The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Is It Time To Rethink How Leaders are Picked?

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

The mess in the British parliament opens the door to a discussion about leadership, and how leaders are picked whether in Britain or in Canada.  Bruce and Chantal have their thoughts on that and a lot more including Chrystia Freeland's latest moves, and Pierre Poilievre's interview choices. 

Are you ready for Good Talk? And welcome to another Friday, another Good Talk. Sean Talley-Bear, Bruce Anderson and Peter Mansbridge here. And, you know, one of the things I love about Good Talk, well, I don't know whether I'd love it, but there's something engaging about it, about how we've been doing this for almost a couple of years now. And seemingly every week, they get to trash on me. You know, I'll make some kind of a suggestion or prediction or thought of a way something's going to go, and they'll kind of laugh it off and say oh peter that's just peter being peter again well who would have thought it remember i was the one who said boris johnson will

be prime minister of the uk at the end of the year he'll still be there in 10 downing street and you all laughed it off and i had to of, apologize when he got dumped in the middle of the summer, was replaced by Liz Truss. But hey, look at the headlines today in the British papers. Is Bojo coming back? Well, he's coming back from the Caribbean where he was on a holiday. He's coming back in the sense that he's one of the names on the short list to replace Truss.

And he's coming back in the minds of some conservative MPs who think, you know, he should really be there. He's the only guy. He's the only person who can get us out of this tailspin, this corkscrewing into the ground that the Conservative Party has had in Britain. So, what can I say? What can I say, really? Chantelle, I'm sure you'll find something.

Just a second, just a second. I set up a straw person because I don't ever remember having a conversation with you about this particular former prime minister of the UK. And I looked at my calendar while you were ranting. And it's October 21st. Last time I checked, my year ends December 31st. Right. Exactly. So you went and got yourself on a limb twice. He did.

I want to be clear. So you went and got yourself on a limb twice. He did. I want to be clear. He did have that conversation with me. And nobody, there is no way that you could have made Chantal and I happier to start this week's conversation off than to relitigate the good fortunes of Boris Johnson. To speculate on his return. I think this is so good that having lost that bet once, you're doubling down. So carry it away, Chantal. I'd love to hear what you have to say. And by the way, we are going to send a link to this to Jason Kenney in Alberta.

Right. Well, who was it who said, I think was bruce who said in the last couple of weeks i mean he was very general in his suggestion and i don't think we disagreed with him that there's probably going to be a place somewhere on the political scheme uh scene for jason kenney in the future whether it's alberta whether it's on the national front or not, we don't know. But he's had a terrible experience as Premier of Alberta, as it turned out. But he does have qualities that are ones that can play in the political arena. Anyway, enough. Daniel Smith probably thinks we have advanced Halloween here with ghosts springing out of good talk.

So, listen, what do we make of this story in the UK, whether you want to have fun with the Boris Johnson equation or not? I mean, this was the disaster of all disasters. I mean, we've seen a few in our careers covering and analyzing politics, but this one, what happened to Liz Truss, and what's happened to the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom is almost without comparison. Chantal? Well, I think that what we've been watching this week just about kills any possibility that our federal parties, excluding the federal conservatives fire their leader, which the conservatives handed to themselves and then fired their own tools.

You look at the experience and that's inspired in large part from the UK model. You look at the conservatives in the UK. They dumped Theresa May for Boris Johnson, Boris Johnson for Liz Truss. In clear, they've been going down market with every caucus vote to expel the leader. And that kind of tells you something about putting a leader on such a leash that from one week to the next, you don't know if a caucus revolt is going to take off for a variety of reasons. And I submit to you one example, because I was thinking about this, thinking what would have happened in this country if on the morning after the 1995 referendum that Jean Chrétien almost lost on behalf of Canada, the Liberal caucus had had the power to fire him. And remember, in the week leading up to that vote,

English-speaking ministers from outside Quebec were talking about the fact that there should be a prime minister from the rest of Canada to deal with the situation. Chrétien's position was totally weakened. Would it have served Canada well at a time of great turmoil for backbenchers and a faction of the party that wandered Chrétien out to have the power to decapitate the federal government by taking down the prime minister. I suspect that the answer should be no. It's okay if you're in opposition, possibly, to play fire the leader. But in the end, I think what we've seen this week shows that there are perils to having these kinds of situations happen

to a governing party. Bruce? Well, Peter, I think the first thing I'd say, because you raised Boris Johnson, I would sort of offer a point of view on that. I was watching some of the interviews with MPs in the Conservative caucus last evening. And the most compelling arguments that I heard were that they want a unity candidate. They want to become united again. They recognize that the chaos and the division and the turmoil is putting almost all of them at risk. If today's translated into election results, it would be carnage for the Conservative Party here in the UK. And in that context, it's even more important, I think, from their standpoint to be a candidate.

And alongside that, to say Boris Johnson is not a unity candidate. He was pushed out of office by a very significant number of the MPs who are in that caucus. So how that would work, other than by virtue of the idea of him trying to muster some sort of populist support again. And I frankly think if you took a clear-eyed view of what happened in the aftermath of Boris Johnson, if I'm not mistaken, Rishi Sunak was chosen by the caucus, but Liz Trust was preferred by the membership when it went to the membership. Probably next week, if you ask me to bet, Rishi Sunak will be the leader of the Conservative Party and the prime minister of the UK.

The biggest difference between them was Sunak had a much more careful fiscal and taxation plan, careful in terms of managing the UK debt and deficit situation. Trust promised billions and billions and billions of dollars of immediate tax cuts, the kind of thing that appeals to a populist, energized base. And that brings me back to the other question that you put on the table, which is how we choose leaders. And I think that in the era of the one party, one member, one vote, populist parties that recruit a lot of people around themes that are kind of angry making, energizing, it's a little bit like politicians telling fairy tales to people who have no sense of consequence if they buy into those fairy tales with a mark on a ballot. I think that's part of what has happened with Johnson and with Trust in their leadership in the UK.

A little bit of what's been happening for the conservatives in the last couple of leadership races. And, you know, if you went back to Max Bernier getting 49% of the votes in the first round of the leadership race in Canada, that too looks like the start of something that hasn't yet wrung itself out of the Conservative Party in Canada, in fact, may be getting stronger. You know, it's interesting to watch how leadership races have evolved in our country, at least over, I don't know, the last 20, 30 odd years. There's been this push, supposedly, for democracy within parties, where every member of the party would have a vote, as opposed to the way it used to be, which was a much smaller operation, meeting in convention, elected from across the country, three or

4,000 people at most in these things, making a decision. And a very active weekends for the leadership convention with all kinds of excitement and drama on the floor of a convention site with, you know, various candidates moving across the floor to support others if they were dropping out. And it made, you know, listen, it made for great television. It made for great storytelling on the part of journalists. What we're witnessing now, arguably, is much better for the system because it's more democratic, because more people have a vote but you look at the way these things have turned out over the years now some have worked out fine but a lot

especially a lot recently seem to have been verging on disaster with you know certain candidates being disqualified it's happened more than a couple of times now. You have a situation, what was it, with the Andrew Scheer convention where one candidate won the first 12 ballots and then lost on the third, Max Bernier, or on the 13th, which seemed a bit strange, to say the least. But, you know, are we hearkening back to another era, that it was a better system of electing leaders and not disposing of them immediately afterwards

if they didn't win their first election run, which we all know, and Chantal's pointed out more than a few times, there'd be a lot of prime ministers of Canada who never got to that position if they were judged on their first election. But what's the thinking here? Is it time to look back, to move back to an old system? So let's not pretend that delegated conventions, which is what they were, the ones you described produced perfect or even the right results. You and I and Bruce were around for the replacement of Pierre Trudeau by John Turner. John Turner won that battle because there was a block of votes

that was establishment votes that had committed to him. But in fact, you could easily argue that the party would have been better off with Jean Chrétien, who had won the membership in that particular contest. A form of delegated convention also gave us Stéphane Zion, which turned out to be, for all of his other qualities, a leadership dud. So it's not as if there is magic to the process. But in this case, the way the one member, one vote starts with who is a member. You look, and I'm going to use an example of something that worked, but there was no reason to know that it would work. Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau was unbeatable when he ran for the leadership. He wasn't unbeatable because he had demonstrated such political skills in the House of Commons that it made him the most compelling person in the universe, he was unbeatable because he was a rock star, mostly by virtue of his name, and recruited an incredible amount of members. Remember, anyone could become a member, it was

free, on social media. It's not as if he shouldn't have won. It is that it illustrated the perils of having those wide open leadership campaigns where anybody can become a member just long enough to get, if you're a milk producer, just long enough to get Andrew Scheer to beat Maxime Bernier, which is actually what happened in that 12 ballot and then Maxime Bernier loses on the 13th. Special interest groups, for whatever causes, have a lot more power within the confines of a leadership race than within the electorate in general. Why are parties not going to walk away from that? Political financing. They could close the membership list as soon as a leader resigns and say, people who have been with us up to now will be the people

who select the next leader but do you know how much money the conservative party of canada raked in over the course of its last leadership campaign a fortune plus an immense addition to its data bank for future reference and for collecting money. So there is a conflict there that is not easily resolved for parties. Bruce? Yeah, I think that's right. I think that Chantal has touched on a lot of really important points that were basically the old delegated system had some advantages over the chaos that is the one member, one vote scenario that we see playing out so often these days, but it also had some disadvantages. Chantal mentioned a couple of them. The importance of these kind of party luminaries and party executives and elected people who carry the

party's banner having perhaps a heavier influence on the selection process isn't just a question of saying, well, these are our elites and let's treat our elites specially. There is an inherent logic to it, which goes along the lines of these people know the consequences of choosing somebody who hasn't really spent a lot of time thinking about the issues, who doesn't really have a developed relationship with the base of the party so that there could be an animated and successful election campaign, who doesn't perhaps have the ability to deal with the media and communicate successfully. case are better applied by people who are deeply involved in politics than by people who were approached by a Facebook friend and encouraged to buy a five or a ten dollar membership as their first act of involvement in politics. Having said that, one of the chief disadvantages of the delegated convention and the party luminaries having these special

kind of voting weights is that it can create a situation where people who aren't part of that cohort feel as though the party's really being run by gatekeepers or establishment types and there's not enough input from the grassroots and there's not enough concomitant effort to recruit new people to the party and that ends up kind of drying up fundraising and organizing for elections so finding that balance is really really tricky and i don't know that i've seen anybody any party that's been particularly successful at it right now yes just yesterday in addition to watching the trust thing play out where, you know, I think that what will have to happen now there is that they'll have to change the rules again so that the party members, so that the MPs have the power to remove a leader. Because right now, the rules say that leader has to be able to stay in that office for

a year before any move can be made against them. So they're going to go back to the drawing board and they're going to change those rules and they're probably going to change the rules that apply to whether the members get a vote on Rishi Sunak. All of which is to say they built a vote in terms of how to decide these things that doesn't work. In BC, in British Columbia, yesterday, and playing out today, and maybe through the weekend, we see a really remarkable situation where a lot of people were sold memberships in the provincial New Democratic Party in order to support Anjali Appadurai. She had run as an NDP candidate in the last federal election, but isn't part of the provincial caucus, has no support from any provincial caucus members as I'm aware of it, but was backed by very prominent environmentalists in the province

of British Columbia. And it looked like almost, I don't know if the road hostile takeover is correct, but certainly to the caucus and the cabinet, I think of the BC government, it would have felt like that had she been allowed to continue her candidacy. But her candidacy was disqualified by the NDP yesterday in a choice that I'm sure was very difficult for the party because it doesn't

sound very democratic. It doesn't sound logical for a populist-oriented party of the left to say this person who has assembled as many as 10,000 new members for our party can't be our leader. So I find that this is a crucial period that we're going through where parties really need to be careful how they evaluate. I don't know, the last point I'll make, Peter, you said, should it be easier or harder to remove a leader? And I think that on balance, if I had to pick, it probably should be a little bit harder in some situations because we seem to be living in an era where the instinct to get frustrated and upset with the lack of instantaneous success is maybe overweighted. And that we need a little bit more stability in politics than what the horror show in the UK is showing us. Well, it certainly seems odd when you look at the Conservative Party with its last two leaders before Polyev, both of whom only got to run one election, both of whom won more votes than anybody else in that election. And they get turfed.

It's just you look at that and you go, wait a minute, this doesn't exactly make a lot of sense. But that's the way the system is working right now. Chantal, you wanted to say something there? The only leader in recent history who was given a second chance and succeeded was Stephen Harper. And the circumstances were very, very different in the sense that he had just reunited the party. And Paul Martin called an election or went into an election

without Stephen Harper having had even a chance to pick the furniture in his leader's office. So, that was really different. The other leader who was given many chances and who went on to do really well was jack layton but the ndp for a long time had a tradition to to which it made a notable exception with thomas mulcair of uh giving its leaders more than one kick at the camp the The conservatives, not so much. But that being said, there's, I mean, there's not a happy history of leaders being given second chances. But I, for one, I'm more comfortable with the confidence vote from the membership at the convention that comes after a defeat, an election defeat, than at the notion that caucus within six months of an

election will dump a leader because a leader who thinks he's going to lose a confidence vote usually decides to step down or and stop at least being told to step down by more than 50 people in a room who have are sad that they're not getting keys to a limousine and the government department to run. Okay, before we started this conversation by talking about what was happening and unfolding in the United Kingdom, and I just want to close out on it

because there's been an increasing degree of discussion in the last few days that the root of the problem for the British Conservative Party, aside from the worldwide situation on the economy, is all about Brexit. That they brought it in, they supported it, they encouraged it, they delivered it. And every time you turn around, it would seem,

it's certainly from the critics, that they can point to Brexit as being the problem. Was Brexit the problem, and does it continue to be? Bruce? Brexit is both problem and symptom of a larger problem. I mean, I think the idea that David Cameron had, which is that you take this incredibly charged discussion in the UK, which was partly animated by some feeling there were legitimate economic and other challenges posed to Great Britain by being part of that market. A large part of the momentum for Brexit wasn't really about that. It was a bit of a cover for racial tensions or frustration with immigration. I don't want to say racism. Maybe I just did.

Maybe that's what I really mean. But Brexit wasn't really the product of careful political and policy thought, at least not exclusively, and maybe not in the majority sense. And I think that David Cameron felt like it was not really a serious threat. And so the way to put it down as an idea is to put it to a referendum, which is, I think we've talked about before, is just generally a terrible idea and turned out to be the most terrible idea that he could have had. So the referendum went the other way. And, you know, just to bring it forward to today, Truss, as I recall, was a remainer. She would have voted not to exit. Sunak was a leaver, but probably is looking at the economy of Britain today and thinking maybe that's not been such a good solution. The people remain divided, but the net effect has been a loss of trust and confidence

in the future of the UK economy and the ability of governments to make sound decisions on the part of people. So Brexit has been like Trump for America, this huge flashing symbol of what can go wrong, not the cause of it necessarily, but partly a cause and partly symptom. And hopefully, somewhere along the way, we're kind of learning from this that when we bump into these kinds of mistakes, we avoid them rather than charge into them because the cliques that make us angry make us angrier and so on and so forth. This whole idea from my standpoint that the more Internet we added to our lives, the more populism we get, the more populism we get, the more bad faith clownish politicians we get. And we need to reverse that somehow.

Chantelle, do you want a quick thought on the Brexit situation? Yeah, well, I will note that we had clownish politicians long before the internet, and some of them got to elevated positions without any help from social media. Ignorance existed before the internet. On Brexit, the age breakdown between those who supported Brexit and those who opposed it tells you a large part of the story. That is that younger people did not want Brexit. That is not the future they had in mind.

I agree with Bruce. I'll say it differently, that Brexit was in part a backlash against diversity, a craving for a return to a simpler world, a more homogenous world, which there is no going back to. But we have seen that nostalgia, not just in the UK, where it played out on a massive stage, but in other parts of the world, including in this country. Now, I think the UK, the British people were sold a damaged bill of goods when they were sold Brexit, and that the pandemic for a long time

hid the realities of what the economic consequences of Brexit would be. And now it's a perfect storm, Brexit, but also a deteriorating world economy. I think it was Paul Wells last night on the at-issue panel who said you can't replace being part of the European Union on the trade front with a Canada-UK trade deal. It's not a substitute. I'm also curious to see whether it will lead the conservative movement in this country and some of its leaders. I'm thinking Andrew Scheer here, but not exclusively, to rethink how excited they were about Brexit and how they supported it. out why a party that was so free trade-ish in all senses of the world would have so many prominent people cheering on Brexit. And then the only thing I could come up with was that they craved for an Anglosphere-dominated world that they felt they belonged to. Obviously, I don't really feel

that I'm part of that club, so I'm a bit skeptical. But what else would justify, if you're a Canadian politician, thinking that Brexit is a great idea? The only other people I saw in Canada who felt it was a great idea happened to be Sovereignist thinkers in Quebec who said, this goes to show that a people can decide its own future and break away from something so it's a a strange match of people in on this side of the pond who thought this was a great idea and i suspect it's going to be like the conservative contention that we should have gone to iraq with with the bush administration people are going to start forgetting that they ever supported brexit All right. One other thing, one other dimension, Peter, that I was thinking about because… We seem to have lost you, Bruce. You're…

Frozen. You're frozen in time. So we'll use that freezing in time to take a quick break and hopefully get Bruce back right after this. The system is really geared towards producing public policies that have faith. Okay, we've got the gremlins, as they say, have been worked out of the system. We got Bruce back. And Bruce, just so you know, we basically lost your whole intervention there. We didn't hear anything you had to say. So you might as well start it all over again.

All right. Peter, I was reminded last night reading something that I think TVO ran a piece about, which is the divisions between younger people and older people, but particularly what they were focused on was how younger people were really becoming more and more doubtful about whether democracies as they observed them or lived them were functioning in their interests. We've seen similar data in Canada and the US where young people tend to start thinking increasingly, especially with housing affordability being the way that it is, that the system, capitalism and democracy together is a little bit geared towards the interests of older, more precisely that. Younger people would have voted to, would have stayed in the EU. Older people were the ones who were saying, we're better off without.

And that generational divide hasn't really come up in a significant way in the course of the current leadership turmoil here, but it still exists. And the search for an economic future that's more rational rather than populist and kind of fairy tale telling, that's a syndrome that I still see in the UK. I see some of it in Alberta as well. I think it's probably going to be one of the things that's the most difficult for new Premier Danielle Smith to deal with, is that the version of Alberta that she says she champions is not one that is really in sync with the value system and the interests as the younger voters of Alberta see for themselves. And it's clearly not just the younger voters. I mean, you just look at the results of municipal elections

in various parts of Alberta, especially Calgary and Edmonton, would suggest a similar kind of pattern that you're talking about in terms of young people. Okay, let's move on. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday edition, Good Talk with Chantal Hébert and Bruce Anderson. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks are on your favourite podcast platform.

Okay, I want to shift it to Canada, and specifically to Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance. I recall when we had our kind of last session of Good Talk before the summer break back in June, we talked about the things that certain people needed to do, certain politicians. And one of them was Chrystia Freeland. And the conclusion, I think, of the Good Talk panel was that she had to show a little empathy on the economic side and show people that not only did she care, but

she was working at trying to deal with some of the economic problems Canada had. Well, we went into a summer where for the most part, we didn't hear from her, except with her occasional thoughts about the situation in Ukraine, but not on the economic front. She may well have been working at it, but we weren't hearing about it. Well, we've certainly been hearing from her on that file in the last week to 10 days, making it clear from her point of view that the economy was going to face some difficult times more than just the ones we're going through right now. And also in the last couple of days,

sending the signal to her cabinet colleagues that if they're looking at the next budget to include a bunch of money for them on their departments to do new things, that they should probably think again, because if they're going to get new money for new projects, they're going to have to get it from their old projects. In other words, they're going to have to make cuts of an equal amount that they're asking for for new things from their department. So here's the question.

Is Chrystia Freeland back at the controls, the economic levers of the country? I don't think she ever lost those controls, but much more in the public eye on those dealing with those issues than she had been. And what difference will that make? Who wants to go first, Bruce? Well, I think that's the intent, Peter. I think the, you know, just to go back to the comment you made about what our earlier discussion was,

I felt like there was a period of time where there needed to be a little bit more, I don't know if empathy was the word I would use, but attentiveness anyway, to the fact that people were having trouble dealing with the price hikes that they were seeing for some of the essentials that they were buying in their lives. But I think that the more general kind of challenge that the government has had, in addition to the relatively low profile of the finance minister through a number of summer months, is this, that this government, any government really doesn't like to say things are changing and going badly, and we need to revise our approach. So governments, incumbent governments generally will be the last to decide to say that, especially if they're a

little bit running out of political acumen, steam, agility, whatever you want to call it, which I think has been a little bit the case with the Trudeau government. So it's taken them a while to kind of get to the point where they're saying things have changed. There are challenges to say something other than everything's going fine. And if it isn't going fine, we'll write checks to solve the problem. And now they're in a world where they're saying everything around the world is going in a more challenging way. We're going to face some challenges here. And more recently, Minister Freeland said that or allowed it to be understood. I forget whether it was a leak or

a statement. Sometimes the line between those two is very, very thin. But the point that she got out there was that if ministers are approaching the next budget consultations with her, that if they have ideas for new spending, they have to come with ideas for how that is going to be affordable within the context of the fiscal regime that has been laid out. That's the first time I think that we've heard such a clear statement during the Trudeau government, really. I might be wrong about that, but it feels right about fiscal rectitude. And I think it's going to be seen as a welcome thing, even though it does mean it puts in play whether there are new programs that some people might be looking forward to and hope get approved, whether the cost of introducing those new programs might mean the loss of some other spending in certain areas. That's always a potential source of controversy for a government. But I think overall, for Trudeau, it's better to have a finance minister who sounds like they are on top of the evolving economic situation, not intending to use more government spending exclusively as the way to solve the challenges on the horizon. But that's

like the first chapter of a several chapter story that's going to be more difficult to write. No question about it. All right. Now I get to say, I think for the first time in the history of the bridge, Chantal, you will need to unmute yourself.

I am not muted. I have a lot to say, but I was waiting for Bruce to mute himself. It took a while. So I've got loads of notes now. For some reason, your screen says mute, but that's okay. I'll ignore it. Mine doesn't. So this is the day when gremlins are really playing with us.

They are. Okay, I believe that the government is undergoing a course correction. Chrystia Freeland's few last set of speeches in this country, I'm not talking about the Washington speech that still is father for many conversations on Parliament Hill these days, could be called the doom and gloom tour. Things are bad and they're going to get badder, which stands in sharp contrast with sunny waves. Remember sunny waves?

Do you remember sunny waves? That's like remembering the best day of summer on the day of a snowstorm. That's how remote it feels at this point. As for the news that she told her cabinet colleagues, you're going to have to not show me more than five projects. And if you are going to want new projects, you're going to find at least 25% of the cost within your existing budgets. And clearly, you will have to cut something. The only way that that could become public with so much details is through a leak. And so that is how it became public. There are consequences to that beyond the fact that we

will see a fiscal update later on in the year, probably next month from what I understand, and a budget in the spring. And remember that at least one minority government almost fell over a fiscal update. That would be Stephen Harper and the parliamentary crisis in 2008. So these things can actually happen. But this is a government that is about to enter, and I don't think it will have a choice but to do so, in negotiations with the provinces over health care funding. And a prime minister who has promised to increase that funding.

That's a significant chunk of money at the time when the finance minister is going around telling ministers, if you want new programs, you're going to have to find ways to cut it. But 25% of the financing from existing budgets still opens the door to a lot of new spending add on to that the health care spending i'm curious to see how this message of fiscal rectitude and for now it is only a message will play out on the front of the agreement between the ndp and the liberals to keep the government in place and to support the liberals on non-confidence votes for the foreseeable future, whether it will increase tensions between the partners to that particular affair, whether the liberals are setting themselves up next spring to be defeated

on a fiscally responsible budget and then go to the polls trying to show that. And I'm not saying they want to go to the polls, but I can see that scenario playing out, or whether the liberals and the NDP are playing chicken with each other, assuming that the other doesn't want an election and will do what it takes to please the other partner. But it is an interesting development. I don't think it's happening without the support from Prime Minister Trudeau.

Although I don't know if you guys have seen it, but this week, Justin Trudeau and Frist of Freeland put out one of the worst videos that I've seen being shot on Parliament Hill since Stéphane Zion looked like he was in a cave, assuming that he was going to become prime minister. It featured Trudeau and Freeland, French and English, basically taking turns to talk about how they were on top of the economic file.

And when one was speaking, the other one was nodding to the point where you would think that something had happened to his or her neck. It's really something to see. One is much taller than the other, and they're both standing. And it seemed to me that the message was, don't listen to what we're saying, because you couldn't. They were nodding so much that you lost track of whatever the other was saying. Seemed to me, can you see that we're really, really on the same page here uh and i kind of wondered

who in the world thought this kind of video was a great idea it it could have been a spoof on this hour is 30 uh two minutes or or whatever it looked like that uh and it it kind of sent a strange message that we really really really need to tell you that we are on the same page. Except that you won't know what the page is because this gets lost in the body language. I remember the Stéphane Dion video. And none of us could believe at the time that that would be put out into the public sphere. But then we said, well, you know, he's kind of new at it. His staff isn't that big.

They're not that experienced. You know, it must have just slipped through the cracks. But when you've got a prime minister who's been in office for, you know, seven or eight years, kind of knows how to use the available media options to him, allows something like that to get out, had the staff around him to allow that to happen, you know, it's rather remarkable that we would even be discussing that.

It just seems bizarre, to say the least. They must have hoped what was going on in the UK, maybe they were trying to be in the spirit of all those things we saw on social media, the Airbnb for 10 Downing Street, the cat in front of a lector and saying it's time for stability. I mean, so they were totally in the spirit of the gong show aspect of videos. Well, there's certainly a gong show out there. Do you have any thoughts on this, Bruce, before we move on, or do you want to leave it at that?

Well, I'll be brief. Promises, promises. Well, I think we should run the clock back on those last two interjections just to measure them. I'm just trying to match you. Side by side. Yeah, I think we should run the clock back on those last two interjections just to measure. I'm just trying to match. Yeah, I think you did. No, I'll be brief because, you know, as both of you know, one of my daughters used to run communications for Justin Trudeau and was in the prime minister's office for a number of years. And so maybe I'm biased, probably.

Well, I am biased, but she hasn't been there for a number of years. And so maybe I'm biased, probably. Well, I am biased, but she hasn't been there for a number of years. When I look at that kind of communications product, not just as a one-off, I look at it in the context of, I think, the quality of communications management coming out of the Prime Minister's office. And I have to say, I don't think it's where it should be. I don't think it's consistent with the level that they would have expected in the past and that they'd achieved in the past. And I don't think it's particularly competitive with, I think it's probably competitive with the NDP, but I don't think it's competitive with the Conservatives. And so more work needs to be done by the government in that space. And it's not just that one video that I have in mind when I say that.

All right. Speaking of the conservatives, I have one quick question on them as well, and it deals also with communication strategy. That's right after this. And we're back with the final segment of Good Talk. Chantal Hébert, Bruce Anderson with us. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Okay, we're talking about communication strategy. Pierre Pauliev has given a number of interviews in the past few weeks they've all been on in the French language they've all been to French stations

networks dealing just en français he hasn't done any English language interviews which is kind of a pattern for him going back some time during the leadership campaign I think he only gave one interviews, which is kind of a pattern for him going back some time. During the leadership campaign, I think he only gave one, and that was with Jordan Peterson, the like-thinking University of Toronto professor, at least on some issues.

What's going on here? Chantal, we've got a couple of minutes here. What's going on with this strategy on the part of Poyev? Take as much as you want, by the way. Stephen Harper also had a preference for French language media. For some reason, he would tell his staff he felt he was getting a fairer shake in French than he was in English, possibly because, like Pierre Poyev, he doesn't spend his life in a French-language environment. But it is a fact that, I think I said this before, we don't really have a translation in this province for mainstream media. And that debate is not really central to

the debate over the media or the perception that a political leader would not go and do an interview with La Presse or Le Journal de Québec or TVA would strike people as very, very odd. It is expected that those leaders will go on the Quebec media and account for themselves. I think that whoever is advising Pierre Poilievre has figured out the difference between one side of the language divide and the other. He needs to introduce himself to Quebecers, show that his French is the best of the previous three leaders.

I include Stephen Harper in the early days in this. And he also needs to give people a chance to see for themselves who he is. And he cannot do that in this province without going on what he would consider mainstream media outlets. You know, yeah, I'm reminded, Peter, that he didn't have very strong support

from the Quebec Conservative Caucus. And so one of the things that I felt like he would need to do, having assumed the leadership, was mend those fences, tend to that question. I think that any math that gets him to a majority government scenario has to include a particular focus on not letting the conservative brand slip further, and hopefully doing a little bit better than that. So it makes good sense for him to be doing what he's doing to try to increase his profile and get some sense among Quebecers of who he is. I also think on the converse side, it's probably,

if it's strategy or not, I don't know, but it's probably not a bad idea for him to be a little bit underexposed in the rest of Canada right now. While he kind of asserts his leadership and chooses his critics roster, you know, sometimes less is more and more effective. And I also think that the conversation that we're having as a country or to the extent that people are, we are, about the Emergencies Act and that commission is awkward for Pierre Pauliev. Another reason why he might want to not be in the face of the media every day. But one assumes that if he's going to reach out to followers and potential voters, he's going to have to do it in more than just doing the odd tea party in different parts of the country. Yeah, but he's got time. He's got time.

For now, I mean, it's not doing him any harm to be proceeding this way. And I think Stephen Harper demonstrated that you can thumb your nose at the Parliamentary Press Gallery and be a successful politician in this country. That being said, we talk about Pierre Poiliev giving interviews to mainstream media in French, but there is also content. He has used those interviews to warn that he is changing the conservative offer to Quebec and to the Quebec government. The days when conservative leaders were basically saying yes to anything that Premier Legault wanted are probably over. His offer, and he said it in one of the interviews, is it's not going to be about Quebec nationalism, the conservative offer. It's going to be about economics.

A lot more leeway on climate and environmental assessments, for instance, which works both in the West and in Quebec. But don't expect him to be carrying a lot of water for Premier Legault on his contention that Quebec should have full control of immigration. I don't think that's on. There is a repositioning that is in progress under this new leader. And he used these interviews wisely enough to signal that change before it becomes an issue in an election campaign. Okay. Well, I understand. I get it in terms of the strategy in Quebec.

What I don't get is the strategy in terms of the rest of Canada, if you will, but specifically Ontario. If he's going to win an election, he's got to win Ontario. But he needs time because if he goes into an interview now, he's going to be asked about the Bank of Canada, the World Economic Forum, and the convoy. Right, I get it. There is no message that will get through those three

that he set himself up for. Well, maybe not. But you're also suggesting that the possibility exists that the Liberals could pull the plug in the spring if conditions are right. So he's got to get out of it at some point. Or those things are going to haunt him all the time. A tumultuous economy where he gets – I mean, he's able to get up in the House of Commons and talk about the tumultuous economy and the cost of living. And I think he's actually done a pretty effective job of tagging the government with the problem of inflation.

And I agree with Chantal that in addition to the three questions that he would have trouble escaping, the divisions between him and the Ford government and the caution that he would have to exercise in talking about Daniel Smith is another reason not to be too anxious for media coverage now. All right. Listen, thank you both. And apologies to all, to both of you and to the audience of a few of the technical gremlins we had today. We usually manage to get around those, but today they set us back a little bit. But nevertheless, conversation, good conversation. Lots of equal time, I thought, for both of you.

I've got the stopwatch. I know what the numbers are. Good to see you both. Take care. Have a good weekend. Good to see you guys. That's it for a good talk for this week. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again on Monday.