The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Iran: The Worst Is Yet To Come

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Donald Trump's miscalculations on the impact of a war in Iran go well beyond the price of oil, and if the war doesn't end soon, we're all, Canada included, going to feel it.  Bruce Anderson and Chantal Hebert join for the regular Friday Good Talk, where we'll also discuss: more floor crossings, more dilemmas for the NDP, and a strange answer from a prominent Conservative.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Shantelle Baer and Bruce Anderson. It's your Friday Good Talk. And as we say, as always, lots to talk about. So let's get right at it. Let's start on what a lot of people are talking about across the country. The impact of the war in Iran, how they feel about it. We heard yesterday on your turn a lot of that.

But this is what I want to talk about. And it's the kind of economic shocks that we're facing. A couple of weeks ago, I think it was like three weeks ago, I filled up my tank here in beautiful Stratford, Ontario. It cost me a $1.15.9 a liter, which was pretty good. It was a very low price. This morning, I checked $1.59.9 a liter. So that's how much has gone up in just a matter of weeks and as a result of the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iraq. But there's a lot more to what's going on in terms of the economic shocks that are likely to hit the system and are already hitting the system than just oil, more than just the price of

gasoline at the tank. So I want, you know, Bruce, you study these kind of things. What are you, what are you seeing? What's the, where else is the impact already being felt and certainly going to be felt unless this war ends relatively quickly. Well, I don't want to overstate my credentials as an expert in this area, but I have been following it, and I do work with clients that have concerns about some of the other impacts beyond oil, so I've become more informed about them in the last little while, and it's obviously an evolving situation. People are around the world in different businesses starting to become alert to some of the

impacts on other products because the straight-of-horne moves is basically shut down. And I think the consequences of it will be huge economically unless and until the United States changes course and finds a way to, you know, to kind of de-escalate and allow the shipping to happen. Among the things that are most significantly impacted, sulfur, a huge amount of the world's sulfur supply needs that region to be open in order for it to reach the markets that it needs to reach. That's a huge input into fertilizer, which affects farming in many parts of the world. There is a large amount of sulfur that's available in Canada near the oil sands, as I understand it.

So there are alternative sources of supply, but they're not set up to meet those kind of supply chain needs in the near term. Sulfur is definitely one, and it affects fertilizer, it affects nickel and copper, It affects batteries. So they're cascading effects that will be felt the longer and more intense the disruption in those supply chains is. There's another major problem developing in aluminum. A significant amount of aluminum is produced in the Middle East. I think it's something like 9% of the world's supply. The United States with its tariffs on aluminum has already disrupted that market and the trade flows so that the dynamics,

even in Canada, we're a major supplier of aluminum, are much different from what the Americans intended a year ago when they started this trade war. This is going to exacerbate the problems that the Americans feel. It's going to affect the aluminum market around the world. And one of the things that is maybe not unique to aluminum, but particularly important in understanding the aluminum markets is if you shut down an aluminum smelter,

And at some point you have to because you can't just keep stockpiling aluminum. If you shut it down, it takes two years to start it up. And so the impacts of disrupting the aluminum supply chain also very, very significant. There are other things that I've been reading about. A huge amount of the Basmati rice that India produces every year goes to the Middle East and is now stranded outside that market because of the disruption of supply chains. The long and the short of it, I guess for me, Peter, is that the pressures that will build up,

or probably already are building up, within the U.S. administration, within the U.S. economy, are going to become a much bigger part of the political pressure set that the president feels, or should feel anyway, certainly that Congress will feel and want to talk about, because it no longer is just a game of, does the president get to stand in front of a mic and use language which sounds aggressive

and have the Secretary of War, you know, sound like it's a war game. There are going to be these economic consequences. And what we've seen in the past, obviously has been when economic consequences mount in terms of the headwinds for America, the president usually tries to de-escalate or change course. So I'll be watching a lot about that to see what happens in the next several days or weeks.

Thoughts on this, Chantan. I'm not the expert on this file, but to de-escalate if you're Donald Trump, means thinking that you're dancing alone and you can stop the dancing by telling, sorry, by cutting down the music. He's got to convince Israel to de-escalate. That doesn't sound like an easy proposition. he's got to convince the Iran to the escalate. That sounds even harder.

So when you put all of that together, it puts a lot of pessimism in the proposition that corporate Canada or the industry would have. Yes, on the tariff front, it actually has probably an upside for us. The aluminum industry in this country, it started to redirect part of its shippings and part of its product to European markets because of the tariffs.

But at some point, it starts from the American perspective, it starts looking untenable to maintain tariffs on steel, aluminum, go down the list of an ally that has safe supplies in this particular situation. It's not, it's better news for Mark Carney than it is for Donald. Trump in the sense that Mark Carney does not face an immediate electoral deadline. So cost of living issues will not drive up satisfaction with the government, obviously. And there are grounds here to see inflation increasing again. Food prices, very hard to bring them down when the cost of getting them to market is going to be increasing.

So go down the list of consequences. it's not great for the budget bottom line of the government or its fiscal horizon. So there aren't reasons to really want, and true of provincial treasuries, there are reasons to really want this to be short-term. The problem is, and that's not just Canada's problem, is we may be thinking of all that, but the only people who have some leverage on this directly are sitting south of the border.

They're American consumers and voters. and the pressure they will undoubtedly put on Congress with the midterms looming. But beyond that, I think no one believes that there is a real silver lining to this for the world economy. Even if you can find little sectors where this could bring relief on tariffs, etc., it's just, I'm not going to use those words. If you're not using in English and that I'm insensitive to, what is that? You know, you mentioned voters being, you know, obviously going to vote with their, with their wallets to some degree. And farmers, you know, farmers are voters too, of course, but farmers are really in a crunch now.

And not just in the U.S., but in Canada as well as decisions have to be made about, you know, spring crops and this and that. The article that struck me most this week that I read was in the New York Times. I think it was midweeks, Wednesday I think it was. And it was basically a team of New York Times reporters who put together, you know, some great investigative reporting on how officials in the White House miscalculated totally on this war. Didn't really get what was likely to happen and the impact it could have. and we're talking about not just the defense people.

I'm sure they did what they did, but it was the economic side of things, the Scott Bassance, and that other guy who's caught up in the Epstein affair, where were they on all this? What were they saying to Donald Trump? What are they saying today? They still seem like cheerleaders whenever I hear them.

But the miscalculation is staggering when you consider what seems to be unfolding now. Bruce, you wanted to make another point. Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Peter. I think it is this staggering, staggering miscalculation. And part of why I think that is becoming more and more obvious to observers who don't come at this from a partisan perspective in the United States or elsewhere, is that there never really was much of a statement about the endgame.

They struggled at first to kind of say what it was that they were going to consider to be evidence of success. And eventually you saw people like the Secretary of State Markov, Rubio talk about, okay, we're going to end the, we're going to end the naval power of Iran, their ability to make missiles and their stockpile of missiles. They stop talking about regime change, even though that seemed to be one of the most important things going into it, to protect the rights of the Iranian people against this repressive regime. And, of course, the new regime has the same name, literally as the old regime. and it's the country's being led by the son of the person who was killed in the opening hours of the war.

So there is no obvious endgame. And so the potential for this to become within the Republican Party, a perfect example of the forever wars that Donald Trump said he would never get into, that the MAGA movement held up as one of the principal virtues of his kind of leadership. this notion that you're just not going to go around the world and put blood and treasure at risk for something that didn't affect the lives of people in Red State America. That is a major risk hitting into the midterms. And Chantelle, I think, made that point about the linkage to the midterms.

I think it's a very, very important one. And the kind of chaotic choices that they're going to have to make because they didn't think this through include, you know, maybe the best example yesterday, I think it was yesterday, is that after spending all lot of time saying we're going to try to shut off purchases of Russian oil, the Americans have now issued a temporary measure saying it's okay if you, whoever you are in the world, need to buy some Russian oil because it's stranded at sea. and that's really just to try to moderate the impact on oil prices.

But the number of things that the Americans are going to have to try to do to cover up the problems that they're causing in the economy are going to grow exponentially over the coming days and weeks. And it's going to really raise that question of, what are we doing this for? What is it going to accomplish? Is it going to accomplish anything? And can anybody tell us a straight story about that?

You know, yesterday Trump, Trump, saying, we've got this great oil reserve. We're going to release it and look at all the money we're going to make as a result of selling oil at $100 a barrel or whatever it is now. Two American consumers? Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, great. Imagine Mark Carney saying great that you know how much more taxes I'm getting. Same with the provinces from selling you gas at two bucks a liter. But didn't I hear somebody in Canada saying that might have been a good idea. why don't we have our own oil reserves? We could be making money out of it. Yeah, yeah. We sell all the oil that we produce.

That's what producers do. It's complex. Let's not go there. Let's leave it to people who don't know what they're talking about to talk about and not join them. Okay. All right. Well, you know, I wanted to start on this,

on this issue, on the war issue, because I know that a lot of people are talking about it from different angles on the issue, and we've, you know, we've had our own back and forth on oil prices and, excuse me, on the Iran war over the last week or two in terms of the political side as well. But let's move to the politics of the day. Well, one of the political stories of the day, And that, of course, is yet another floor crosser this time from the NDP. So we have this kind of remarkable picture, actually, of liberal government in the middle attracting crossovers, floor crossers, from both sides of the spectrum.

One now from the NDP, three already from the conservatives, and the continuing discussion about whether there's more. Steve McKinnon, the Liberal House leader, saying yesterday, oh yeah, we're going to keep talking. We're going to keep talking to them. Is this good for politics? Is this good for, you know, obviously it's good for the liberals, but is it good for politics on the way politics is looked at by Canadians?

What we're saying here. Okay. I don't, I don't, I'm not good at the good or bad because I don't believe that we are in the business of preaching and determining what is good or bad. And I also don't believe in the theory of everything is over because something happens. But I will point out to crossovers tend at the national level to increase

when there is a major issue on the agenda, when governments are invested with a mission that has a capital M, which I believe is the case now with Mark Carney, and the kind of election we had last year, which was really about which one of the two main protagonists is best to handle what is an existential crisis. The last time we had a lot of crossovers was when we were facing a different kind of existential crisis,

i.e. the unity crisis that followed the 1995 referendum. And it may sound encouraging to liberals when I say that, but 10 MPs crossed over to Jean-Kritsin over that period, not four. Why, 10? Because and where did they come from? Well, mostly from the ranks of the Progressive Conservative Party. And in large part from Quebec, today Joe Clark got himself re-elected, second spell as a Tory leader with this party way at the back of the House of Commons.

two or three of his Quebec MPs stood behind Jean-Critzien in the lobby of the House of Commons to announce that they were becoming liberals. And why? Because the battle in Quebec at that point or the way we were counting votes was how many voted for a sovereignist party and how many voted for a federalist party. And so people who were not sovereignists gravitated to the strongest federalist warrior. And I think we are witnessing some of that now. This is a bad time to be a third party because the choice is very binary.

And many MPs in opposition, conservative and new Democrats, notwithstanding their absent leadership or their leadership, want to be on the side of that definitive or defining battle. They can find a reason within themselves to make a move that there's other Otherwise, I'll grant you opportunistic electorally because I believe that the people who crossed over would be reelected tomorrow as liberals. That may not be the case in two years, but the history of crossing over is not just filled with people whose life ended. So I think there is a larger context here and that what is happening now does reflect in some part the mood of the electorate. So I don't believe that no, it's bad for politics.

I also believe that a larger liberal caucus comes with its own challenges and more pushback internally than in the House of Commons. And it's usually at least this productive and exacting change from a leadership team in the government as whatever is said across the aisle. Bruce? Well, I'm still just so admiring Chantal's ability to say, I'm not going to say whether it's good or bad, but then I'm also going to say it's not bad. It's a relatively, you know, available thing to have happened.

I absolutely agree with Chantelle about this, whether it's good or bad. I'm not putting these words in your mouth. I think it's a healthy thing. It's not a sign of an unhealthiness in our democracy that this is happening. It frustrates people who are partisans. There's no question about it. You can see how livid they are if it happened to their, party to lose somebody, but here's how I see it. I think it is the job of a leader of any party

to lay out a plan, a program, a set of ideas, and to try to attract people to it. And that's what Mark Carney has been doing. That's what he did during the election campaign. There was a lot of talk at the time last year about the idea of a kind of a national unity government. And I think that that Carney himself felt like whether you call it that or you just try to have that effect on people to say, let's put down our partisan kind of mindsets and just concentrate on what we should really do as a country in this moment of crisis to try to improve our prospects going forward.

I think that's the work of a political leader, and I'm happy that he's doing it. And I think it's a good thing that some people from both parties have decided, okay, this is a plan that we feel more comfortable with than the one that our leader is putting on the table. If I believe that, I should also believe that it would be healthy if Pierre Poliev would be trying to recruit liberal members of parliament. But I don't see any evidence that that is how he approaches politics. He approaches politics the other way. The way that says those people are not our people.

They don't have our values. We're not interested in their support. And so there will be some people who think that's the best version of politics, this notion of you're in these kind of ironclad groups that don't invite other people to join. That's not my view as to how politics, at least in our country, should work when it's at its best. Is Palliav not trying to reach out right now? You don't buy that?

Reach out to other MPs from other parties and say... No, no, not that. to reach out to, you know, to Canadians who perhaps haven't listened to him, not interested in him. I think he says things that are less alienating to them. But I think it's different from saying, if you have not considered voting for me before, I would like to tell you why I would like you support going forward.

I think you need to be more overt about it if you started so much in that kind of, we want to tell all of the world who we reject as our supporters. as a way of bolstering the enthusiasm of our base, which I think has been the conservative approach. I think the NDP has fallen a little bit more into that, maybe not in that exact same way, but the NDP has tended not to be trying to pull liberals towards them or deal, I think, effectively with the threat that they faced from the right,

where Polly-Ev and before that, to some degree, Preston Manning was pulling those blue-collarral. voters from the NDP to the conservative party. So I think it's a healthy thing and parties compete for the support of other parties, provided that they're doing it obviously with a centering on a kind of a plan for the country. I think that's fairly healthy.

And the last thing for me is that I think the NDP has kind of lost a lot of ground under Jagmite Singh and they're really struggling to try to find some way to rebuild political capital. I think on the conservative side, there's been a struggle that the three of us have witnessed for 30 years at least of that party trying to hold progressive conservatives and reform conservatives together in one tent. And it just, it requires a level of skill and a point of departure that it's important to do that, which Stephen Harper had some of, but Pierre Paliath has not had a lot of. And obviously, Brian Mulroney struggled with, even though he, that was his intent. We've got to take a break in a second.

But, Shantel, do you want a last word on that before we move on? Well, I'll just say, it's very late for Piapwiliev to suddenly become Mr. Congeniality and say there is room in my tent for all kinds of ideas that are not mine. but also to try to attract people to your tent when you are double digits points behind your rival in the appreciation of voters and double digit points behind in the polls because you are dragging down your party does not kind of come across as a doable proposition, no matter how nice you want to be about sounding. You know, I'm not that person you saw last year. I don't think that really works with voters. Okay. There's lots more to talk about it on this,

especially about the NDP, and we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk for this Friday. Chantelle-Barre, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge, I'll hear for you. You're listening on Series XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform,

or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. I mentioned that in New York Times piece. I'll include a link. on that tomorrow in the buzz. If you subscribe to that, you'll get it tomorrow. Okay, I want to talk about the NDP, because we're coming up in a couple of weeks. It should also mention there's an anniversary tomorrow, right?

Mark Carney, officially now one year since he took office as sworn in his prime minister after winning the liberal leadership. But coming up in a couple of weeks, you have the NDP leadership vote. If you believe those who are following this and including some members of the party itself, Avi Lewis is the leading contender for the job as leader. Now, to pick up on Bruce's point about leadership,

leadership is where you outline a plan and you have people who decide to buy into that plan and follow it. I'm assuming if Avi Lewis is leading, then he has a plan, and that plan has been one that's been accepted by a significant number of members of the NDP. I don't know. Is that an assumption that I should be able to make, or no? What is happening on this leadership front? Sounds like an assumption that needs to be tested.

The reason I say that is this is, this is, This is a kind of, I agree with Avi Lewis leading, and I think the fundraising speaks also to that notion. There is a huge gap between how much he fundraised, and that means people willing to put money where their ballots will probably be in the leadership campaign compared to his rivals. And don't forget, the NDP does something that the other. major parties, the conservatives and the liberals do not do, it allows its leaders to be elected by the largest number of supporters rather than by some system that takes into account the way of each region of the country. What I'm trying to say is if you were running and you could convince the entire town of Stratford to vote for you as an adopted son of Stratford,

You could probably win without getting a single vote in Winnipeg where you used to Rome or in Toronto where you used to be the big star of the newscast. That kind of means that the results do not reflect, no matter who wins, will not be reflective of strengths across the board in the country. you can win presumably without Ontario up to a point. And that kind of tells you something. What's interesting about the fundraising is that the one who has the most diversified source of money coming to his leadership campaign is Avi Lewis. So his membership representation seems to stretch further across the board. That's the good news. But the problem is that you've got a union leader, an elected MP from Alberta,

and Avi Lewis as the three main candidates. And I'm not sure that the three of them have a lot or as much common ground as previous leadership aspirants to the NDP had together. And so I'm curious to see the fallout from whatever outcome. who decides to focus on other challenges rather than focus on team building behind the new leader because I believe that whoever wins, and Avi Lewis in particular,

will have a really big challenge in trying to build momentum for himself or herself to rebuild the NDP. And on that basis, I'm not sure that this leadership campaign has really contributed to making the NDP stronger rather than returning it to being a movement of the left rather than a party of the left that aspires to influence and power. Bruce? Well, I would accept the assumption that Nabi Lewis is going to win this leadership,

as you guys have said. I think that's the available evidence to us. I find that what he seems to be trying to do is to at best recreate a more successful minor force in Canadian politics. And I don't know that that's a, I don't know that that's going to be a successful objective for him. And I say that for two reasons. The one is I think it's easy to look at his background

and maybe his style a little bit and to say, well, maybe there's some charisma there that's going to catch on. But there hasn't really been any evidence that that's how he works in a political context. So you think he finished third and his two tries to win a seat. And with his name and his speaking skills, you would have thought that he could have maybe done better than that. You would have thought as well in the leadership race that there would have been more attention drawn to the things that he's saying and the way that he's saying them.

And I'm not, I'm not sure I know exactly why, although I do think that some of what he talks about, you know, the billionaire hoarder class and it's a real kind of tax the rich. The problem is rich people and fat corporations are doing harm to everybody else. There's definitely a market for that in public opinion. I think what there is, more importantly, is a market for that kind of pressure to be brought into public policy, but not with a tear-the-system-down framework. There are just too many people who say we can't afford to do really radical things in the context where we're trying to keep the ship of our economy kind of pointed in a useful direction.

So it's not the best time to be sounding like that. like the most radical disruptor of the way in which things work, even though there's quite a bit of tension among people about affordability and quite a bit of blame that's associated with people at the top end of the income scale, getting richer and richer all the time. I don't think he's been able to connect those things in a way that makes people think the way that they did back in the day of Ed Broadband, that it might not be the worst thing to have a stronger end.

and maybe one day an NDP government. I just don't think that that's what Abby Lewis is putting on the table for people, and I don't know that he's attracting much attention or excitement around his campaign so far, and that's, I guess, the best interpretation I have of it at this moment. Is there anybody in this race who's like an ad broadband socialist? I don't necessarily see that, but I'm not so sure that the kind of socialism or labor or trade socialism that had broadband brought would be as in sync with Canada's union movement as it used to be. Why is Piaquiliev doing well with blue-collar trade unions?

Well, in part because of the NDP stands on pipelines. That is, you know, you go and I've gone to places where Jopmi Singh was speaking. construction unions, big labor unions that do the pipeline work, et cetera. Why would they want to support a party that actually funds no pipelines and wants to take away jobs from trades? And when you look at white-collar unions, white-collar unions under Justin Trudeau got a lot of access, as did blue-collar unions to governance. and the kind of battles that Avi Lewis is promoting does not necessarily jive with their priorities.

You know, talks of general strikes, national rent control, go down the list, public run grocery stores. I don't think that resonates with that section of the union movement. Now, why do I think that's happening and why do I think that's happening, will also not come back tomorrow or the day after is also because of political financing and the changes in the rules. For a long, long time, the major trade unions supported the NDP.

But when Jean-Glicein banned corporate and union donations to political parties, the liberals and the conservatives did lose some corporate donations, but the NDP lost the trade union financial contribution. And when you are no longer paying the Piper, you don't get to call much of the tune. And that has also happened. So there's been kind of a distance built between the union movement and the NDP,

and I'm not sure you can bring that back, which explains why you're not getting in that broadband-style leader that resonates at this point. Did I read it correctly that the convention or the leadership vote is taking place in Winnipeg? Well, it's taking place. now. No, but I mean the

announcement is in a Winnipeg setting, which is interesting because 50 years ago, 51 years ago now, was when Ed Broadbent won that leadership race for the NDP,

and it was in Winnipeg. And it was a big convention, people from across the country. And, you know, at a really interesting finish. Rosemary Brown finished second. BC. NDPer, who did extremely well in that race and made name for herself and, you know, spoke from the other side of the party and as it got down to the final ballots, final votes.

But that set off an era where Ed Broadbent did extremely well as NDP leader and is kind of revered by many people in the political camp in Canada no matter what their partisan streak is. now you look at the party today a caucus that ended up with just what seven members no official status in parliament now they've lost one member and they may well lose another one in the next couple of weeks somebody who's considering going into

Quebec provincial politics which would bring them down to five seats with a leader who won't have a seat assuming Avi Lewis wins and a really kind of uncertain future. And people like us talking about whether they're dead, whether the NDP, given, you know, I think partly due to the Trump factor, that they're considered irrelevant in politics and in parliament.

Is that unfair or is that where we are with the NDP? I seriously think Jokmint Singh did a lot of harm to the NDP. And electorally, the numbers speak for themselves. He spent his election evenings literally dancing on the tombstones of defeated MPs. And in the process helped the party to vanish from Atlantic Canada, from Quebec, and from most of, well, from Ontario. You talk about that broadband. Bob Rhee was also an MP at that point or over that tenure.

And where were these people elected in Oshawa and where the auto sector and the auto union is really strong? And in downtown Toronto, where there is a left, a progressive left, that is called the place home, the old city of Toronto. They're nowhere on the federal scene in those writings. anymore. The liberals have taken up all of that downtown Toronto territory, and the conservatives are taking over the union belt of Ontario. So I believe, you talk about Winnipeg, I believe that many new Democrats see the next leader as someone, a caretaker, to take them to the day when

the most successful NDP Premier in the country at this point, the one who has the profile, speaks both official languages, who happens to be, have indigenous roots, is available for federal politics. And I'm talking about Manitoba Premier Web Canoe. I think a lot of them are seeing that NDP members are not blind to reality. They know that this leadership campaign is probably not, you know, the greatest road to success and that their choices are limited. But I think. what they really want is for someone to keep the seat warm until Mr. Canoe is available to make that jump. I'm not sure that that would ever happen. But for sure, a lot of new Democrats are thinking,

if we have a future, it's a little leader like that who can speak to everyone in the country and who also brings something to the federal scene that no other party is brought, i.e. a leader of, with indigenous credentials. You may be right about Wab Canoe and the possibilities in the future. I'm pretty sure right now he's not thinking beyond where he is because there's so much he wants to achieve in Manitoba, especially in northern Manitoba. But he's a star candidate no matter where you place him.

He's quite something. Bruce, you want to be in opposition with the NDP in the House of Commons when you can actually advance apartments. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I just wanted to pick up a couple of quick points, Peter. One of the reasons why Kanoo is so successful is that he reaches out to people who aren't necessarily part of his political movement. He is that leader who says,

come and think about what I'm doing and support it if you can. And when I look at the situation in Manitoba, and I look at what's happening with the NDB, in Alberta, potentially. And I look at what's happening to federal vote numbers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which in our polling is showing an

incredible realignment or at least potential realignment. Let me put it that way, right? In our latest poll, the liberals federally are behind the conservatives federally in Alberta

by, I think it was three or four points, and they're tied with conservatives in Saskatchewan. We've never seen numbers like this in a very, we haven't seen them in a very, very long time. And you'd have to go back probably to the Peer Trudeau era before you would see that kind of competitiveness for the federal liberals there. What does it tell us?

It tells us that all of the voters in the prairies aren't dogmatic, far-right voters. They're looking for kind of sensible centrist, and they didn't think that they were getting it from the Liberal Party and in some instances didn't think they were getting it from the NDP. But they're open to persuasion. And I think in a way, this is sort of where I'm coming from on Abby Lewis is, unless you're trying to do what Wab Canoe is trying to do, which is to reach those, and presumably Nenshi as well in Alberta, which is to reach those centrist voters. Give them a strong progressive message and set of ideas, but situate it within the context of what their priorities are and what they might think are reasonable idea is to try to accomplish those priorities

and that's not and i agree with chantelle that uh the chagmite sing did a lot of damage over time to the ndp as a as a party that can do that all right and take our final break be right back after this and welcome back you're listening to the final segment of good talk for uh this friday bruce andersson chantile bear peter mansbridge all here um I'm trying to figure out this Andrew Shear quote from the week. It's kind of a puzzler. He went to Washington, I guess, just before Christmas, really, so a few months ago, to talk to people in Washington about the situation in Canada

and to put forward the ideas of his party and his leader. When asked, who did you speak to in Washington? because there's been some discussion about various people from that party, either provincially or federally who've gone to Washington and who they talk to. When asked of Andrew Shear, a former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, who did you talk to? He said, I can't remember. That seems to be a bit of a stunner.

Well, it's, it's, it's, not very nice for the people he met, but at this way. They must be very disappointed that they had such a little impact on it. But there are two explanations. One is he made so little impression. He couldn't remember their names. Or that he really didn't want to say who he'd been meeting because they would have confirmed the parties flirting with MAGA style elements in Washington and possibly

doing with Mr. Giovanni did more publicly, I bring back the Trump message to Canada, i.e. you should love us because we love you and just get in line. So one or the other, but it certainly didn't speak well to someone who once aspired to be the Prime Minister of Canada and who is today a major caucus lieutenant of the current leader. Yeah. There is a third possibility. I think those are two very viable possibilities. But the third, I guess, is that he couldn't get a meeting with anybody that seemed important enough to want to recount. And, you know, the piece in Politico, I think a really well put together piece about this, where I first saw this little vignette, mentioned that went through the fact that, you know, Republicans in D.C. are not convinced that Pauliev is,

a meaningful force in Canadian politics for the future, are not convinced if they want to engage with him as somebody who's a fellow traveler. So even if they did want to cozy up to the MAGA influencers or important MAGA people, they might not get a hearing with anybody very senior. So it's possible that Mr. Scheer went down to Washington and couldn't get a meeting with anybody that was worth reporting back. And so he came up with this can't remember, which makes, you know, he will be mocked for this. And he should be mocked.

I mean, he obviously had an agenda. There was an itinerary. There was money spent to travel. And he's very fond of talking about the prime minister going places and spending money to travel to meet people. But at least we know who the prime minister meets with. And we know a fair bit about what's discussed and what they're trying to accomplish. But the idea that he can go down there. and come back and expect everybody to go,

oh, you don't remember, that's okay. Let us tell the next time and maybe make a note of who the people are that you met with so that you can remind yourself when asked. But that does bring us to Pierre Pueleva and is for a in the U.S. at this joint tour that does not include the stuff in Washington. And to be fair, it's not always easy

for Canadian leaders to get meetings with important people in Washington. And the time when Fiatorev could have gotten them was when he was 20 points ahead in the polls. And the only reason they would have spent time with him at that point would have been that he was going to be the next prime minister. So at that point, it's useful to meet that person because you are establishing contact early on. And once they are in government, there will be a rapport. But at this point, he is showing up as a leader that anybody who reads two polls will know that he's not doing well against Mark Carney and his party is not doing well against the liberals. So at that point, you think, why would I spend time with a minor character in the Canadian conversation, which is what he would look like from the distance of Washington?

So yes, I think Bruce's hypothesis is also totally valid that whoever Mr. Shear met, and I'm sure there are notes with names to remind him of who they were, would have made him look like someone who can get a door open to a major player on the U.S. scene. I've got a couple of minutes left, and as we've done the last few weeks, I throw it open to you with a sort of what's on your mind question. It can be anything. What's on your mind, Bruce? Well, you know, the U.S. government announced that they were going to launch some more tariff-related investigations yesterday,

a group of 29 countries, including Canada, the purpose of which to find another way to achieve the same kind of tariff levels that they had removed by the Supreme Court. in this case the investigation has to do with whether or not Canada is a place that supports the use of forced labor. I find myself watching this development and wondering, is the whole tariff agenda really starting to fall apart on Trump? Is there much energy behind it within the administration? Or are they just kind of putting these ideas out there so that they look like they haven't completely lost their way and lost their momentum? on tariffs. That's an interesting thing for me. It sits right alongside the how big do the swings in the financial and other markets, commodity markets, and how big are the impacts

on industries before the Trump administration starts to feel like it's got to try a different approach. And I'm really curious to see more from Scott Besant, who I think yesterday, when he was talking about how the U.S. would try to escort ships through the Straits of Hormuz, I think raised the idea of an international coalition. So this is maybe the first time anybody could ever have imagined that if the U.S. is going to intervene in some part of the world, it's better to do it with allies rather than to do it on your own. And of course, America has done so much to alienate allies that it's hard to imagine

there'd be an international coalition that would happily sign on to the board of peace in the Straits of Hormuz movie version or something like that. So that's what I'm watching. It's hard to keep track of their various ideas about what to do around the Straits of Hormuz. And with the Iranian Navy, I mean, it was like two days into the war. Trump announced that they'd sunk the whole Iranian Navy. Well, they're still sinking Iranian ships every day. So, you know, anyone who'd sign on to something like that would want to be cautious in the extreme.

Chantelle, what's on your mind? So you talk about the sinking boats. I'm going to talk about the conservatives sinking their own boat, a bit further in Quebec. What people are talking about is this leader sanction, conservative bid to get Don Cherry,

the order of Canada. The Quebec MPs belong to Mr. Pueleves' caucus are usually mute. Sometimes you think the cap must have gotten their lungs, but not this time. At least three of them are now on the record. sign they can't support this. And why? Because Mr. Cherry over his years, his many years on the CBC,

never wasted an opportunity to let viewers know that in his mind, a true Canadian, was not a francophone and a true solid hockey player. He was not a francophone. He called Quebec hockey player cry babies. He called gold medalist, ski champion Jean-Lewkshaelé, a Francophone, nobody. Do you need to go down the list. So the notion that the Conservative Party is supporting the order of Canada for someone who spent his career dissing French-speaking Canadians is really not going down well in Quebec. It is something everybody understands and it is not even going down well with the usually docile Quebec caucus of Mr. Puelev. So when it comes to bad ideas, it seems they just keep coming. And just in case somebody wants to say you guys have a conflict on that issue, yes,

all three people you're looking at right now are members of the Order of Canada, but I don't think that stops us from reporting on what is clearly an issue out there right now in different parts of the country and for different reasons and different areas of either support. I mean, isn't Doug Ford championing this idea? as well for Don Cherry. It's going to be hard for many Francophones going forward if this were ever to happen, and I don't believe it well, to accept the Order of Canada. That's basically where this is.

Yeah. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. Have a great weekend. Bruce Chantal. Thanks for listening, folks. Bye for now. Bye for now.