Friday show. No.

Let's not do it all. Please spare us. I say, you know, they need to make their own mark, you know. Exactly. And we'll end up talking about them, I'm sure, if they do. But my point is, why, you know, when you look at that landscape right now of the parties that are the major parties, who, if anyone represents the center, truly the center, not sort of center, but, you know, leaning to the left center, but leaning to the right. But the center, does anybody? Yeah, it's become more rare, but in part of that is the organizational dynamics of a party. A party gets more reaction when it says things

that sound less like pragmatism, more like ideas that are a bit out there, ideas that have some significant edge to them. The media also tend to like covering things that sound more combustible rather than more middle of the road. Those effects are exaggerated over time, and in particular, in the way that social media amplify the actions of politicians and the coverage of politics as a kind of a sport where polarization, everybody hates it, but everybody wants to sort of give oxygen to the aspects of polarization that are out there.

So I think all of that is part of what's causing parties to be less inclined to choose the center. But I do think that there are some signs that our democracies might be getting tired of that phenomenon in the UK. I think that voters said that they wanted a pragmatic alternative to the conservatives. And Keir Starmer said, we'll give you a pragmatic Labour Party. I think in the United States, voters are saying we don't really want Trump or a lot of voters are saying that, but we want to make sure that we get a pragmatic or more centrist Democratic Party than we fear that we might otherwise get. And I think that's what Kamala Harris is in the process of offering to people to see how it works out.

But I think that market for centrist and pragmatic policy is there. I think it's there in Canada. But I think that as long as this fight looks like it's going to be between Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poliev, we may not see that swing where voters really say, you know what, I'm tired of this kind of hyper-polarized politics. Give me something centrist and I'll pay attention in a different way. Antone? You know, you could argue that one of the last few times when we had someone who tried to be the centrist politician you describe, or the kind of person that this new party says it's looking for,

would be Paul Martin. And that, in the end, didn't work out so well, because he was so in the center that you never knew where he was going to go next. But that was the last real incarnation of someone that you would describe fits the definition of what you've offered. I'm not sure that it's... I mean, you need people to break the mold of what the definition of center is. My interest, for instance, in Mark Kearney is that I believe he breaks some of that by being someone who is clearly seen by people on the fiscal right side as one of their own, but people who you would associate with the left because they care a lot about climate change also see as someone that is one of their own. But we have not yet

kind of reinvented this in part because we have been so polarized, and that's been one of the failures of the past decade, so polarized on the climate issue that we haven't had the discussion of the kind of leadership that needs to reconcile both the economics and the climate priorities under one roof. And until that gets resolved, and we missed that last turn when Aaron O'Toole tried to come back to that highway so we could have that conversation, we completely missed that exit of our polarization on this issue. I don't believe we can move forward economically or environmentally to address the biggest issue, the existential issue of our times, until we reach a consensus between our political parties that they each try to do better than the other on issues like that, rather than fight each other and pull back or pull forward and try to wedge the issue to their advantage.

You know, seeing as you brought Mark Carney's name up, and we've got a couple of minutes left, let me just say this. One of the things that I've found surprising, there are a number of people who suggested about Carney that, you know, he's politically inexperienced, he won't be able to handle the back and forth, and he won't be able to, you know, deal with the knocks that you can get in politics. I don't buy that. There are questions I have about Mark Carney, but I think that one is not a legitimate question. I mean, he,

as governor of the Bank of Canada, for one, but mainly as governor of the Bank of England, he was under the gun all the time from politicians and the business sector, and he handled it, you know, he handled it really well. Yeah, yeah. Look, Peter, I just want to jump in on this. I have a lot of time for Mark Carney. The idea of Mark Carney entering public life and running for the leadership of the liberal party, I think is a great idea. I think he, I think Chantal's point about parties should be looking for people who have that kind of blend of experience and values that he brings, that idea that you can be fiscally cautious or fiscally conservative and progressive on

social and environmental issues. And Mark Carney has written extensively about that. He has devoted hours and years of his life and his energies in pursuit of those goals he's worked in areas that are deeply political in terms of the uh the governorship role particularly in the uk during that period of time but also in canada and so i i just and he's a very accomplished person so the notion that he somehow could have been good at all of the things he's been good at, smart enough to figure those things out, but somehow can't figure out this really magical thing called politics, I don't buy it. It's not my experience of him. That isn't to say that

he would have all of the same retail political skills as somebody who's been playing a role in politics actively for the last decade or so. But I think it'd be a mistake for people to think that he doesn't have that capacity. And a mistake to discount all of the other things that he could bring to the conversation about politics in Canada, as Chantal was alluding to. All right. If I can just bring it back away from Mark Carney, who for me is mostly a profile, not necessarily that person exactly. I was watching, and you guys might have seen it, the Stephen Harper TikTok video that landed on Twitter X.

And Stephen Harper was talking to, obviously, promoting the Conservative Party by going after Justin Trudeau's government, but it wasn't one of those rah-rah speech setting. And what he was saying about the liberals, and it struck me because it goes back to the point of a mature adult leadership, he wasn't saying Justin Trudeau is bringing the country down the drain, although he was, but he was saying the worst thing you can say about these people and the truest thing is that they are not serious. And I thought this is really where it hurts a lot more than all the name calling,

because that does resonate with people, this criticism. But then it got me thinking, so if Mr. Harper's point that this is not a serious government, and I think you could make a case that that is a fair attack, then who is a serious politician on Parliament Hill these days? So rather than looking for a centrist, since then I've been looking

for the serious person. It's a search that is still ongoing. For those of you who are worried that we ended up only talking about Mark Carney, we'll devote time over the next few weeks to talk about Melanie Jolie, Christopher Freeland, Anita Anand, and the list goes on,

which we may or may not get into as a result of whatever Mr. Trudeau may or may not do. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this day. Thanks to Chantel. Thanks to Bruce. Keep in mind the buzz is out tomorrow morning. Get it delivered to your inbox. Some of my thoughts about the week gone by and articles that I think you will find interesting to read.

If you haven't already subscribed, you can do so at nationalnewswatch.com. You just need to give your email. There's no charge. It's free. All right. Thank you both. Thank you both. And we'll talk to you again in a week's time.

Next week.