The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Immigration Becomes The Issue

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

John Kennedy used to say, aside from indigenous people, we are all either immigrants or descended from immigrants. That was true in the US and it's true in Canada. So how do we resolve what is becoming a major issue in Canada -- immigration?  Plus, the Liberals have a cabinet retreat next week, so what? Will it make a difference? And, what now for Rachel Notley? Bruce and Chantal on all these and more. 

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there from Stratford, Ontario. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is Good Talk. Sean Talleybear is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. 1958 was a good year for those of us who remember it. One of the things that was happening in 1958 was John Kennedy was a U.S. Senator at that point. He was still a couple of years away from running for the presidency, but in preparation for that, he was making a name for himself on a number of fronts, and one of them was writing a book called A Nation of Immigrants. And there are lots of quotes from that book that are used when talking about immigration.

And this is one of them because it clearly applies to the United States, but you can see how it applies to Canada as well. And at a time when immigration has become a kind of top-of-line issue for a number of reasons. Housing, immigration flow, student visas, all of that. But listen to this quote. As each new wave of immigration has reached America, it has been faced with problems.

Not only the problems that came with making new homes and learning new jobs, but more important, the problems of getting along with people of different backgrounds and habits. So you can see how that applies at different times to the Canadian story as well. And we seem to be in one of those times now for a number of different reasons. So I want to talk about that for a couple of minutes. And Chantel, why don't you start us? Because you as well see immigration as kind of a key issue that is facing the country right now.

At a time when we've, what, the numbers were, what did the government announce a couple of years ago? 500,000 new immigrants a year. It's quickly been realized that housing is a big problem to house 500,000 new immigrants each year. But that is just one of the issues. So Chantal, why don't you start us? I do believe we are seeing a shift in the conversation on immigration, at least at the federal level. Immigration has been kind of a sacred cow topic for the mainstream federal parties, the NDP, the conservatives and the liberals, in the sense that the baseline was immigration is good and we want more immigrants.

And there was never a very profound discussion. And whenever someone steered into, for instance, with this ban on on kneecaps at the citizenship ceremonies the result was that they were perceived as anti-immigration and they have been trying to fix that since then but the this conversation the one that we're going into now is slightly different and it is not just about although there is a focus on the one that we're going into now, is slightly different. And it is not just about, although there is a focus on the fact that the federal liberals decided to raise the target to 500,000 new immigrants a year, but it is not just about immigrants, people who apply, go through the process, and then come to this country and settle wherever they wanted to settle. It's also about another side of the equation, asylum seekers, whose numbers have been rising at the speed of light, for instance,

mostly showing up at airports in Montreal and Toronto, and mostly staying in those cities while they await an answer on their request to get asylum in Canada, which can take 18 months to two years. Meanwhile, these are people who obviously are not going to be starving on the streets and begging, waiting for an answer. Foreign students, also numbers that have gone sky high, also more so in some provinces than others. But when you look at the entire picture, the fact is that what all the people I'm talking about have in common

is they all need a roof over their heads. And we do not have, at this point, enough affordable roofs to provide them with a roof over their heads to them or their family, especially if they're going to be coming in large numbers and to that temporary foreign workers to places that are already under stress. It's not news to anyone that the city of Toronto and the GTA have housing affordability issues. I think housing affordability has been an issue in Toronto for as long as I was an adult looking at house prices. So when you put all of that together, the conversation we're

getting into stems from the conversation we've been having about not being able to build enough housing to keep up with the population growth. There are, and the Conservatives this week really pushed that theme. Mr. Poirier was on a visit to Quebec, where he would push that theme probably with less risks than other areas of the country, because for all kinds of reasons, as you know, the Quebec discussion on immigration has been ongoing for a number of years. How do you adapt, you know, large waves of newcomers to the fact that you want to maintain a French language society that's been part of the mix, but now affordability has come into the discussion.

The problem for the federal liberals, frankly, is there are some stopgap solutions. For instance, there has been a really significant rise in asylum seekers coming to Canada from Mexico. There was a time before Justin Trudeau came to power where Stephen Harper decided on that basis to demand that people who come to Canada from Mexico obtain a visa to come here. There is pressure on the government to restore that. It's never pleasant for a government to go back to something it undid,

but it would at least do something on that front. The United States, by the way, the White House, the Biden administration, is also asking Canada to consider imposing visas on Mexican travelers to Canada again. But a lot of those issues are complex. Some provinces, Ontario looks like a case in point, have a huge problem with managing foreign students who are here on visas and who go to institutions that are little more than a front to allow people to get a visa

that allows them to work in Canada. Others need the temporary foreign workers because they have labor shortages. Think of the agricultural industry. So it's not an easy solution, but the main government problem federally is that it looks like it has not been paying attention to a number of yellow lights along the way on all of those issues.

And all of the chickens that it didn't pay attention to are coming home to roost. The problems with immigration do not stem from something that happened last summer. They date back. After eight years in office, you have to own part of the problem of not having paid attention to warnings from civil servants, Statistics Canada numbers. And I guess the irony is that Mr. Trudeau, last summer, appointed to fix housing the minister who was in charge of immigration as all these issues were festering. And here we are today with what I believe is a major, major liability for the Liberals looking at an election. All right. You've given us the big overview there and lots to pick from. So, Bruce, why don't you start picking there?

I agree the issue is a major risk one for the liberals right now. I think we wouldn't be having a conversation about immigration were it not for the problem of housing. I don't think that the attitudinal mix in the country has shifted in the direction of we don't want more immigrants. And I don't sense that there's a lot of racial animus in this conversation at all, which has been from time to time apparent, but not in this particular wave. I think the biggest challenge for the government beyond the how do we get more homes built more quickly? And could we have started that five or six years ago as a matter of some urgency? They can't do that. They can't roll the clock back. The biggest problem that they have is incumbency means that you're responsible for the way that things are right now. And you can say it's complicated, which it is. And you can say that there are other levels of government work which are involved in causing the challenge, which is true.

And you can say that it's better to have this problem of housing rather than the other problem of too few workers to support our economy, which is plausible. But all of that in the context of being some 15 points behind in the polls against a politician who doesn't need to hold himself accountable to the same standard of care, these weren't his policies. And he's not arguing against immigration. He's arguing against incompetence. He is suggesting that the government has had these siloed views of immigration and housing and weren't able to put these two things

together and to figure out that if they can't do the things that would make housing happen more quickly, then they should look harder at the question of how many immigrants is too many. And the other issue that Chantal touched on, which is the people coming in under these programs that people knew were being kind of abused, there's a feeling of catch-up for the Liberals on this right now, and they don't really need more issues where they look like they're on their back foot. What's going what's on the positive side of the ledger for the Liberals? I do think that Mark Miller and Sean Fraser, the two ministers who are most directly involved in this, are two

of the most capable ministers, both from the ability to kind of cut through the policy issues and figure out what the better policy solutions are now, and also from the standpoint of being able to communicate about them. In saying that, I am not suggesting for a moment that the Liberals are in the clear yet on this issue. I think it's still a developing problem for them. And I think it's going to continue to be a developing problem for them as long as people feel that the economy is not where they want it to be. The cost of living is not where they want it to be. And the cost of housing is such a symbolic and real pain point for as many people as it is right now. It just seems that they've been dealt an impossible hand, both those two ministers.

I mean, I don't see what the easy way out is on this, short of doing backflips on policies you announced, on numbers especially. I mean, listen, let's face it. As Kennedy said in 1958, which is the same applies for Canada, other than Indigenous peoples peoples we're all immigrants so we're kind of on side on the issue but we're offside on the situation it's it's caused on you know the number of new immigrants each year the whole issue of you know student immigrant visas visas for overseas students that the universities have pushed for because it's cash in their pocket to have these students,

but it's caused all kinds of problems on the housing front, et cetera, et cetera. Chantelle, you wanted to add on to something, Bruce? Okay, so, well, they maybe have been handed an impossible hand, but it is largely a hand of their own making. This isn't a pandemic that has suddenly been sprung on the government. Let me give you a number, just as an example, because I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but 600,000, that's how many students who came to Canada to study on visas in 2019. Statistics Canada did an analysis of the number, and it found that 20%, 19%, if you want to go precise,

did not really attend any post-secondary education institution. They basically used their student visa to go to work. Now, if Statistics Canada can find that out, surely provincial governments and federal governments, because it's not just federal governments that license. And I'm not talking here about students that were accepted at Carleton or Queen's University or Seneca College. I'm trying to show my great Toronto culture here. But students who attend institutions that were created as a visa mill to some of these institutions, private institutions, not mainstream ones,

have 90% of the people who are supposed to be registered are no-shows. Oh, they're here in Canada, but they're no-shows. I agree with Bruce. Attitudes on immigration culturally have not changed. But even if you came to Canada from another country 30 years ago, and you see that your kids are struggling to be able to buy or to find the first home that they can afford,

you are going to say, we need to fix this. Now, I talked about amber lights, but this week, I saw two red lights flashing really vividly in the eyes of federal liberals. What Pearson Airport and Trudeau Airport have in common is that they are located in the two cities that are the last real strongholds of the federal liberals going into what could be an election year. You have in Toronto, Olivia Chow, who is not a conservative, leading the charge on the federal liberals saying, you know, I'm hiking in Israel, Texas, and I'm going to hike them, almost double them, this hike, unless Justin Trudeau comes up with more cash to help me to deal with these issues. Now, I imagine if you're a liberal elected in Toronto,

how you feel about that, and how you feel about that knife on the throat. The same is true of François Legault. François Legault's demands and laments are not new, but they are documented and backed by numbers. But the reason why he is restating those numbers so forcefully is because we are going into an election and it does hit the the liberals where it hurts, in the Montreal area, where the problem is real and really striking. So when you put all that together, you have an issue. Yeah, I believe that it could be the last nail in the liberal coffin

unless they find some way to account for how after eight years in power, we are where we are. And I don't think the fact is the liberals have used immigration as a branding issue for the past 10 years. We are the pro-immigration. We're open to refugees. But it remains to be seen whether they did the legwork that was required to not just have the brand, but to live up to it. And so far, the evidence is that they have not been paying attention to actually doing what they were talking about. It does seem like, you know, this didn't come out of nowhere. It was just sitting there as this flare point. and nobody seemed to deal with it. Nobody seemed to notice it or talk about it.

And I guess that, you know, that includes the media is supposed to be watching all this stuff as well. Um, Bruce, you got a last point on this before we move on to a related matter, actually. And Chantel hinted at it a few moments ago,

and that was Polly's statements this week, but on the general discussion, Bruce, you got anything more to add on this? Well, you know, I know that we're going to get into the discussion maybe about the cabinet retreat that's coming up. But I think for me, the big point for the Liberals is that if they're talking about this issue, they're on defense now. And the last thing they need is to be on defense given their situation and um you know i was reading a toronto star piece this morning that talked to some liberal caucus members and kind of asked them to assess their situation and i read one quote that said well we can't out slogan pierre pauliev, you know, I'm paraphrasing maybe incorrectly, but our response has to be to come up with more programs or better programs or new programs or something like that.

And I really feel like the liberals in government have overinvested, over indexed in the idea that every political problem requires a program solution. And really the situation that they're in is that Pierre Poliev's message has more focus, more punch, more reach, more frequency every single day on almost every single issue. And it would be a mistake, I think, for the liberals to say, well, we can't out slogan him. We shouldn't try to do the kinds of things that he's doing because I actually think they do need to really take the business of politicking seriously here if they want to be competitive in the election. And by politicking, I mean, it's not always about a program. It's about a pitch.

It's about an argument. Make your argument. Make the pitch. Talk about the other people and what's wrong with them. If you see those flaws and you don't think the public sees them, talk about what you're doing and what you want to do for the future. But I don't think the Liberals necessarily need more programs. Now, maybe in this area, they will need some more and they'll need some program changes. But I think that's a reflex

that comes with incumbency and almost a fascination with the levers of government sometimes. And this is not that time where I think programs are the answer for everything. Well, Polyev does know how to make a pitch on a number of fronts, but he also knows how to step in it occasionally. And Chantel also knows how to step in it occasionally. And Chantel, he seemed to step in it a bit this week. It's a bad idea for federal politicians in general, but federal politicians from away in particular, to come to Quebec to dump on elected officials in Quebec. Regardless of whether you like those officials,

you think, who the hell are you to come here and say stuff like that? Having set it up like this, Mr. Poiliev, over the course of his visit, decided that the mayors of Montreal and Quebec City, the two larger cities in the province, were, and those are his words, incompetent. That they were getting, his argument was, that they were getting federal money for Justin Trudeau while they were standing in the way of affordable housing.

Now, the reaction was swift on the part of both of these, but also the Union of Quebec Municipalities. People have been on radio and TV saying he doesn't know what he's talking about. And why does he not know what he's talking about? Because I'm not sure Mr. Poitier realizes that by declaring war on housing on mayors like Dalé-Liplante or Bruno Marchand in Quebec City, he's actually declaring war on François Legault. And here is why. As opposed to every other province, Quebec cities by law are forbidden from entering into direct funding arrangements for housing with the federal government.

The federal money for housing has to be given to the Quebec government. And the Quebec government then decides what it is going to do with it and which city warrant X amount of money. So when Mr. Poitier comes to Quebec and says, when I'm prime minister, I'm not going to give money to those incompetents until they show me housing to speak for that money, he's actually saying, I'm going to take away something that the Quebec government has never, ever accepted giving to any government, I'm going to take away the discretion of the Quebec government to interact with its cities on its own terms. And I don't believe for a second that François Legault will wake up one morning and say, gee, you know, I sometimes have trouble with these two mayors that you don't

like, so why don't you deal with them? And getting out of my hair, never going to happen. But what it did show to many people is an abysmal amount of class, for one, and two, a significant amount of ignorance as to the fact that there are significant differences in the way that the federal government interacts with cities in the province of Quebec. Some poor advanced person is probably getting screamed at in the background right now. Why didn't you tell me this? Why didn't I know this?

But he's got to wear it, and obviously he is wearing it right now in Quebec. And this was a big trip, right? This was the trip where he was trying to break through in Quebec, which is sort of the last place in the country right now that he could get a significant breakthrough. How this impacts that or not, I guess time will tell. But it wasn't a perfect week for him. All right.

It'll be interesting to see if he doubles down on this. He has. He's been insulting to make up for this and say it's not Quebec-centered. He's been insulting the mayors of Vancouver, the mayors of Edmonton, Calgary. Do you want me to go down the list just to show that this isn't an attack on Quebec? The problem is that

people in those provinces will decide what they make of this approach to conversation, political conversation for someone who wants to be prime minister. But in this province, it raises a lot more questions than it brings answers to. Why would you want someone like that who throws firebombs and has no respect for elected officials who represent more people than Mr. Poiliev does at this point, to become your prime minister?

What does it bode for the future? Nothing that you really want. So what I was thinking there was that he does have a reflex sometimes where if he's criticized, and we talked about this before, if he opens himself up to a legitimate and painful criticism, he does tend to have that reflex that some politicians have, which is I'm going to double down. I'm going to punch back harder. I'm going to pretend that this criticism is meaningless, but I'm going to effectively show you that it that it hurt me by the way that i respond pardon me let me just have a little drink here

i wonder what's in that cup yeah sure but his design for his housing solution has suffered from this flaw for some time, which is that he sort of imagined a world where he would be able to tell mayors where the new housing should go. And he's been talking about this for a while and not just in Quebec, obviously, you know, that that he wants new housing to be built near transit ways. Sounds like a good idea. But embedded in that idea is the notion that a federal prime minister is going to have significant amount of leverage over where houses are going to be built in your neighborhood,

if you're the average Canadian. And anybody who's looked at this problem of housing with any care knows that one of the problems associated with the slow building of houses is that we have nimbyism. We have people who say, oh, density is a good idea, but not right where I live. Right. And and so Polyev has been campaigning with relatively little criticism of this idea on the basis that he can use the power of the federal purse and maybe the power of persuasion of himself as a politician to go to places like Guelph and Toronto and Vancouver and everywhere else and say, this is how it's going to work. I'm going to give you this money, but only if you do these things with it. In a world where many people might say, well, the most important thing is the current government hasn't done enough and we need more solutions. And this guy sounds like an action oriented guy

that works somewhat. But on the other hand, what the liberals have been doing, I think, has been quite smart in this area. Setting aside the discussion we've had about cut the red tape to speed up the process and to get more homes built so the setup of a contrast between liberals saying we're going to work with the mayors and to be able to show that they've actually made progress with it. And on the other hand, Pauliev kind of digging into this idea of a federal prime minister, who's going to go into communities and say, this is how it should be. That's a useful contrast for the liberals.

And I think it is a mistake for Pierre Pauliev and it would be a mistake for him to continue to sort of play that role because it sets him up for a bit of a trap. One last point, I guess,. Povliev did not notice the only news conference of this kind that took place in Quebec featured François Legault and Justin Trudeau and not some mayor because you cannot have these news conferences in Quebec with a mayor for the reasons I stated above.

And it's easy to, it's been all over the news in French. That being said, I want to just say something about the comment you made about some backroom person being yelled at. I'm told that Mr. Poitier has one advisor only, and he is called Pierre Poitier. So I don't think you can blame a staffer for not doing the advance on this as much as Mr. Poiliev can only blame himself for his penchant for picking enemies and picking fights, even those that he doesn't need and nobody is asking him to enter.

Well, not that he hasn't blamed staffers in the past. Remember that social media stuff? He blamed that one on somebody in his office. We never found out who or why or what happened on that. But I take your point, and especially if he's doubling down on it now, it would seem like nobody's going to be in trouble for that. We'll see how it plays out. Sometimes confrontation works between levels of government.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires. So we'll see how this one plays out. Okay, we're going to take our first break. When we come back, we're going to talk about the cabinet retreat that takes place next week and why we should care. You know, we keep hearing about these things, caucus retreats, cabinet retreats, cabinet shuffles, this, that, and the other.

Nothing seems of significance to change. We'll see. We'll talk about that when we come back, but that's right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk. Chantel is in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa.

And Peter in Stratford, Ontario, where there's lots of snow. Lots of snow in central Canada now. And still a lot of cold temperatures out there. You know, in Churchill, Manitoba, my old hometown, where there's a great port, the water was open in the port two weeks ago, two, two and a half weeks ago. It was kind of unheard of at that time of year for Churchill. Well, you saw the weather map in the last couple of weeks.

That's changed. It's just solid ice out there in Churchill now with those extremely cold temperatures, especially across the prairies. Okay, cabinet retreat next week. Justin Trudeau takes his cabinet, and they're going to change everything about their 15-point deficit in the polls, or at least I'm sure that's what their hope is. Tell me why I should care about this cabinet retreat when we've seen all these different

meetings and retreats and shuffles and you name it in the past year, nothing seems to have worked. Why should I care about this one? Bruce, you start. Well, you should care because you're doing a podcast about politics. Exactly. Yeah, that's a good point. Okay, let's care.

All right, let's move on from that obvious point. Look, I don't think there will be an election this year, but there could be. I think it's reasonable to assume that the Liberals are looking at their situation now and saying, if we don't start getting it more right soon, there will be no hope for us to win the next election. I think they're at that point now. Whether they discuss it with that degree of clarity, I think, I don't know whether that will be the case or not. There has been a tendency on the part of some liberals to think that these are the normal problems of an incumbent government in a difficult economy

and in between elections, this is what happens to support. I think those views to the extent that they're widely held, are mistaken. I don't think they are that widely held. I think that's what some people say about the situation, especially if they're not sure exactly what they can do to get to a better place. I think that there's a sense that the government is so often on the defensive that it hasn't figured out how to escape that situation, not just on housing and immigration issues that we talked about, but if the country is saying it doesn't feel like everything's going well, let's not,

I don't think that everybody thinks the country is broken, but then they look at the liberals and they're looking for some optimism, some joy, some sense of here's what is going to go better for you. And soon they're not really getting that. They get a lot of it's complicated and it's difficult and we're trying to manage our way through it. And there's a feeling of government as, as management of the whack-a-mole issues of the day, as opposed to a sense of purpose and relevance personally.

And that's the last point I would make, which is that I'm glad that Mr. Trudeau has brought in some new communications talent on his team. I don't know if they'll be given free reign to say all of the things that need to be said to really shake up the communications programming of the government. I hope that that's true. That's just good political management to do that, to challenge yourselves, to say, what are we going to do differently? But you can see in the public opinion that there are big chunks of the population who don't feel that this government has been speaking to issues that matter to them

personally. And one group in particular is younger men. This is a government that has, for many, many good reasons, and it's an idea that I personally believe in, indexed heavily on feminism. But I do think that after this many years, that does leave a sense, it has the potential to leave a sense among younger men, perhaps, that the government doesn't spend that much time thinking or talking about the issues that matter to them personally, that affect their well-being, that affect their

sense of economic hope. And so I think there needs to be a really kind of clarifying conversation about what it is that the government exists to do. How is it going to describe that to people so that it's compelling, so that it's optimistic, so that it's a better contrast with the conservatives? And how is it going to sound like it's more relevant to the person rather than about the country? Because this is the thing that I think Pierre-Paul Lievre is taking advantage of. So the liberals talk about what the country needs. Pierre-Paul Lievre talks about what you need. And I think the liberals need to get a lot closer to that mark

if they're going to be competitive. And I think this is that moment where, and there will be more, but this is a pretty important moment coming out of the kind of fall and early winter polling that they've seen. They don't have that much time on the clock, and they've got to make some changes now. Chantal? Chantal? So the new thing that the government would like you to be thinking about

is the American presidential campaign and the American presidential election. And that was obvious when Justin Trudeau visited Montreal earlier this week and went out of his way to talk about the possible re-election of Donald Trump as a major complication for Canada. You never heard things like that coming out of the mouth of the prime minister in the first round. But even the communique announcing the cabinet retreat alluded to the Canada-U.S. relationship. So you can kind of see it. You see the strings that are being put in place to be pulled at this retreat,

that you try to focus on what's been happening and what's happening in the U.S., which will be top of mind for many people, even from a distance, who don't necessarily follow politics from day to day. But the Trump thing is too big to ignore. It's a constant, and it will be next week again. What I'll be looking for is not some new program or even some... I mean, if the liberalsals want to talk amongst themselves about how they talk to Canadians, they can have at it.

But I'm going to be looking for signs that after eight years, there is still a capacity to think out of the box. Surprise me with some approach that I didn't see coming that doesn't sound like same old, same old, and that demonstrates a capacity to break out of the box big. And that's what Bruce was describing with this whack-a-mole. It's the box. And I have seen precious little evidence in the communications

or in the policies of the government that this capacity exists. They are forever in defense and catch-up mode. And they're never saying anything that makes me say as a voter, gee, you know, I'd like these guys to have more time because I'd like to see how this pans out. There is nothing that they put forward that makes you say that. There's a lot of the, if they're not there anymore, there won't be this or there won't be that. But you're looking to a government or a party that wants to stay in government. You're thinking, well, do you still have anything fresh? Are you still able to have fresh thinking about emerging issues? And I don't know if I'll see evidence of that next week. But

by the way, what many people always look for at cabinet and caucus retreats in circumstances like these is what happened at the caucus retreat that Jean Chrétien held at the tail end of his term when he surprised everyone by setting his retirement date. I don't think that's going to be happening on Monday or Tuesday of next week. You know, the last time you could even make a small argument that they were thinking out of the box was when they did the carve-out on home heating oil. That sure worked out well.

So, you know, we'll watch it, and we'll see the prime minister stand at the microphones after it's all over and say something. Whether it can fit the bill that either one of you are talking about is a heck of a challenge. But one assumes he knows where he's at and that if he really is planning to stay. Well, when you organize these meetings and you're in the situation that Justin Trudeau is in, the decision to have one carries some risk. It carries some opportunity,

which is that you're going to galvanize everybody. You're going to say, this is what our plan is, and you're going to build confidence, and you're going to hear from one another, and everybody's going to end up feeling kind of united and pumped up. The risk scenario is if people have come through a fall where in their constituencies they've been hearing pretty negative things, in the polling they've been seeing pretty negative things, the feeling that they have is that conservative hasn't become more scary to Canadians, but it's become less scary.

And I agree with Chantal that the almost job number one for the liberals is to make sure that before they go to the polls in the next federal election in Canada, that Canadians have a good understanding of what's under the hood of conservative in Canada, given everything that we're seeing in the United States. I say job number one, but it's certainly either job number one or job number two. It is very important, and I think it is work that has largely been unaccomplished so far. So the risk in calling a meeting like that is that you're going to bring people together and they're going to come with a set of expectations that they're going to hear some one or two or three things that are going to make them go. Aha, when we do this, our situation is going to change.

We're going to feel excited about it. Voters are going to feel excited about it. People are going to be surprised by it. And if they don't feel that, then you've crossed another checkpoint in that path that we've been talking about, which is what happens when incumbents are in there so long. And that's why I think that any one of these now is more important than any of the ones that have happened in the last few years. And there'll be a caucus meeting of the Liberal Party caucus later in the week as well, similar. Okay, we're going to take our final break.

All I would say is the danger in playing that U.S. card, the Trump card, the right-wing card, and we saw it started over the holidays when Trudeau did his terry demonte interview um the danger with that of course is that trump loses and suddenly that's not an issue anymore that plays either into or not into the uh liberals hands and i of course but that assumes that if Trump loses, though, that the MAGA influences and Trump just go away,

which is not my assumption. It feels to me like that's going to be a major issue one way or the other. Yeah, I think the MAGA influence will still be around. He may not be. He may be in jail. And, you know, my flawless political predictions over the years have him losing this

year and being in jail by the end of the year. But we know how successful I've been on those predictions. Okay, we're going to take a final break. When we come back, something a little different. and welcome back final segment of good talk for this week Bruce is in Ottawa Chantelle's in Montreal and you know every once in a while there'll be a an election result that doesn't necessarily come without some predictions that it could happen. But nevertheless, it's a banner headline because it is surprising. It's sort of out of the ordinary. You think Bob Ray winning in Ontario in the 90s, the NDP winning in Ontario. In Alberta, in the mid-20-teens, Rachel Notley became Premier of Alberta,

leader of the NDP, and who would have ever thought that would happen, that the NDP could win in Alberta? Well, Rachel Notley decided this week that her time was up as leader of the Alberta NDP, and so she departs the scene, but not without having made a mark on not only the landscape in Alberta, but the political landscape in the country. There's been talk that she might run federally.

She seems to have dismissed that. But nevertheless, a figure on the landscape of Canadian politics who made her mark, surprised us at times, led us at times. And I think of those, you know, the fires around Fort McMurray and the way she led her province through that. It was something that other premiers acknowledged was a lesson in how to lead at a time of crisis. Chantal, Rachel Notley, leaving the Canadian political scene, at least seemingly leaving the scene.

What are your thoughts? Well, leaving the Canadian political scene might be a a way to describe it that will not live up to its advanced billing i am not saying here that um rachel notley is going to be running uh in the next federal election and certainly not for jagmeet singh's ndp and why i say that is because when she resigned, she listed the accomplishments of her government. And what was at the top of the list? The completion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Now, which federal party fought the completion

of the Trans Mountain Pipeline to the nail? The federal NDP. So I am not seeing Rachel Notley go to Albertans and recommend the federal NDP as an option for voters in her province. It would make absolutely zero sense. If she were to run federally and she has said she would not, although those statements you never take at face value because she's still the leader of the party till the summer. It would be very awkward to say I'm going to run when everybody knows that if she ran, it wouldn't be for the federal NDP, which leaves only one option. And that would be the federal liberals.

That would be called doing a Bob Ray, having surprised the country by winning government in Ontario. Mr. Ray subsequently re-emerged federally as a liberal. But in the larger Canadian political scene, I'll have you note that the NDP leaders, those that have significant impact, tend to resurface in some capacity. Here are three of them. John Horgan, recently Premier of British Columbia, now our ambassador to Germany. Gary Doerr was the envoy to Washington for Stephen Harper. And Stephen Lewis, who worked in the same capacity at the United Nations for Brian Mulroney at Broadbent, who went on to chair a think tank called Rights and Democracy, appointed by Brian Mulroney.

The point I'm trying, and Bob Ray, of course, now serves in the UN, the point I'm trying to make is that in the past, the liberals and the conservatives have not been inclined to leave remarkable new Democrats sitting on the sidelines. And so I totally expect in some way, shape or form to see Rachel Notley in some capacity in the public life of this country going forward. The other question is for Albertans to respond to answer is whether in her absence they will revert to their one-party system or whether she leaves behind an ndp strong enough uh to be a contender certainly by the numbers uh the ndp is a contender for government in alberta today where it will be in two years it's much too early to tell bruce well i i first want to say i just think doing a bob bray is is a good thing i i don't know that anybody suggested otherwise but

to me it's um uh you know it's a good day uh for the liberals if they can recruit um talented um new democrats i think that um the list that Chantel went through is an interesting list. And so I don't tend to think that, I think the liberals should run, not walk, to go and try to recruit Rachel Notley, the federal liberals should. I think-

They probably are already running. Yeah, they may have been there a few times already for that matter. Right. So my assumption is that that is a conversation that they see that way as well. She has been a remarkably effective politician in Alberta with the NDP brand in the most conservative province of the country, it had to be frustrating for her to lose an election to Danielle Smith, who I'll be gentle, I don't think is her equal from the standpoint of, sorry about that, her equal from the standpoint of political management and, and contribution to the public space in terms of ideas. But, and she may not feel like she wants to be in politics right now, because a lot of time that people have been in it for a while,

it feels like a pretty miserable way to spend your, your time. And the grass can look pretty green on the other side and, and full power to her if she decides that's what she wants to do. But if she wants to make a contribution to political life, you know, she might look at the Liberal Party now federally and say it doesn't look very competitive. And that might keep her away from it for a while. But I'd love to see her be competitive in politics again. I'd love to see her um be competitive in politics again

i'd love to see her make a contribution and i think the issues that she did a did a good job of managing not to everybody's satisfaction but you can't on these issues are the uh are the energy issues and the and the transition of Canada's energy sector. And she was right in the heart of it in Alberta and competitive because she was trying to marry those competing instincts to protect the economic opportunity that our traditional energy sector has and find the new opportunity in a decarbonization scenario. So she's got some excellent, excellent experience in trying to manage that, and it's not an easy thing to manage.

All right. We're going to have to wrap it up for this week. I was thinking, though, when you went through the past NDP leaders and NDP personalities who received federal appointments of one kind or another from different governments, both the liberals and the conservatives, that Ed Broadbent never went that way, right? I mean, I think somebody offered him a Senate seat, which, of course, an NDP leader was, thanks, but no thanks.

But I'm sure he was offered stuff, and he must have just said no. Well, he liked running rights and democracy which was created by brian malroni and there was a time when brian malroni wanted him to co-chair a royal commission on indigenous rights but something happened along the way as in it leaked and some cabinet ministers were not happy about that choice. And so it didn't happen. And who did it leak to and why do I know that? I'm the one who wrote that story that apparently cost Mr. Broadbent that appointment. And as you reminded us last week, there was a time in the early 80s

where Pierre Trudeau talked to Broadbent about some kind of relationship between the two parties. Listen, thanks for all this. Good conversation, as always. Catch the buzz tomorrow. Subscribe to it at thenationalnewsletter.com. And we'll talk again in a week's time. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks, Chantel.

Take care. Have a great weekend. Thank you.