The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Is Poilievre Rethinking His Media Strategy?

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Bruce and Chantal discuss the decision by Pierre Poilievre to scrum with the parliamentary press gallery after months of ignoring them. Why? And debating the Auditor General's power and impact.  Plus when is a Greenbelt green and not grey?

Are you ready for Good Talk? The weekend is fast approaching. It's Friday. It's Good Talk time. Chantal Hébert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. We've actually got quite a bit to talk about in this hour, so let's get right at it. Something happened this week that hasn't happened in, I guess, a couple of months. Pierre Poliev met with the national media, met with the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa. He's ducked that deliberately for quite some time. I think that he's only done it once before, since his election as Conservative leader, and that turned into a disaster. Remember the shouting match with David Aitken from Global Television? It didn't go well. But there he was, sort of unannounced,

suddenly doing a thing with the Parliamentary Press Gallery this week. So what are we to take from that? Is it all just because there's a by-election next week and he wanted to get some face time with the national media? Or is there more to that? What do we think? What do we know? Chantal, you start. What do we know?

We know that Pierre Poiliev won the conservative leadership on the first ballot and came out of it with a lot of momentum. We also know that over the time that he was campaigning for the leadership, a number of months, he had a very high media profile in the mainstream media, as well as in the social media. We also know that as of the moment that he became leader, and in contrast with every federal leadership victor that I have covered, he has declined to spend more than two minutes until this week talking about his vision of the leadership going forward, and has apparently gambled that he could sustain that momentum and increase it over the course of the leadership going forward and has apparently gambled that he could sustain that

momentum and increase it over the course of the fall via his performance in question period and the social media. What we also know is that that didn't happen. Polls do not show a sustained, consistent increase in Conservative support. What reality does show, though, is that Mr. Poirier's presence, now that he's not a contender in the competitive contest, has largely faded. If you do not talk to the parliamentary press gallery and you're mostly toiling in question period, you're not going to get a lot of exposure. And whatever exposure you get is going to look manufactured because

the theater of question period does not always translate well in television or radio coverage, for instance, or it doesn't make for a very deep critique of the government in print media. I think a number of caucus members have become impatient with that approach. There is one thing that caucus and party members like, and it is to see their guy, in this case, on national television, giving it to Justin Trudeau, who, as it happens, has spent most of the fall traveling outside the country.

So it's not as if Pierre Poiliev was going to give it to Justin Trudeau in the House. He's been mostly not in the House because he was attending summits, etc. I'm not convinced that the conservative numbers, and we'll know on Monday, in that by-election are particularly great. Mr. Poiliev went and campaigned under the radar in Mississauga Lakeshore, which is where the by-election is taking place. When I say under the radar or off the radar, I mean that on a famous weekend, he tweeted that he had held a news conference in Toronto,

but declined to invite Global, CTV, CBC, The Star, The Globe and Mail, CP, any mainstream media. So unless you were subscribing to his Twitter feed, you wouldn't even know that he'd come to Toronto. The problem with that strategy is it kept him out of trouble. He didn't have to comment on Daniel Smith's sovereignty bill. He didn't have to talk about the notwithstanding clause and Doug Ford, the conservative premier. But it also means that the thousands of voters who did not spend the summer riveted on the conservative leadership race still do not know very much about Pierre Poilier and have been given no way to know.

He is basically being in an echo chamber talking to people who already have made up their minds about him. I suspect that the reason he showed up in the lobby this week is that they are tweaking that strategy. I know people around Mr. Poirier were starting to worry about his relative discrete presence in national coverage. And I think they did it this week ahead of Monday's vote, because should the Conservatives lose a winnable riding that they should win if they were headed to government in a general election? They're better off starting to tweak that before it happens than on the morning after. All right. Well, OK, so you clearly sound like you think the strategy needed tweaking, or at least some of those within his party felt the strategy needed tweaking.

This at a time when there were a lot of people saying this strategy was a smart strategy. Stay away from the national press. Do the local stuff. And many of those people being conservatives who are happy to talk among themselves as they have been on and off. I should just add, there has never been in the history of this country a leader of the official opposition that has avoided taking questions

from the parliamentary press gallery every single day of his tenure until this week. And the notion that the press gallery is hostile to you and it will tear you apart, well, one, it shows that you're chicken. But two, you should possibly ask Yves-François Blanchet, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, who certainly does not expect a very friendly reception, and who scrams every single day after a question period. All right.

Well, Bruce has arrived. Bruce has arrived in the trio here. I've just been enjoying this. You know, I learned a lot from Chantal's comments, and she made some points that I'm going to think about a little bit more. I have a slightly different take. But, Peter, I love the way that you, you know, it appears to me that you had a different view of this and that you didn't decide that I'm going to say this is my view.

Some people might think that. And then, well, I think I think a lot of lacking from Chantel because you didn't want to take it yourself. I think a lot of former conservative leaders, not all of them, but a lot of former ones, would probably subscribe after their time in office to the fact, stay away from the national media, they're no friends of ours, they're going to screw us one way or another. You know, most leaders of most parties now have a similar kind of instinct when they get out of bed in the morning. But Tory leaders have a record, have an electoral record

that is not as good as liberal leaders. Especially after they lose, they tend to think that way. Yeah, exactly. But that's kind of the past tradition. Until they win, they do use the national media to get to where they want to go because the national media amplifies critiques of the government. It's an asset to an opposition. Okay, let's let Bruce get to where he wants to go.

Go, Bruce. We'll be quiet now. Well, look, I think that there's two different things going on here, maybe three, now that Chantal has sort of laid out her thesis. So I think there's merit in what she's arguing. But the two things that occurred to me were, I do think that Mr. Polyev is trying to change the chemistry of his relationship with the national media.

I think he knows that he needs to have national media coverage and he needs to have the ability to have the media be attentive to what he has to say. But he wants to change the power dynamics. I don't know that he's going to be successful. I don't know that it's well-intentioned. I don't know that it's good for democracy. But I think what he's been trying to do is, during his leadership run, tried to demonize mainstream media because it

rallied the base of the Conservative Party, who always like hearing that the reason that they lose is the national media are biased against them. And then more recently, including the other day, he seems to be tempering that a little bit without wanting to be caught by his base as being too tempered. So he said something that sounded like, well, there's still David Akin. He didn't mention David Akin, but he said there are some good journalists in the National Press Gallery, but most of them still have a bias against us. You know, how does that work? I think that there's a certain amount of leave them wanting more,

create a demand, and maybe that tempers the crustiness that arrives in a scrum from the journalistic side of things. You guys would know better than me, but people in journalism need that content. And there might be some Machiavellian merit in the, I see Chantal's doing the thing that, you know, is about to turn into a full-blown. We need the prime minister. No, we need the prime minister, but we do not. I covered Parliament Hill for 30 years. I do not need the leader of the opposition in every story. And while he's not giving me anything, I may be up to mischief, covering things that are more the flow as I see it anyway, in terms of the broader gallery and the need for content, fresh content. And so I think he's doing a bit of a modified Trump, to put it short.

He's continuing this idea that the media are biased against him and the conservative idea, but he's doing less of it and he's signaling that he's prepared to play in a more friendly and open way, provided the other side of the equation is willing to come to the table as well. But I think the other thing that he's been doing is recognizing that there have been chunks of time in this fall where more accessibility to the media would only mean more difficult questions that he doesn't really want to get into. The Emergencies Act thing being principal among them. But I think also the conversation about the Alberta Sovereignty Act is another one. I think more generally, Polyev probably has done the calculation that at least

for now, if the conversation is about Polyev, it's not about Trudeau, and it's better for him if the conversation is about fatigue with Trudeau and fatigue with the liberal government and the problems that inevitably kind of surround any incumbent government, whether it's the auditor general and report on COVID spending or gun control and possible staff who's there, what have you. Now, the last point I'll make is that Sean tells, I think, right, that too much of that strategy starts to make caucus members restless, start to wonder whether or not they're sacrificing too much share of voice, whether there isn't something that can be said that feels more pugilistic and more likely to punch through the political noise. And so finding the balance is the work of leaders in these situations. But I think the first two factors are definitely

part of what's going on too. We've got the by-election coming up in literally in hours beginning of next week. Does it matter? I mean, we talked about this last week a little bit, and I don't want to sort of go through that all over again, but at the end of the day, does it matter? Does what happens in this by-election make a difference in any way? Of course, the party that will lose on Monday will say it doesn't matter, it's just a by-election. And the party that wins is going to say this goes to show that we are still

or we're on course for something great, re-election or election victory. But I do think there are numbers that will matter. And I think it's too late. I don't think a scrum on Thursday changed the dynamics in Mississauga Lakeshore. I think voters in a specific riding are not just sitting there still. This is a riding in the 905. the year of the majority victory of Stephen Harper, they defeated Paul Zabow, who was a longstanding liberal member who was widely considered as a social conservative and also a blue liberal. So the instincts of that writing are not the same as my Laurier-Sainte-Marie writing,

where we tend to elect left-leaning MPs. The economy is not doing great, and Justin Trudeau is bearing some of that load. And in past elections, 2021, 38.7% of voters in the riding voted for the Conservatives, meaning there is a solid base to build on. So if you were looking for a test to show that you've got a brand new conservative leader who's going to be gaining because you need seats like this if you're going to win the election and you're Pierre Poilievre, this is a writing that can call itself a test for the conservatives.

So there are two numbers people will look at on Monday night. The first is who wins, obviously, and the Liberals are not looking to give up that riding. They're running a star candidate, former finance minister from Ontario, Mr. Sousa. But the other number that the Conservatives will be looking at and everyone else will be looking at is the number or the share of the vote that Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer got. Because Pierre Poilievre may not absolutely need to win that riding, but he does not really or he will have a harder time explaining why he did or he couldn't do as well as Aaron O'Toole. I had to smile when you said that a Thursday scrum in Ottawa is not going to make a difference in the by-election. Quite frankly, I bet if we were able to poll our audience right now, they probably wouldn't even know that there would be a scrum on Thursday,

let alone what was said in it. Bruce, does it matter? Not the scrum, but the by-election itself. Yeah, it does matter. I think that Chantal is right, that it affects the chemistry of the parties. And right now, both parties are a little bit unsure of what to make of their situation.

I think we described the numbers from our more recent polls as being perplexing for the liberals who don't really know if they're really in trouble with Canadians or could win another election and perplexing for the conservatives who don't really know if people are really fed up enough with the liberals to vote conservative or really interested enough or open to Pierre Pauliev, enough to vote conservative. And one by-election won't completely resolve that. But the parties will take more from the loss than the win, I think. If the liberals lose, it will be a cold water shower. It will be confirmation that, yes, it's true that by-elections sometimes work against the incumbent government because people don't see any risk of changing the government. But if people want to send a message to the liberals, that's what a loss will feel like to them. A message sent and ideally from their standpoint, message received and and a wake up call.

If the conservatives lose, it will be a signal that the idea of just waiting for the liberals to fall so far out of favor that they'll lose the next election is not a safe bet. And and it's not so much just because of this writing, but it's because the conjecture internally, forget about what others say about it, the conjecture internally would be, we should, after this many years of Justin Trudeau, be able to pick up a by-election win in a weak economy with massive deficits, with various and sundry other things nagging at the government. And so if we don't, you know, they won't, they'll interpret it as being something that requires more work on their part, not just, oh, that's a writing that we didn't win before. And so let's not be preoccupied with it. The thing is, if it's a writing you didn't win in the recent past, i.e. not since

2011, and you've been in opposition since 2015, the message is that you need to win back the writings that you did win in 2011 when you won, the last time you won government. It's kind of a no-brainer mathematically, and you can't escape that. In the run-up to each of the last several elections, careful analysis, I think, in the punditry has focused on the suburban and urban ridings as the way in which the election result will be decided. And so if you're the Conservatives and you know that, you kind of know that your rural base is going to be intact, but it won't be enough. And you need to win ridings in urban Canada.

And this would be a pretty good time to win one if you wanted to create the sense of momentum. And it'd be a pretty bad time to lose one if you felt like you were positioned for a victory anytime an election might be available. Well, if you thought that the voters were going to get the nod to you on the issue of management of the public purse, then you might have been handed an issue this week with the Auditor General's report. But were you handed an issue? There's a debate on that, and we'll get into it right after this and we're back with uh good talk for this friday chantelle a bear in montreal bruce anderson ottawa and peter mansbridge in toronto you're listening on sirius xm channel 167 canada talks or on your favorite podcast platform or You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching on our YouTube channel. You can get the link on my Twitter or Instagram feed. It's right there, no charge. Subscription is free. Please join us. All right. This week, the Auditor General's report came down,

and historically that's been usually not a good day for government, pretty good day for the opposition, because the Auditor General, whoever that may be, points out issues where it appears the management of the public purse has been left lacking. Well, today she had, or this week, this year, she had a big target to look at, and that was how the government spent and managed the COVID situation.

And as we all know, there were billions, hundreds of billions of dollars put out to support Canadians and businesses as a result of the pandemic. Now, I think when I go back and listen to our programs from a couple of years ago, we always assumed that there was going to be some ugly stuff at the end of all this because money was rushing out the door. That was the objective, get it out the door. We'll worry about the accounting of all this later. Well, the accounting is taking place now.

And when the Auditor General's report came down, it suggested there was almost $5 billion that could not be properly accounted for, and there might be a lot more than that upwards into the mid-20s. Now, while that was said, at the same time, it was also said the government did a hell of a job in getting money out the door and looking after Canadians through a difficult time. same time has also said the government did a hell of a job in getting money out the door and and

looking after Canadians through a difficult time but the issue is raised about the management of the public purse um where are we on this Bruce why don't why don't you start it is is is it as bad as it looks when you talk about billions of dollars that were not just unaccounted for, but that were basically taken advantage of? Or was it, hey, we did a hell of a job under incredible circumstance? Well, if you're asking me with my qualifications as an auditor, then I have no answer because I don't have any of those qualifications. If you're asking me what the politics of it look like, I was kind of torn between the metaphor of a poison chalice or the one that I grew up with, which was don't eat the yellow snow.

And what I mean is that the argument that this was a massive waste of government funds must obviously have looked extremely attractive to the conservatives as a political weapon. Because, you know, the sheer scale of it and in the midst of a general kind of anxiety about the economy and the size of historical deficits and everything else. But there's a reason that there's not an emergency debate right now about this. And the reason is that the conservatives know that the more they try to relitigate what happened during COVID, it might not work out.

It might be the proverbial yellow snow. It might be that moment where people kind of go, oh, God, why are they always on about this? And more importantly, would they have done something different? If there was another if there is another crisis like this, do we interpret their focus on the money that, you know, went astray or was sent to the people who didn't deserve it as a signal that maybe they wouldn't buy vaccines, maybe they wouldn't support and anesthetize the economy in a time of extreme duress. And if I'm the liberals, I kind of want that debate. I don't, you know, I wouldn't mind that division in the conversation. So I think there's a reason why it's not item number one, two, and three in the political debate right now.

And it's because the conservatives kind of understand the chemistry of the argument isn't great. The last point on that, which is that when people get real voters get really outraged about government spending, it's about things like taking flights or drinking expensive orange juice. which is that when people get real voters get really outraged about government spending, it's about things like taking flights or drinking expensive orange juice. This isn't that. This is money that went to people who whose businesses were threatened, sometimes shuttered to people who are low income people who didn't know if they were going to keep their jobs, who didn't know if they were going to keep their jobs, who didn't know how they were going to feed their families. And arguing against that having been done or arguing that that money was inherently wasteful forgets the fact that the money came from Canadians and government put it back into the hands of Canadians and it went into the economy. And yes, it did cause some

part of the inflation that it went into the economy. And yes, it did cause some part of the inflation that we're experiencing right now. But all of that doesn't sound the same as, do you believe that government mismanaged these contracts or spent money on frivolous things or on their own creature comforts or bought some new planes to fly around in or anything like that?

It's a very, very different connotation to this money, what it was for, where it went, what it was intended to do. And I think that's another reason why the conservatives are being cautious about trying to turn this into a bigger issue than it appears as of, you know, what has it been, 48 hours? And I don't sense that people are really clamoring for a conversation about this. Chantal? Any government faced with the same circumstances would have had to make the choice of either showering Canadians in need and possibly others with money,

getting the money out fast, or putting in so many criterias before sending money that people would have gone broke, wouldn't have been able to pay rent, wouldn't have been able to make mortgage payments, with consequences that go far beyond trying to collect, if at all possible, some of the money that went to various businesses and groups. We are talking about extraordinary circumstances. It's easy with the benefit of hindsight to forget that we shut down Canada's economy overnight with all that that meant for anyone who had a job and didn't know what was going to happen the next morning. If only the government had gone to the handbook that said what to do in those circumstances from past experience.

Whoops, sorry. They wrote the book. Possibly, if and when something like that happens again, there will be lessons learned from this particular episode. That being said, the conservatives have no interest in going after it. Why? Because it will always come back to the question, so what would you have done differently? And what would you have done differently basically means we would have done less. The other problem is that

they voted for most of those measures along the way. They did not fight them and say, oh, we're going to squander billions of dollars. But it's an interesting exercise in the psychology of the electorate that we all covered another auditor general's report that triggered not only a major scandal, but eventually led to the downfall of the incumbent. And that's the sponsorship scandal. And when you look at the money that was involved in the sponsorship scandal, it's like the orange juice that costs too much. It's nickel and dimes. If you had a scale, you wouldn't even notice the money of the sponsorship scandal. But it was the principle that killed the liberals, the impression, the perception that the liberals were using a program to further partisan ends.

If you conclude from that that the public will backlash on issues of principle, you will find it hard to get a huge backlash over this particular spending issue because the principle of coming to the aid of Canadians is a widely accepted one that every government in this country, be it conservative, liberal, or new Democrat, accepted. But it is interesting to watch. There is also, and I think some of us tend to be of that persuasion, but we are in a minority, that it is possible once in a while for a government to push back against the auditor general, that the auditor general does not come down a mountain with the tablets

and then you need to do whatever you need to do. And in this case, what she is basically saying, which is her role, is you should go after that money and at least figure out how much you have spent here or there or maybe needlessly. She's not saying it was wasted, this 20-some billions. She's saying we don't know. But the attending decision is to put massive resources behind that exercise. And it is a choice of governments to decide whether that is the best investment of those resources. No, as we all know, Revenue Canada does not go after every single suspicious income tax report. Because there are times when the resources devoted to it are not worth

whatever the outcome would be. You live in fear that you will be one of those that they will look at and maybe find something wrong. But you know that the odds are that they're not going to scrutinize every single line and every single income tax report in the country to find you. So I'm not inviting people to cheat on their income tax. I am just saying it is common practice to make those choices because otherwise we would be diverting resources from where we need them possibly more to this mission of figuring out whether where every single penny of these benefits went. Bruce, you wanted to pick up on that? Yeah, just a couple of points. I agree with everything that Chantal said. I think the idea that an auditor general has a large share of voice

and the ability to kind of interrupt normal politics and draw attention, I think that's a really good thing. I think it's also a really good thing to recognize that they don't run the government. They are part of our system and a valuable part of our system. But ultimately, the choices that are made after an Auditor General's report represent a measure of accountability, but also judgment, political judgment that governments are held accountable for. And I think in this case, it was probably incumbent upon the Auditor General to say, a whole bunch of money might have been sent to people who didn't deserve it based on the criteria that you government established. Maybe you want to go after that. But I think also, you know, it was entirely logical, at least from a political standpoint and probably from a public in trying to chase down what, you know, is money that went to individuals that helped keep the economy going. dependent voices have recently said, yeah, this amount of government spending, as unprecedented

as it was, was helpful to the economy and therefore helpful to Canadians. And I think that Canadians don't need to be economists to have felt that that was the right set of choices, even if some money was spilled along the way. But the last point I want to make is that each of these issues now represent a possible line of division between conservatives and liberals. And if we think about this question of, no, we're not going to chase down every last dollar that might have gone to somebody who didn't, by the criteria, exactly merit it. The liberals could be inviting the conservatives to take the opposite point of view. But the conservatives, from an electoral politics standpoint anyway, would be nuts to go into the next campaign saying, we're going to try to chase down every last $2,000 increment that went to somebody during COVID that didn't deserve it. It would just become

something, again, that might make their base a little bit happier, but might make others feel like they're not really focused on the larger issues and maybe don't have the right sensibilities when it comes to what would happen if there was another crisis. Okay. Before we leave this issue, I want to raise one thing that you both talked about. Chantel brought it up first, I think. But it's this issue of, you know, the political graveyards of governments past, provincially, federally, you know, all stripes, is filled with those who have suffered because of an Auditor General's report. And, you know, Chantel gave the best example, of course, on what happened to Creighton Martin after the sponsorship scandal. But there appears to me, maybe I'm wrong here,

but it appears to me there's the beginning of blowback or fighting back on Auditor General's report. We saw it a little bit this week with the Minister of Revenue who's responsible for the CRA, saying, you know, it wasn't quite as bad as the Auditor General's putting out. Our numbers are not as bad as her numbers in terms of what was, you know, on payments that couldn't be defended. And two weeks ago, we saw something similar in Ontario

when the Auditor General reported after doing a procedure on the Ontario Lottery's Gaming Commission and issues that she felt existed there. And Doug Ford came out like right away with, she should stay in her lane, the Auditor General in Ontario. That's not her lane. She shouldn't be doing that. And the issue basically died right there.

In both cases, Auditor General said, we stand by our numbers in Ottawa this week and in Queen's Park in Toronto. But the issue kind of died based on, to some degree, on the blowback that was created. Are we seeing something changing here in that relationship with the Auditor General, which is, as Bruce pointed out, is important in terms of the protection of the public purse,

but sort of the political side saying, you know, yeah, to a point, but we're not going to stand here and take it every time. Are we seeing something happening there? I think that's been ongoing for a number of years. I started to see a blowback to Auditor General's after the sponsorship scandal and not towards Sheila Fraser necessarily directly, but to, you know, you started to see columns from people who are as interested in accountability as the next saying,

at what point does the, where does the lane of the Auditor General stop? Is it the role of the Auditor General, for instance, to opine on conservation of museum pieces? Where's the expertise for that? And it comes and goes, and it depends on the issue. My understanding, I don't cover Ontario politics, but I did notice that there was analysis that was not written by conservatives that suggested that this Auditor General maybe had a tendency to widen her lane. So it's a balancing act. But I do think that it's part of the conversation that governments once in a while will push back. And I don't think that goes against accountability. I think the role of the auditor general is to shed light in maybe darker corners and then have the government explain why that corner has whatever she found or he found uh but not say here i am with the broom just tell me where to use it it's more complicated than that the business

of government in fact i think we were you know i shouldn't speak for you but i kind of know the chronology i think i was going to say we are all old enough to remember what political life was like before there was a, I mean, there probably was an Auditor General before the Auditor General was a political star. And I think that part of what has happened has been the star of the role of the Auditor General has been rising for a good long while. And then eventually it got to a point where maybe some of the Auditors General decided that that was something that they liked, that they kind of relished the spotlight, that they wanted to use the spotlight to make, to offer opinions that were a little bit political. And there was nothing really wrong with that. And it represented a kind of a balance in the system that was probably on the whole constructive. But it's not surprising that at some point, politicians started to look at

some of those opinions and say, you're making a political opinion out of a forensic accounting exercise. You're not just reporting on whether the dollars that were intended to go to something were actually spent on that something. You're opining on whether or not the outcome was as intended. And so it's natural for me that to see that politicians would start to push back a little bit over time. I'm happy that they're doing it in a more measured way. I thought Ford's language was a little bit testy, but I also understand what he was trying to do there. So I think this is a natural tension. And I certainly agree with Chantal that the nature of the role is such that it works best when it stays in his own, that avoids sounding political. Because we need people to kind of trust the auditor general as a function, and not to wonder whether it has an agenda, if I can put it that way, other than a financial management.

You know, some of them have, as you say, have been kind of rock stars in their business that have become these figures, you know, nationally. The first one I remember was Maxwell Henderson. And that goes back to the 60s um I always thought the Beatles song Maxwell's Silver Hammer was about Maxwell Henderson uh but of course it wasn't um but you know when Sheila Fraser as Chantel mentioned um can die yeah can die JJ McDonnell I mean I can't believe these names are coming back, but some of them. It's like we've got our old baseball cards out and we're going,

you remember Harmon Killebrew when he played for the Twins? That's right, first base. And you will remember that in the days of some of the people you mentioned, the Auditor General federally only reported once a year. That's right. Which made for a bigger bang. It was a big bang. But less consistency.

So when that was changed, there are now, I'm not sure how many, but more than one a year. It also means that it became a familiar event, the other third generals reporting, and then three months or four months later reporting again, covering a wider range of issues, maybe not always in the same depth, with the same depth as when it was a once a year thing. And I wouldn't go back to the once a year event, but the relationship with government by the nature of this familiarity would become a bit different. There would be

more occasions to slightly disagree with some items and the multiplicity of these items because they report more often. So it's a sacrifice. Mar bang, less bucks, and vice versa. Okay, we're going to take our final break. We'll be back right after this. And we're back for our final segment here on Good Talk. Chantal's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto on Good Talk. Chantal's in Montreal, Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto on this day.

You know, one of the great things about the audience for Good Talk and the bridge generally is we hear a lot from listeners. They write in all the time, and the thing about podcasts is, at least at this podcast, I find that the letters, the correspondence is really thoughtful. There's some really good letters. I mean, I used to remember some of the letters you'd get at the CBC, and some of them were, well, not necessarily that thoughtful. But in this case, they are. And one of the things that i found interesting the last couple of weeks is some of the mail that's been coming in um has raised an issue that is an ontario issue and i've kind of ducked it and not brought it up because of that because we have a national audience here but of

late i've been getting letters from across the country from different parts of the country i don't want to overstate it but definitely different parts of the country. I don't want to overstate it, but definitely different parts of the country who are raising the same issue and saying, why aren't you talking about this because this affects us all. And it's this issue of the Greenbelt, this area north of Toronto that had been set aside after much debate, but had been set aside by the Conservative government of Doug Ford and said okay

there's going to be no development there and it's going to stay a green area. Well that's changed now. Ford has announced in the last month or so after a month apparently where developers were in there buying up land the Ford government has said no said, no, we're going to allow development in there. There's so many people coming into the southern Ontario, and with new immigration numbers, it indicates even more are coming, and we've got to have areas to build homes, et cetera. So that has caused a lot of people a lot of grief they're very upset about it and other parts of the country people are writing and saying hey we have the same kind of issues could happen here

something's got to happen so i'm just wondering whether either of you have have been looking at this and what you see in this story and how important it could be. Bruce, why don't you start? Yeah, I think it's been a bit of a third rail for Doug Ford consistently. He's had this experience before of talking about paving the green belt or doing something that sounds like changing green to gray. And it didn't feel good for him the last time. And it's probably not feeling good for him now. And there's a couple of reasons for that. You know, I think that it's easy if you're the premier and you're taking meetings with developers and your political organizers are saying the developers really want this to kind of think, oh, you know, we've got a housing

affordability problem. So maybe this will be one logical solution is to open up more land that can be used to build homes that can help make the overall stock of housing affordable. The problem with that, as political math goes, is this. People who are really having trouble finding an affordable home in the greater Toronto area, they don't immediately go, that's what I want. I want a house built somewhere out there where there is green belt now, and I know it will be affordable for me. You have your skepticism about whether that's ever going to be something that benefits you. It doesn't feel like an immediate or an appealing solution necessarily.

The second is, what about those people who already have homes? The majority of people in the city of Toronto and the surrounding area will already have homes in the most congested part of Canada. They don't love the sound of, well, why don't we take some of that green belt away? kind of sea of humanity as they see it, surrounded by housing developments and traffic and not enough green relative to the amount of asphalt. So it doesn't really appeal to them. And then the third group is the rural voter in Ontario. There's not much in this for them as an announcement, right? It's kind of easier for them to look at and say, well, is that really really is it necessary um maybe it doesn't affect me but do i like the feel of it and i think that

you know we've got a situation where canadians generally think if you have something that's called the green belt you should probably keep it green um and find other places for people to live because there's a lot of land in Canada. So I'd be surprised if this doesn't feel like a really risky proposition and maybe a political error for Doug Ford to his people. Chantal. Well, it's got everything to become a poisoned apple. One premier who campaigned for re-election basically sending the message, if you re-elect me, the green belt is safe with me, which less than a year later, it turns out it isn't. Lots for people who are investigative journalists to dig in over who bought what at what time prior to the announcement.

And inevitably, because we live in a society that there's small links, whether they be for malfeasance or normal, between some of those developers and fundraising conservative politicians, which will make it stink even more. And then there is the reality of Toronto. And I have lived in both Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. And when I left Toronto for Ottawa and eventually Montreal, I realized how much easier it was to get to nature from Ottawa or Montreal than from Toronto, where you can to drive and drive and drive before you find some public space for you and your family, as opposed to Ottawa, where it's, what, 10 minutes? And Montreal, within half an hour in any direction, you're going to be in green. So,

it has to be an even more sensitive notion for the GTA than it would probably be even in Montreal or Ottawa, where people are very defensive and get to know about their green spaces. It's a really toxic mix politically for the premier. I noticed this week that Angus Reid does those regular reports as to the approval ratings of premiers. And, well, Mr. Legault was proud to give a link to it because he sits on top of that approval rating scale at 57%. Just Scott Moe from Saskatchewan is right behind him at 56%. But Doug Ford, who used to be, you know, at the bottom of the pile before the pandemic, and then over the course of the pandemic rose consistently until he got to re-election, has now fallen back to third last place with about a third of voters approving of his tenure.

That sounds like pretty poor numbers for someone who's just been re-elected to a majority government a few months ago. So his first term started off badly, and now his second term starting off badly. But you keep in mind that his first term, as you said, he bounced back. Well, he's not going to get a pandemic, though. Both the hospitals are in trouble schools have been a source of real friction and frustration and uh and now he's uh you know he's embroiled in this uh you know chantal mentioned the unseemliness of this and the investigative journalism that's going on around the you know how is it that developers decided to buy land in this scenario? Were they just kind of optimistic and naturally hopeful about a change in the political culture?

I think those questions are well asked and they're legitimate to kind of pursue. But none of it feels like a conversation that is worth the political risk for Doug Ford, in my opinion. All right. We're going to leave it at that. But next week on Good Talk, just seven days away, we'll have our year-ender. So I'll have to craft some really good questions for you guys. You know, obscure questions that will put you on the spot for your knowledge. You love the party tricks version of Christmas punditry.

And the rest of us, not so much. But we'll have some questions for you, Peter. No, no, I'm sorry. Those will be ruled out of order. Oh, you think you can set the rules, eh? Doesn't work that way. No. Okay.

Well, there's that coming up next friday monday we have the latest in the more butts conversation or the butts more conversation bruce doesn't like more butts he thinks the connotation i felt like if you just said it the wrong way that you should probably change it around to avoid any kind of confusion about what you're talking about. That's all. As in more butts? More butts. Whatever. It'll be a good one.

That's Monday. Two great political insiders with knowledge about their thoughts on the year gone by. Different kind of discussion than the one we'll have next week with Bruce and Chantel. So that's it for Good Talk for this week. Thank you, Bruce week with Bruce and Chantel. So that's it for a good talk for this week. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Chantel.

We'll talk to you again, as we say in seven days, but we will talk to you, our loyal audience. And thanks for listening. Talk to you again on Monday.