The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Is Pierre Poilievre Getting The 2016 Donald Trump Treatment?

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Chantal and Bruce debate just what kind of treatment the media is giving Conservative Leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre and compare it to the treatment Donald Trump got in 2016.  Fair or unfair?

Are you ready for Good Talk? And of course you're ready for Good Talk. It's Friday. Peter Mansbridge here, Chantelle Hebert, and Bruce Anderson are also on the line. And we've got a few things to talk about. I want to start off this way. If you recall in 2016, when Donald Trump was running first for the Republican nomination for president and then for president against Hillary Clinton, he had quite the campaign. It got a lot of attention. The media loved the guy because he drove ratings. Audiences were up, whether they were watching or reading or listening and how did he do it well he do it he did it a number of ways he did it by slagging his opponents

and in some cases really slagging them with fabricated stories lies as we call them these days back then we were much more gentle, the media I'm talking about, in terms of Trump, partly because he was driving ratings. He was a real interesting figure on the campaign trail, and a lot of people were tuned into watching him. He got big crowds out when he campaigned across the country. Did he have detailed policy? No. He made some kind of vague promises. Wouldn't explain them. Said, you know, you'll have to wait to see

how I'm going to do these things, but trust me, I can do them. So he had all this kind of magic around him. And as I said, the media loved the guy. Now, I raise all that because the other day somebody came up to me and they said, you know, you guys, meaning the men and women of the media in general, are doing the same thing with Pierre Poliev that you did with Donald Trump. He's got big crowds, and so you're following him, you're playing the crowd thing, and that's what you're talking about. And there's no question, he does have big crowds and so you're following him, you're playing the crowd thing. And that's what you're talking about.

And there's no question, he does have big crowds. At least bigger than anybody else is getting on the conservative leadership campaign trail. But really, is he like Donald Trump? Is there enough discussion about Polyev and his promises and his statements and his policies is there more of that than this person was giving credit to or is it a lot like trump that they're kind of caught up with the aura around this guy as he starts off his campaign he's no donald trump let's not get ourselves But you see the comparison and the reason it's being made. Is it something that actually you can take to the bank?

Is this a real comparison or should we just ignore it? Chantal, start. I was listening to you recount the Trump attraction, and I thought you were describing Justin Trudeau on his way to the liberal leadership. As it happens, coincidence, I was looking up in my calendar to see when it was the last time I went to Red Deer, Alberta. I apologize to the people of Red Deer that it was a decade ago in 2012. At that point, Justin Trudeau is not yet the Liberal leader. That's going to happen in the spring. I happened to visit Red Deer about a week after Justin Trudeau had come to town. The people I had dinner with before I spoke at the college there told me about people lining up

to see Justin Trudeau. Now, Red Deer is to the liberals what Toronto is to the conservatives, a wasteland. And by the way, Red Deer remains a conservative stronghold a decade on. But people were curious to see Justin Trudeau, not for his policies, but for who he was, because he was something different, and also for his name. So, to say that we've never seen something like this, and you know the rest of the story, a formidable social media following means that Justin Trudeau continued to attract those crowds all the way to the leadership. And if Bruce can remember a serious policy debate amongst the contenders for the liberal leadership in 2013, I will forever be impressed by his capacity to remember details,

because I cannot, and I have a good memory of things that happened. I cannot remember a policy debate that took place over that period. The media also loved Justin Trudeau. Anything that had the Trudeau name in 2012, 2013 would sell newspapers clicks. And so his crowds were all over the map. Now, to the Trump comparison, I would warn the many liberals and others who have come to use the comparison to Donald Trump as a way to ward off Canadian conservatives to be careful because it grows old very quickly. Donald Trump, the Canadian Trump, was supposed to between Premier Ford and Donald Trump, one of those is that I have never seen any evidence, for instance, that Doug Ford craved for an era when Canada was more white or where more males were in power and females stayed in the kitchen. He is totally comfortable with diversity. I would say the same thing about Pierre Poirier.

He is obviously comfortable in diversity, and as he should, because you cannot win an election in this country on a, although Maxime Bernier is trying, on a we're going to be, you know, doing away with this notion of diversity because it's just a vision of the imagination. Another difference, Donald Trump was a newcomer to politics. Pierre Poilievre has been in the House of Commons for decades and he has served in senior positions on both sides of the House of Commons, which is more than one could have said about Justin Trudeau, by the way, in 2012. So he does bring some parliamentary and political experience to his bid.

You are right that Donald Trump had fabricated stories about his opponents. And you are also right to say that Pierre Poilievre has been spending time on the social media attacking his opponents. It may not be elegant, but so far the accusations or the attacks have been based on facts. Yes, Premier Chagall in Quebec did not have a great health care management track record and did not fulfill his promises. And up to a point, that is fair game that Jean Chalier brings a record, as does Patrick Brown, and it's not all great. You can agree or disagree.

I've watched from a distance some of his gatherings, and while there has been a lot of social media negative attacks, uh, I don't think that, uh, what you watch when he is talking to those crowds is the Trumpian style of, uh, raising passions by making people hate rivals. That is not what I see that is happening. So I'm not saying there are not common points. Populism is populism. I am just saying that it is glib to say,

here is our Trump coming up to us just because you're scared by the size of his crowds. And by the way, it's one thing to attract crowds in a leadership campaign and it will or may win you the leadership. But that doesn't mean that the people who are coming to see you have voted anything other than non-liberal over the past decade. All right. Well, that lays out a pretty good case on one side of the question. Where are you on this, Bruce? Well, he offered to have me go first. So it's, you know, very helpful. And I listened to a lot of things that I agreed with and a couple of things where I was like, I don't know if I'm exactly in the same place, but it's great to talk with you again, Chantal and Peter. And I was really looking forward to this conversation. I think that the similarities for me are the media are going to

be interested in crowds. Crowds are a thing that take everything that a politician says that they're succeeding at and add some evidence of reality to it physical reality pictures as you used to always sort of remind me peter that in the television business news to be a good news story there needs to be a picture that's an interesting picture and i think crowds represent an interesting picture and an incontrovertible piece of evidence that a politician is attracting some degree of interest and maybe even enthusiastic support. And not every politician can do that. I do remember Justin Trudeau was doing that. I remember his father doing that when I was a young

boy in Valleyfield. And his father came through the town to open, what I think was a post office or something like that. It was a new building. It was built out, you know, as part of the 100th anniversary of Canada. And he rode through town in an open roof convertible. And everybody in the town, it seemed, came out to see him. And it wasn't

a campaign. It was just the prime minister's coming to town. And that was a different time. But so I think that's an area of similarity. Polyev can attract people. And why does he attract people? And what are the parallels to Trump? I think the first is that Polyev, in his life in politics politics has understood a thing that Donald Trump understand quite well, which is that there's a reason reality TV became popular, more popular, in my opinion, than it deserved to be, is that it always contained a certain amount of shock value, people would do things or say things that were completely unexpected. Now, we all can know that some of that, even though they

call it unscripted TV actually is scripted, but producers are looking for people to do shocking things. But just like Trump made the latest version before the political version of his name as a reality TV star, by saying things like you're fired and using kind of really blunt language. And his way of interacting with other people was impolite, rude, kind of disturbing on some level. That made people pay attention. I think Pauliev in politics has had a similar kind of path. The way that he has conducted himself through most of his time in the House of Commons has been more blunt, more edgy, more caustic, more disruptive. And that has attracted attention to him. And I think it's served him well in terms of making him appear to be a bigger figure in politics than maybe some of the other contenders.

Well, certainly than some of the other contenders in this leadership race. Another point of similarity for me is he approaches the biggest problems with the idea that a big problem requires you to answer with a simple solution. And so his answer to the question of what to do about housing affordability sounds really simple, except that nobody can really unpack what it is. His answer to inflation, that we're going to use cryptocurrency, might sound simple to some people, but I haven't heard anybody explain to me how it's even plausible. And I think that's a pattern that Donald Trump used. He talked about immigration as a big problem. He talked about all kinds of things. And in every instance, his solution was a really simple sounding solution, because he knew that there were a lot of voters who didn't really want to hear, well, it's complicated, and there's, you could do this, but this might go wrong,

and that sort of thing. There has been some similarity, although I agree with Chantal, but less so from Pierre Paulievre lately. But Donald Trump was harshly critical of his opponents. He called them names. And it seemed so unpresidential and undignified that the media couldn't stop themselves from covering it extensively. And I don't blame journalists for doing that, because it really is newsworthy that somebody who's running for office is doing this. I think that many of them did it on the assumption

that voters would be as horrified as they were in watching this spectacle unfold. And of course, as it turns out, voters weren't that, a lot of voters weren't that horrified. Now, I don't think Polyev has done as much of it in the last five or six weeks as he did in his previous years in politics, but I think it has been more his habit than not to approach opponents with pretty harsh criticisms. Now, I do want to say that I think that the relationship with journalism right now is evolving. And I don't know where it's going to end up. But I've seen some positive signs that there's scrutiny and there's a challenge function. And part of that, I think, is unlike in the Trudeau leadership, the Justin Trudeau leadership campaign, there is a, there's at least some question about who might win this race. Whether it might be Charest or Patrick Brown. I don't know that I can make a plausible case that

that they have a great chance. But I think that there is at least a dynamic where, I don't remember, I heard Chantal's challenge to me, and I'm not going to answer it directly. But I don't remember in the Justin Trudeau leadership race that there was really an instinct on the part of other parts of the party to say, no, no, no, we can't have that guy. He's the wrong guy for us. We need something else. And the Charest campaign is definitely saying that about the Polyev campaign. And Chantal wants to jump in and tell me why. Okay, yes. Because, you know, time does erase some memories. And one of those is how the Quebec federal liberals felt about having another Trudeau as leader, thinking how in the world are we going to sell the Trudeau name? Or for the record, do we forget that after the Constitution was patrioted 40 years ago this week, Quebec abandoned the federal liberals. And the name that stuck through the Turner era, despite his support for me,

Jean Chrétien, despite his record in the referendum, which pleased federalists, despite the narrow result, the Trudeau name endured. And there were questions within and outside the party across Quebec as to how in the world are we going to sell a party that is down in the dumps, disappeared from Francophone Quebec and is now going to be led by that darling of the Toronto media called Trudeau. So, yes, there were concerns over that and they were expressed by some liberals. Martin Cauchon comes to mind to name just one um a couple of points i wasn't finished though can i say one more thing i knew that i knew that i would draw fire for uh for that but i just wanted to finish by saying that the question of the scrutiny that mr poliev is being put to now to me is it's going to

be an interesting period because I saw a piece I think CTV ran it that sort of raised doubts about whether or not Mr. Polyev could be credible as an advocate for housing affordability since he had since his wife owned a rental property and he had a part of a rental property in Calgary. And on the one hand, I kind of felt, well, it's good if you're running for that level of office to endure a certain amount of scrutiny. On the other hand, that didn't look to me like a significant issue in terms of the scale of what was being described. And so I don't think it was wrong to run the story, but I think it would be wrong for anybody to imagine that they can make a meal out of it politically.

On the other hand, I haven't seen very much scrutiny of the cryptocurrency promise. Yesterday, I saw a piece that said he promised that there would be no lockdowns forever in the future and that he would end vaccine mandates forever. And I don't know how a responsible person could make that kind of undertaking without it drawing some pretty intense scrutiny. It doesn't really make sense as a matter of leadership to say that you can create a world, just will it that way, so that those

kinds of measures never need to be taken. I think the last thing I would say is that the relationship with the media during the Trump campaign was almost one where a lot of media were covering him extensively, but were horrified by him. And that over time, they came to regret how much coverage they gave him a little bit. And so there is a cautionary tale there. I don't think that in the case of Mr. Polyev, the media are horrified him, horrified by him. And I don't think they love giving him that much coverage either. I think we're in this kind of gray period where it remains to be seen how this race is going to go but i'm happy to see charrette kind of mixing it up and i hope patrick brown does and i hope the fight becomes a little bit more intense on an

ideas basis and charrette was doing ideas yes i'll let chantelle back in here in a second the one thing that i i think it's worth looking at in terms of the race is that people are actually talking about it, which is unlike the last two Conservative Party leadership races, where it went for weeks and months on end before anybody was really even talking about it. They were having debates across the country, wasn't getting hardly any coverage. Here, and perhaps it's because of the kind of campaign that the lead candidates, so to speak, have been running and the,

the occasional shots they're taking at each other. And some of the, you know, I'm just going to say outlandish, not really outlandish, but sort of headline grabbing attention that they're getting in terms of who's out there listening and watching them. You know, you mentioned earlier about the importance of pictures, Bruce, and they really

are. And it's not just television. It's also in newspapers. You know, people are attracted to the picture of a story. And sometimes they don't listen to the commentary that's being expressed on television that goes with the pictures, but they are locked in on the pictures. And when it's either a big crowd or a small crowd, or whether it's somebody, you know, has been said at these things or understand the differences in the policies that are being expressed, but they remember the pictures. And it's all happening at a time, and we'll probably get into this in later weeks, but the media industry is undergoing these huge changes. You know, just this week after spending $300 million, CNN going into the streaming service business with a new channel, they've killed it already after just a couple of weeks that it's bombing. And there were a number of reasons for that. But no media organization right now is comfortable understanding what is happening in terms of its relationship with its

audience. And it will be involved in this issue as well in terms of covering political campaigns and leadership campaigns in Canada. So it's really an involved story on a number of different levels. But Chantal, you wanted to pick up on something Bruce said there. I'm going to first pick up on something you said about pictures. It's not just pictures. This is a leadership campaign. This leadership campaign is about signing up members. If you're filling a hall

with 1,500 people and 300 of them are waiting for an hour and a half to get their pictures taken with you, chances are some of them are going to become members that will eventually vote for you on September 10th. Or my comparison is that it's easier to fish in a barrel than to fish in a lake that has not been seeded with fish for 20 years, which would be Jean Charest's comparison. Now, here's a picture idea or a picture example. We've seen all week pictures, obviously, of Pierre Poiliev holding that big rally in Toronto, another one last night. I can't even remember the city because at this point, they all look the same.

They're outside Quebec. There have been crowds for Pierre Poiliev just about at every step of the way. And then I woke up this morning to Jean Charest's Twitter feed and it said, great event in Oakville last night. I don't doubt that it was great,

but if anyone attended beyond the four people, including Jean Charest and Tasha Carradine, who is one of the strategists who were there, it is not in any of the pictures. Now, my conclusion would be that if you did have a crowd, you would show it. You would show it. Why? Because that's how you create momentum and you get people to say, I want to come and see this. And that's not been happening.

But that contrast matters more than just because pictures sell papers or because pictures attract attention. They matter because if you are going to be selling memberships, chances are the best way to sell them is to attract people at your events and then sign them on. Otherwise, what are you doing? Fishing in the dark for people that you have not met and that you cannot convince. And that is why it matters that Pierre Poilievre is attracting those crowds, because those crowds mean members. He has a head start amongst the existing membership of the Conservative Party. That's a fact. But if he is also attracting new members, it means that the gap,

instead of narrowing, is becoming larger. That's just a reality. There is no point in going to denial. Pierre Poilievre's organization does not go to central casting and say, could I get a couple of thousands of extras tonight? I'll show them my picture so they know who they're cheering for. That's not happening. Those are actual real people who want to see what he's about. He is also campaigning because people seem to forget these things because they're underdogs, but he is campaigning against Chashage, one of the best campaigners of his generation, no contest, and Patrick Brown, someone who came from relative obscurity, the Harper backbench, to become the leader of the Conservative Party in Canada's

largest province. So if they're not doing any better, he has to be doing something right, whether you like it or not. He is so far having a better campaign, not just because of the crowds, but because his message goes to their heart. Bruce talks about the cryptocurrency. I Googled it. I found seven, eight, nine, ten stories in various media, French and English, and I'm not counting the television and radio because they won't show up as quickly on a Google search, of stories debunking Pierre Poiliev's policy. I don't think that the people who are attending those rallies, or even a lot of Canadians, care about the cryptocurrency promise of Pierre Poiliev any more than they worried about the budgets that would balance themselves, according to Justin Trudeau. Because Poiliev's connection to the people who are coming out

is not, and I'm not saying this in a demeaning way, but it's not through their minds, it's through their hearts. It has more to do with emotions than it has to do with calculation. And that was true of Justin Trudeau, too. And Trump. The conservatives would tell you everything that they did about, you know, the budgets balancing themselves is a rather stupid statement. I wasn't the only stupid statement. It just had no traction because the way that Trudeau connected with voters was at a level that was not

the long explanation as to why what Justin Trudeau was saying made absolutely no sense and showed that he probably wasn't ready for a prime time quote unquote. So this is where this is happening now. I can't tell you that in three years it's going to be the same, but I think the liberals should see from that a fair warning that their early contention that the best outcome would be a Pierre Poitier win probably needs to be revisited. That description you just gave of how he's appealing to the people is the same as what Trump did in 2016. And it's true, though. I hear you.

I hear you. But there were levels of how that played out in terms of the kind of politician that we were looking at. Anyway, it's interesting. Bruce, do you want a final thought on this before we move on? Well, I think that what occurs to me is that over the years that I've been studying public opinion and how much people follow and know about the big issues and the complex choices available, it hasn't been an upward line graph of public knowledge and literacy about these issues. I would say that it hasn't also been the case that

more people became emotionally involved in the political choices that were before them or before the country. In fact, if anything, for most people, there's less emotional engagement. But for the people who are partisans, who've made a commitment to join a party, who feel such interest in politics that they're following these events closely, their emotional connection has become stronger, and in some cases has on in any party has eclipsed the importance of the policy issues. So I think it's important to kind of recognize that if you're a politician, and you're trying to win a leadership, that if you try to win it just with bookish kind of but smart ideas, we all know some examples of people who've tried to do that and they failed miserably because the

dynamic isn't really, the market isn't looking for that. The market that they're pitching to isn't looking for that. And the market beyond the market that they're pitching to has kind of lost touch in many instances with what those choices really reveal so i hear chantal saying she found eight or nine stories on this crypto thing i'm kind of looking at it more from the standpoint of i'm sure there are some i've seen some myself however we don't have a society that explores these hugely important choices effectively anymore and that's not just on the media it's on the voters too and it's on the political parties but we are where we are and um and hopefully we don't end up in a situation where because people

are fatigued with uh trudeau that we end up with somebody who's promised to do some things, and then follows through on them, but which would be really quite disruptive and unhelpful for people who want more housing affordability or who want a stable economy. And I think there is some risk of that. I don't want to overstate it because politicians can campaign on some ideas and then not follow through with them. But Pierre Polyev, more than any politician that I've seen in a long time, with the only exception of being Max Bernier, is somebody who relishes the disapproval of the institutions and the elite opinion. And he makes a meal of it all the time. And in that sense, he is also similar to Donald Trump

and dissimilar from all of the other candidates, I think, running in this leadership. Some of them are a little bit further from the mainstream, but they're not using their distance from the mainstream as an argument as to why you should vote for them in the same way that Polyev and Max Bernier do. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. I wonder if, I'm just curious as to whether Bruce read all those cryptocurrency analysis or just noticed them. Because I think that's part of the problem.

I think most people's eyes glaze over when they see a title about cryptocurrency and they move on as in okay next that's my that's my well i think yes i think that's a big challenge i watched stephen paul's uh be interviewed and there was one question at the end of the interview about it and he was to to say he was skeptical is to understate how poor an idea he thought it was, but he didn't elaborate in any way that would make a regular voter feel, oh, now I understand why this is a terrible idea. I saw the same thing. He didn't elaborate enough for me or you to explain it.

Exactly. And while it's not universal, you can find in discussing with senior players in the financial institution industry in Canada, when you bring this up, they look at you like, no, no, no, really,

you don't want to go there. But it is there and it's played out for whatever purpose that Pierre Palliot threw it out there and for whatever gain he threw it out there for. I'm not sure.

But as I say, it's out there. Okay, we're going to take a quick pause and come back and try and get a sense of the landscape. I mean, with all this chatter, is it really impacting anything in terms of Canadians' moods on politics and where they would place their vote? If there was a vote, which there isn't right now, but if there was one, where would they place that vote? We'll find out when we come back. All right, we're back. This is The Bridge, Friday edition. Good talk.

Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is traveling in Scotland, and so am I this week. Lucky, lucky people we all are these days. Okay, you're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, you're listening to Good Talk. All right, after all that discussion about the kind of campaign we're witnessing on the Conservative Leadership Party, leadership race, what impact, if any, is being had in terms of Canadians' attitudes towards the makeup of their parliament right now. If there was an election today, you've seen a number of polls in the last few months since the election last fall. And one of the things that Chantel noticed this week is that, for the most part, there hasn't been a lot of change in those numbers. They're pretty much where they were at election day and where they've been month after month since then. What is that telling us? I mean, there is no election right now, so there's no reason why people would have to really sit down

and think about it. But usually you see some movement, especially at a time of high-impact issues, and there are certainly high-impact issues. So what does it tell us that there isn't much movement? Bruce, you're the, you know, you're the pollster in the trio here. What's your assessment of that fact? Well, I think there are a couple of things that come to mind for me oh i guess the first is that about a third of the public doesn't vote another third votes but doesn't pay very much attention at all politics on a day-in-day-out basis they engage a little bit during the course of an election campaign to evaluate the choices and talk to friends and acquaintances and come to a view

and mark a ballot and then there's a third that are highly engaged now a lot of the third that are highly engaged are already spoken for in terms of they have party affinities they're not always rock solid party affinities, there can be a migration, there are centrist liberals and conservatives who switch party leanings back and forth, there are liberals and New Democrats who do the same thing. But a large majority of those, that last third, have a fairly consistent tendency in terms of their voting intention, which also means that events can happen and they may not on any given day say that they're going to change how they vote. The second thing I would say is that in the last, call it 22 or 23 years since the turn of the millennium,

there have been a few events where we've seen more seismic shifts. Typically, they have to do with, you know, weak liberal leadership for a period of time and strong NDP leadership created an orange wave in Quebec and looked like it could upend some of the kind of progressive boat patterns that we've seen for some time. And in the end, that hasn't manifested itself. Although there remains, I think, for a lot of active partisan liberals, an anxiety about whether the NDP could end up sounding like a more pure and simple and determined solution to the progressive policy choices that they favor. But the other thing has

been the splintering of the right has caused movement in the polls. And when the Reform Party came to federal politics, it essentially destroyed the Progressive Conservative Party, the Canadian Alliance came into play. And now we see the People's Party playing a smaller corrosive effect, but nonetheless unmistakable in terms of setting the landscape. So there can be things which cause disruption in these patterns. But without those kinds of things, the day in, day out issues rarely move the polls very much, in part because of the first point that I made. So many people don't pay attention except during election times. Still, it is an extraordinary time for the needle to be so stable. The war in Ukraine, the conservative leadership, which is getting, as we mentioned before,

a lot more attention. I think we've probably spent more time on it just today than over the entire time of the previous campaign. I'm kind of kidding here, but still, it is doing that. I opened my radio in French in the morning, and Jean Charest is on the radio explaining a health policy. That didn't happen in the morning and Jean Charest on the radio explaining a health policy. That didn't happen in the previous race. The NDP-Liberal deal, which is unique federally, hasn't moved the needle up or down in any significant way for either of the parties to that deal. It's as if it didn't

happen. The federal budget, the first of this term, which apparently has managed to satisfy those who voted for both the NDP and the Liberals. So no movement there. I think in part because we are election-weary at the federal level. We've had so many elections over the past five years, that people are saying, okay, we're going to wait to see how this happens. There are now three years to go. By the way, there was no sign of the orange wave beyond the election and the by-election of Thomas Mulcair and Outremont. When the 2011 campaign started, you could not have found a poll that saw any hint that an orange wave was in the making. Remember, on the night of the election special, we are about to go on set, Peter, and there is a column in La Presse from someone I'm not going to name for reasons that will become

apparent that actually says this orange wave is a mirage. Nothing's going to happen to the NDP tonight. They'll be lucky if they elect five people in Quebec. And I remember you asking me what do you think of this? And I'm answering, this is sheer lunacy. This is real. It's going to happen. And two hours later, Quebec is orange. But that's how change over campaigns and people who tune in during campaigns change

the tide. They don't do that in between elections. I would also add in closing that we are going to, or we have entered an intense provincial politics period. The people who are most interested in Ontario and Quebec, Canada's two largest provinces in politics, are now looking at the campaign in Ontario. The vote is in June, so we're weeks away from that vote. And they campaign in Quebec on October 3rd, the election. So I think we're entering a bit of a dead zone federally, not to mention those mail-in ballots in Alberta that will seal the fate of Premier Jason Kenney. So I think we are in a provincial cycle that will last pretty much until the middle of next fall. And then we will have a conservative leader in place.

Actually, this conservative campaign is probably the only federal thing that is keeping federal politics at the center of the radar at this point because there is so much going on at the provincial level in some big provinces. How can those provincial elections and the situation in Alberta with Kenny, how can that impact the national picture? Well, I think that there's the direct impact in terms of it, you know, depending on how they go,

they can send some signals that are either reassuring to federal parties about the positions that they're taking and the likelihood that they'll be popular or disconcerting to them. But there's also an indirect one. I think that if Kenny is replaced in Alberta, the implications for climate policy in Canada are very intense, as we've talked about before. Rachel Notley would be a government that wouldn't agree with everything that the Trudeau government is doing on climate policy, but would agree with the general direction of it, and in some instances,

would want it to go further faster. But that would be a kind of a landmark thing. I think Ford has essentially folded his tent in terms of his opposition to climate policy. So there wouldn't be, if he wins, that there wouldn't be all that much difference there. So I don't, you know, I guess I'm hopeful that Chantel's right in her assessment of we're in a provincial cycle and that's where public attention will be. I'm a bit skeptical because in my work, we do measure how much attention people are paying to things that are happening in the world and in Canada. And over time, the number of things that people pay a lot of attention to does seem to be shrinking, in part because people are maybe seeing a certain futility about paying attention to some of them in part because they're distracted by other things that come into their social media feeds that are maybe of a more personal interest or local interest. And that brings me to the last part, which I wanted to sort of pick up on, which is that all

three of us can remember a time when the number of sources of news for people were fewer, and the quantity of news that people consumed from those sources was greater. And the disaggregation and, to some degree, the disintegration of that kind of industrial news formula that we had in the 70s, 80s, 90s, I think is causing a problem. How many people watch the program that, Peter, you anchored for 75 years or wherever it was? Was it only 75 years? It was 75 that you anchored it and you trained for that job 25 years before that. So you were really prepared for it when you took it on.

But, you know, if you, and that's not to criticize the national, I think that generally we've seen declining audiences for some of those more institutional or legacy news organizations. I saw yesterday CNN Plus, a thing that CNN spent $200 or $300 million on, let it run for 30 days and then put it aside. It makes me wonder where that audience is going to go in the future and how easy it is going to be for them to consume information that everybody needs to consume in order to be an enlightened and informed citizen. I'm not sure I totally agree with that. And part of the reason is the era that Bruce talks about, 60s, 70s, 80s, a lot of people

only watched one newscast or read one newspaper that came to their door, and that was the perspective they got. It certainly showed during the free trade campaign in 1988. If you were reading the Toronto Star versus the Globe and Mail, you were getting one take on free trade. It was very different from that of the Globe and Mail. We live in a country where we keep using that cliché, the two solitudes. I believe that social media and access to information that is disseminated in both official languages has never been more accessible. It is now possible to know what the National Post is saying if you live in Trois-Rivières

about Quebec, and it is possible to know if you live in Red Deer what La Presse is saying about Pierre Poilievre. That wasn't possible before. You wouldn't have had a clue, and you would have had to rely on people who often did not speak the other language in the case of the English-speaking media, or had never traveled in Canada further than Ottawa in the case of the French-language media for interpretation of either side of the country. So, this notion that in those days people were better informed, I think they were informed in silos that the social media has, to a large extent, allowed to bring down. And in the process, has put a higher penalty on mainstream media journalists for spreading BS about the other side of the language divide because the penalty is going to come to you in a very public way if you are showcasing your ignorance, thinking that your audience won't know better and has no way to

know any better. The doomsday view of what the social media has done to the mainstream media and to information suggests that all was so great before that. To me, I have the same reaction to that as when people say journalism was so great in the 60s and 70s. Peter, in the 60s and 70s, I would not have been on this show with you for two reasons. One, because I'm a woman, and there were very few women who could do or were invited to do this. And second, because I'm a Francophone and Francophone and Anglophones until News World and other such networks came about, did not mix on panels all that much. Plus, you would be asking me what does, if I were lucky enough to be on, you would be asking me, what does Quebec want? I agree with the point about the silos. And I'm not making the case that I'm not trying to romanticize what was.

What I am trying to say is the silos were unhelpful in some respects, but most people consumed a relatively narrow number of sources, for better or for worse, and most of those sources covered the same stories, sometimes in different fashion, I take your point. many people pay attention to national issues and national politics right now. Setting aside the question of whether silos and fewer silos is better than more sources, I find that the disaggregation and the multiplicity of sources that people can spend their time consuming has meant on the whole that fewer people, to me, and I'm not talking about compared to the 60s or the 70s or the 80s or the 90s i'm talking about in each almost every passing year now um the you know you'll find people who are really interested in some international issues you'll find people who are very interested in some local issues but the number of people who are consistently engaged with and understanding the national issues, in my experience anyway, and the work that I've done has told me that that has been in decline of late.

And the technology has had an effect on that, which isn't to blame the technology. It's what people are consuming through the technology. Okay, I've got to take our final break. We're almost out of time on the show today, but well, I'll make the point when I come back. Let's take this quick break. Okay, Peter Mansbridge back here with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. The final couple of minutes of good talk for this Friday. And, you know, I mentioned earlier in the program this sense that the media is going through this enormous challenge right now trying to determine what its future is

on all levels, all platforms. Things have changed dramatically. Numbers have been impacted in terms of, you know, who's listening, watching, reading. And the numbers have changed in terms of the number of journalists out there as well. I mean, the business has changed considerably. And the relationship between the client, the public, and the media has changed as well. There's less trust than there was, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s, you name it. At all points, Chantal made about that are true, you know, having lived through part of it at least. So things have changed, but it hasn't flattened out yet.

We still don't know where this is heading. And, you know, it's worthy of, you know, more discussion and we will have it. We've touched on it a number of times over the last year or so, but it's a big deal because it, you know, revolves around how you get your information and how you feel about the value of the information you're getting and the trustworthiness of the information you're getting and the kind of platform you're getting it from. So there are big changes afoot and there are big decisions to be made. You know, Bruce mentioned and I mentioned earlier, I guess Bruce was nodding off during my commentary, often does, but I talked about the CNN Plus thing and the decisions this

week by them to abandon it. That is a huge deal in terms of what's happening here. I'll give you 30 seconds each to tie a knot on this part of the conversation about the change that's apparent, and really 30 seconds is all I got. Bruce? Chantal's point about the opportunity for people to get more news that they couldn't get before is a really valid point. And it's the one that will stick with me when I play golf this afternoon. Chantal. I still believe that a lot of people gravitate to actual journalism.

I have 160,000 Twitter followers. I don't post my trips or I don't play golf, so no pictures from the golf course. It's a mostly boring feed. I retweet stuff I do or stories that want to start to name it. So up to a point, yes, the media is changing, but I have a national audience through the social media. I wouldn't have had that in the past. All right. This is a conversation we will pick up and have more of in the weeks, months ahead of that, there is

no doubt. Bruce, Chantelle, thanks so much, as always, for good talk this Friday. And for those who follow the bridge, we'll be back, of course, on Monday. We've got some very interesting shows next week. Unfortunately, I don't have time to tell you what they are, but they will be interesting and they will be good. That's it for this day. We'll talk to you again on Monday.