The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Is Support For The CBC Collapsing?

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Bruce has just completed a deep dive on the CBC and how Canadians feel about it.  The results aren't pretty and along with Chantal and me, we have some thoughts on whether the nearly 100-year-old national public broadcaster will even make it to the centennial in 2036.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal this morning and Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. And I'm going to start with a little story because I know you love it when I start with a little story. You sit there, I can tell by the looks on your faces that you're kind of hanging on every word of my little stories. Not. Nevertheless, here we go. We'll try. As everyone knows, I spent a lot of time in my life at the CBC.

50 years, half a century. And one of the things they always used to tell us, the research department at the CBC, is people love us. They love the CBC. And I think there's no doubt that was certainly true in those early years of that 50-year span. Then, you know, competition, expanding 500 expanding 500 channel universe, a lot of different things started to happen. Audiences started to drop for television in general. Uh, radio always remained strong, but nevertheless, even up until when I was leaving, I was still hearing the same kind

of thing. They love us out there. They love us even in Alberta, the majority of Albertans like the CBC, this at a time when we were already hearing all these things about the potential for those who were arguing defund the CBC. It became a political football at times. But they kept saying they love us out there. Now, here's my question. And we'll start with Bruce. If that was true, and I have no reason to think it wasn't true at the time I was hearing it, but if that was true, if those numbers were

supposedly true, and if your numbers that are just coming out today are true, then there has been the beginnings, at least, if not more than just the beginnings, of a collapse in kind of loyalty or support on the part of the people to the CBC. Would that be accurate? It would. I think that what we're seeing in the numbers is the indication. We don't have so many data points in time to document the pace of it, but it feels like a slow-moving detachment from the CBC or detachment by the CBC from the Canadian population.

And part of why I think it's going on is one of the big elements of the data that we're going to release today, which shows that given a choice between sell the CBC or shut the CBC and save tax dollars or maintain the CBC because I value it, it's 45% who say, let's shut it down and save the money. It's only 55% who say, I value it and let's keep the CBC. I think that's going to surprise a lot of people, including probably a lot of people who are listening to this podcast. Underneath the surface of it, there are two big storylines, Peter. One is a generational one.

Younger people are far more likely to say, I don't know, maybe shut it down and save the money. Older people are more attached to the idea of the value of the CBC and they want it maintained. And the other thing is that if you look at Conservative Party voters and People's Party voters, the majority of both of those groups say, let's shut it down. And voters who are more on the center and the left are more hesitant. But I don't want to go further than that, because you can't see in these numbers that there's a large cohort of Canadians where there's no risk. In every region, in every generation, Liberal Party voters, NDP voters, there's pretty big chunks of people who say, shut it down and save the money.

And the related question that we ask, it's not necessarily related, but when we looked under the hood at the data, it was somewhat related. Is this argument about propaganda? It's 40% who are prepared to believe the idea that the journalism provided by the CBC is propaganda on behalf of the federal government. Now, people might hasten to say, well, that's not a majority. It's not a majority. But if you're that journalistic organization, you must have to read this as a huge warning signal that people are trusting what you're doing. And it may not just be because they don't trust you.

It may be because they don't trust journalism anymore. It may be because they've been told by politicians not to trust you because you have a bias that's different from theirs, for example. Long story short, these are disastrous numbers in terms of the ability of the CBC to claim broad support among Canadians, to muster that support in its own defense right now. Really, the numbers say there's a lot of work for the CBC to do if it's got a chance to reach that 100th birthday, which is, I think, about 13 years from now. The politics are working against it generationally and on different parts of the spectrum. All right, there's lots to pick away at that, but I want to first get Chantal's overall impression

of that situation. First, I'm going to say, beware of numbers and answers to simple questions. And if you asked the same question, do you believe that the Toronto Star peddles liberal propaganda? Probably get the same kinds of numbers. Do you believe the National Post is a tool of the Conservative Party and the right? You would get the same numbers. If you asked in Quebec, do you believe La Presse is peddling federalism stuff? The answer would be probably even higher, especially in the years when we had referendums

and reversed the answer for Le Devoir, is it the sovereignist propaganda tool? What is interesting is when you ask Canadians, and ECHO said that that and did it recently, who do you trust most as a news source? The CBC Radio-Canada came first. I would argue that probably part of the numbers nationally for the CBC are helped by the Quebec numbers. And why I say that is because when you look at the entire graph from ECOS, you will find that La Presse and Le Devoir also get really high numbers in Quebec. So trust in the mainstream media as a reliable source is higher in Quebec than it is in the rest of the country. Now, to turn to the CBC, I haven't owned the television set in a decade. And as a result, I never tune in to the CBC. If I see anything from the CBC, I see it online.

But I don't. And the same would be true of Radio-Canada. I don't have a television set. And I'm happy with that. When I look at my grandchildren, who are now old enough to play with the remote, they don't have a TV, they have a screen. That is what they see. And when they look for a program, they don't start channel surfing.

They wouldn't even know what channel surfing is or a channel. They look to Netflix and other such organizations for programs, which is why it's important to feature Canadian content on those platforms, because you are not raising a generation. And Bruce will soon, if he hasn't yet found out the joys of Paw Patrol and all of the other great shows that you get to watch. When I was a kid, we only had Radio-Canada. We were all raised on the same children's programs. My sons watched Passepartout. But my grandchildren to watch Passepartout need a parent to say, there's this great program, and to put it on. They're not saying, let's go to Télé-Québec, and it's a public television network, and it's going to give you Passepartout. It doesn't exist, the concept of a channel. So the notion that people

under 30 would say, well, what's the point of it It's not surprising. You talk about love for the CBC, and I find that a very strange criteria to decide whether something is worth keeping or not, in the sense that everything we love will eventually die. But the best way to express love and attachment, because I think attachment is more important than love in this case, is for people to watch. And on that note, I would say that the CBC versus Radio-Canada, for instance, has a major, major attachment problem that it has never resolved. That's not, and I'm setting apart CBC News here to talk about the CBC in general. And that problem isn't solved. And I did promise to tell you that, one, I stopped watching evening newscasts in 1990 when a guy called Mansbridge

was doing the National. And I have never gone back to watching an evening newscast live since then. That's a lot of years. And I'll tell you why. I used to work for Le Devoir back then. And it was negotiations for the Meads Lake Accord. And in those days, if you worked for a newspaper, you filed at eight o'clock at night, and then you could do nothing until the next day. I got really sick of trying to get to sleep, having heard a voice say, CBC News has learned. And then I'd go to bed and not be able to do anything about it until the next morning. So one day I decided for reasons of sanity that I was no longer having to put up with this that would stop me from sleeping until the next day. I've lived happily ever after.

But if I can live in the media as I do without watching an evening newscast for, what, 30 years? That basically tells you just about all you need to know about how the world has changed. Well, I've got good news for you, Chantal. I have a big part of my hard drive where I've stored all of Peter's old newscasts. And every once in a while, I'll just kind of take a trip down memory lane. The day that he announced the internet to us and, you know, the coverage of coronations or world wars or whatever. So there's a lot of it. And can share it with you i can send you a link but i the point that you made about not wanting to be beset by the worries that a nightly newscast would give you is it really uh reminds me of a conversation i had with peter many many times when the conversation was should the should the national stay at 10 o'clock or move earlier?

Remember, Peter, all of those conversations? And I think it was because I was getting older and also just this sense of, is it the last thing I want to do before I go to sleep to hear all the bad things that are going on in the world and to see the pictures? And I do think that's a big phenomena for people. I mean, there's a reason why people are consuming meditation and sleep sounds and all of that kind of stuff is that people are having trouble sleeping and they know that one of the reasons is the number of stressors coming at us are are there and that's a challenge for journalism not to not tell us the bad news but to recognize

the role that that news plays in our lives, in our physical lives, too. Peter, when you see this, do you see this is a broad problem for the media as a whole? Or do you see a specific CBC problem? Or do you see both? Or do you see a way out? Yeah, I think I do see a way out, but it's more complicated than that. I mean, this is a Canadian problem, okay? It's not just in particular one network or the way the CBC has operated it. To me, it's a Canadian problem. Either you feel there's a need and a value in having a national public broadcaster or you don't.

And if you don't, you argue to shut her down. You know, let's save the money. Let's use it for something else. But if you do, then you look at what the CBC, as opposed to Roger Canada, I'll let Chantel speak on that, but the CBC, the English service of the public broadcaster, has been a picture of failure for a number of years now. It's losing audience for all the reasons you mentioned, Bruce,

and Chantel mentioned, in terms of our times and technology and the expansion of the video universe. But it's also losing because it's become irrelevant to a lot of people in what it's doing. And that's a failure of imagination. It's a failure of imagination. It's a failure of management. And, you know, I tend to place, I accept all of Chantel's cautions about numbers and about surveys like this and about the changing times. But this is a huge problem. These numbers are disastrous, and they're going to send shockwaves through the

halls of the executive branches of the CBC for any of them who care about why people aren't watching them. You mean they haven't noticed yet? You know, quite frankly, Chantelle, quite frankly, I don't know what they've noticed anymore some of the things they say and do don't make any sense to me now i'm a you know i'm a news guy i used to argue when i was there about various things the domination of hockey at this time of year and bouncing the newscast around all that stuff so i you know i i was never shy about making

arguments but i i look at the way the place is run today and has been run for a number of years and you can track you can track the demise now can it survive there's a critical moment coming up here and that is the decision by the Parliament of Canada and the Prime Minister's office as to whether or not to reappoint the existing executive leadership of the CBC. If they do, well, good night. You know the road we're on. If they're going to try and find something new

in terms of people and a way of doing things and a vision for what public broadcasting should be in the 2020s, with all these other things you've talked about, then maybe that signals things. But I think we're at a crossroads in the life of the CBC and the public broadcaster, and the decisions are going to be made in the next little while are going to determine whether this place will continue to exist. Now, that's the dark view of it all, but that's the view I have, and I know it's the view a lot of people that I care about,

who either still work at the CBC or used to work at the CBC, have as well. And what's interesting but complicated than that is that over those years of CBC decline, I totally agree with you that CBC has been in steep decline. As you can, it has not gone the same way. Bruce's numbers that are pretty high for Quebec, let's say, yeah, just get rid of it. But it was numbers like that that led the Conservatives in 2008 on the eve of an election campaign to believe that they could make some minor culture cuts and those would be popular with the kinds of voters that they were looking for. And it cost them their majority in Quebec. I've watched all week the Conservative Quebec caucus members hide under their beds to avoid

going on any TV or radio platform to explain Pierre Poilievre's vendetta against the CBC. At this time last year, half a dozen Radio-Canada shows were at the top of the most watched shows in Quebec. So to divorce the CBC from Radio-Canada is more easily said than done. A large part of the infrastructure, for instance, that brings news from outside Quebec into Quebec, from outside Quebec in Canada, comes from the CBC. Radio-Canada has people across the country, but the infrastructure that they use is the CBC's infrastructure. Before you shut all that down, you have to think long and hard that Radio-Canada is the only network in Quebec, the only media that actually covers the rest of Canada. Do you really want to not make sure that that continues as part of the mix? So you kind of look at all that and say, well, you know, it's a simple proposition that doesn't work to say we're going to shut down the CBC and we're going to keep Radio-Canada. It's a lot more complex than what Pierre Poilievre is actually saying. And I would argue it's a very strange thing, and it's going to sound strange. But when the

newspapers in this country started to be in trouble, in Quebec as in the rest of the country. The fact that no federal government so far has wanted La Presse to die on its watch has gone a long way to ensure that other newspapers across the country also got government funding. For the record, I'm not big on the government funding thing for newspapers, like most of my columnist colleagues. But still, La Presse ended up saving probably the Toronto Star, the National Post and other media, because you couldn't just give it to La Presse. And there is one scenario where Radio-Canada ends up saving a lot of the CBC. It's a strange reality, but it could well be what is part of a future

that is not very radical in the we're cutting off that limb, but we're going to give taxpayer-funded public radio and television to francophones across the country. Bruce? Yeah, I wanted to reinforce something that Chantal mentioned, which is that when we ask questions like this in polls, it's important to contextualize the responses, to understand that we're asking people, not would you push the button and do this tomorrow? But would you go along with this idea? Or do you

generally favor this other idea a little bit more? And there are no real consequences for people in offering an opinion. And there obviously are consequences when a government makes a decision based on numbers like this. And so smart people in politics know that and are not looking at the decision about what to do with the CBC based on soft questions, expressions of preference like this. I'm sure these questions don't seem that soft to CBC, but from my standpoint, polling is useful, but it is not the real world of decision-making. What I think the data tell us, though, if you are a decision maker, is that right now there is precious little reward for

letting the CBC continue to do what the CBC is doing. There are some enthusiastic supporters of it, but there are a lot of people for whom it seems like a matter of indifference or worse. For Mr. Polyev, there's probably a reason for him to be cautious in looking at these numbers and saying, well, if I got to the point where I actually won an election and I was going to do this, is this how it would play out or would it be worse for me? And I think no question it would be worse. Once you cross that threshold and say, we're shutting down these local news gathering operations, we're kind of laying off everybody who has provided you with whatever, the weather, the news, the sports, the entertainment, whatever you've consumed, just the sense that you're dismantling an institution that's been around, even if I'm

not somebody who uses it, that becomes a matter of greater political consequence and risk. So I don't think anybody should look at these numbers and say, it's easy. Pierre Polyev only needs to get 38, 39% of the vote in an election. And if he has 45% saying, yeah, you can do this, it will be accretive to his support if he's prime minister. That is not an accurate sense of what would happen. On the other hand, to your point, Peter, for the government, the notion that they can reflexively say, well, Pierre Polyev is just making mischief talking about this great Canadian institution that everybody values, and he shouldn't assume that Canadians are with him. In fact, they're probably outraged at what he's saying. Well, there's not that much outrage at what he's saying. And so people who care about this institution inside

the institution itself or in the political world, they're going to have to do more if they want it to survive, not just the next year or two, because I don't believe that if Pierre Poliev was elected that he would dismantle the CBC or Radio Canada. But to my earlier point, if it's going to make 100 years old, it's not on a trajectory to do that. At some point, some combination of we don't use it anymore and there are other alternatives and generational change becomes too big a force to be reckoned with. Okay, I know Chantal, I know you want to pop in here, but let me just take a quick break because we have to do one of these, uh, right now.

And then as soon as we come back, we'll, uh, we'll get back to you. So, um, stand by. We'll be back in a moment. And welcome back. You're listening to the Bridge, the Friday episode. Good talk. Chantelle Hebert in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa.

And you're listening on Sirius XM, channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favourite podcast platform. Or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Whichever platform you're using, welcome on board. Okay, we're still talking about the CBC. A couple of things I'd like to cover before we move on to something else, but Chantelle, you want it in at this point. Yes, Bruce was talking about Pierre Poiliev and his bid and the people who would support it and the fact that there's not a great uprising against it.

And the same would be true of the people who are defending it. But it's not a policy of the leader. It does send a clear message that you are branding yourself in a way that is not pleasant for your party. I was looking at some Léger numbers this week, and there's always this question, who do you think would make the best prime minister? Pierre Poilievre in Quebec is considered the best prime minister by 13% of voters. That's one point more than Jacques Mead saying you can't get the time of day in Quebec. They already have a leader's problem. And now the leader in Quebec is providing substance to the reason why people aren't saying this is a really interesting proposition.

Even the people who vote for the Bloc Québécois in that poll were majoritively and almost by a margin of two to one saying, we think Justin Trudeau is a better prime minister than Pierre Poilievre would be. Those are not great numbers. And the fact that he only ever talks about the CBC and all of his broadcasting ideas in English rather than in French does not help him. It actually makes him sound like he's saying one thing in one section of the country and the other official language. The other problem is that he is providing the Bloc in particular, but not exclusively, with something great to run on. We will keep Pierre Poiliev in check if they, and they being voters outside Quebec, give him enough votes to make him the government. I don't think that a minority conservative government could ever bring about many of its policies, not just the one on the CBC. And I think issues like that are

bringing the liberals, the NDP and the Bloc closer together on many of those values issues. And that coming closer together will eventually come back to haunt a minority conservative government if there ever is one run by Pierre Poilier. And the other thing that I found interesting in these numbers that Bruce has got today was the collapse in young people's support for the CBC. Now, I heard Chantel explain one of the reasons for that, but I want to just dig a little deeper on that because, you know, for years at the corporation, it's always been we've got to make sure we're attracting young voters.

They are the future, blah, blah, blah, all that. And every year they'd come back with the same data that we weren't doing that. They're clearly not doing that now. I can recall it was like two years ago or maybe even three years ago, I gave a lecture at the University of Toronto, and it was all fairly young people, postgraduate students. And at one point I asked them, how do you get your news?

Raise your hand. Do you get it by print? Do you get it radio? Do you get it television? Went through the thing and there were a hundred post-grad students in the room and hardly any of them raised their hand on radio, television, print. But social media,

Facebook, they all, you know, dozens and dozens of hands were raised. When I asked them their problem with the media, and television media in particular, why they didn't watch it anymore, they pointed to stuff like their belief that it was all biased, that they only covered bad news, what both of you were talking about in some way,

that it was boring in the way they did it. This is a young generation that's used to, you know, whether it's TikTok or what have you, they found the news telling boring. And they also found there was two, this is a Toronto audience. They found it was too Toronto-centric. And by that, they're not talking about, you know, like covering, you know, some particular downtown issue in Toronto,

but the kind of stories they chose to focus on were the kind of stories that the chattering classes in Toronto would talk about and not necessarily those outside of Toronto. And this is national media on all of them. But that, you know, it's always been a, you know, the future obviously is going to be guided to some degree by what the young people today are thinking. And what you show in these numbers, Bruce,

is there's good reason to be concerned, I guess not just for the CBC, but for journalism in general, if that's the feeling they have. Yeah, a little bit for journalism. But I think one of the other things that we need to be cautious in over-interpreting, I mean, when you said a kind of a collapse of support for the CBC among young people, I kind of look collapse of support for the CBC among young people, I kind of look at it as more they didn't grow up with it the way that we did. I mean, when it's a little bit like saying has support among young people for Coca-Cola and Pepsi collapsed? Probably not, but they're just exposed to so many other beverages that didn't exist when I was growing

up. Maybe there was Kek Cola or RC or something like that, and that was as wild as it got. And now there's kombucha and there's flavored water and there's all kinds of other things that are on offer. So the menu of choices is so much more broad and young people have just developed in a different marketplace that they sample all of these other choices. Now, related to that, I've been in focus groups asking young people where they get their news and what news they consume is usually a pretty strong function of what they're really interested

in as people, which in many cases is more to do with what the Guardian is reporting on or what is happening in a particular policy area that they're fascinated with. Or if their interests aren't what's the mainstream news agenda for Canada, then they won't consume a mainstream news service about Canada in the sense of let's do Canada in 30 minutes every evening. That's almost a project that isn't interesting to them if what they really want to know is what's happening in Russia and Ukraine, what's happening in Central and South America, what do I need to know about the climate change issue? What's happening with the human rights

of the Uyghurs in China? These are real life examples that I've heard in focus groups that people say, well, that's, I want to know everything about that. And if it means I don't have time to know what's happening in the mayoralty race in Toronto, so be it, right?

There's no sense of consequence for not having that. And I'm not saying that there should be. I'm just saying it is a fact of life that interests have disaggregated and there are places where people can go to get the information that pertain to their passions. And even if I wanted to hear about one of the topics that Bruce is talking about, I could find it on the CBC without having toCanada, CTV, but it doesn't come in the shape of someone sitting behind a desk telling them this is what happened today. One of the problems of the evening newscast is whoever is still watching them could easily know everything that there is to know that will be in that newscast long before it is ever on air, and they will probably have had the opportunity

to see the news reports that come with it. So how do you measure engagement? I read and listen to reports from the CBC on the CBC website if I'm interested enough, but that doesn't make me go and buy a television to watch a program. Yeah, you know, I guess what I was trying to get at is there's a lot more to what the CBC should be, and quite frankly is, than just the news, right?

I've got a 24-hour programming day. But should there? Well, okay, that's a legitimate question but that is the question that should be part of the debate about public broadcasting right but i'm talking about news in the larger sense like i'm including current affairs the fifth state and local news it's a large field yeah but there's drama and there's comedy and there's sports and there's all these other things that are, you know, part of trying to paint a picture of a country.

Now, do you want to get out all that stuff? Some people argue, even some people internally at the CBC will argue it's time to get out of some of that stuff and focus on what Canadians claim or at least have claimed. I don't know what to think anymore given the data we're discussing this morning. But the claim was always, the number one thing I want out of my public broadcaster is news and current affairs. I watch these other things. There's a big gap that's developing for local news.

And I think the question, from my standpoint, should be, what does the CBC need to do because it won't be done otherwise and because it's actually important for a functioning society? I could put all of the drama and the entertainment programming off on the TBD kind of category and maybe some of the national news coverage stuff, certainly those curation functions, if they carry a bigger cost in terms of how the news is organized and packaged and presented, I feel like the models are pretty outdated. But I do think that it's been clear for a number of years that local news gathering is going away in the private sector.

And if there's a function for a public broadcaster, a public news organization, I think there's a big gap there. Okay, we're going to move on. I think it's, you know, we've talked about this a number of times this week, about the CBC and last week as well, which is funny because I always spent a career not talking about the CBC in last week as well, which is funny because I always spent a career not talking about the CBC because I felt there was kind of a conflict there. However, moving on, related in a way is the Twitter issue, right?

I mean, Twitter has been the focus since Elon Musk of, you know, what are they really up to and are they, you know, what are they really up to? And are they, you know, does it make sense what he's done to the place? He, by the way, if you hadn't heard overnight, apparently has pulled that description of the CBC as a government-funded news organization. No explanation, at least yet, that I've heard as to why he's pulled that. But anyway, a lot of people are trying to determine whether they should even stay on Twitter.

Is the management of that social media platform being so controversial and so bad because of Musk that it's time to punt and get out. And we've seen some of our colleagues have done just that. And the government of Canada is supposedly thinking about whether or not it should end its use of Twitter. How do we feel about that? How do we feel about the use of Twitter,

whether it's by individuals or governments, given the way it's being managed and the pronouncements that are being made by Twitter about all kinds of different things? Bruce, why don't you start? Well, I think that my opinion continues to evolve because Twitter keeps changing and I don't know how I'm going to feel about it a year from now

I do think that there are huge problems with the organization with the platform I think there are huge problems with the leadership that Elon Musk has provided I think it's pretty clear that my early hypothesis that he's a genius in EVs and other things. And so he'll bring that special genius to bear on this. Incorrect. Let me just declare right now that I was a hundred percent wrong about that, that he brought the non-genius part of Elon Musk to Twitter.

And it's been a kind of a disaster. that he brought the non-genius part of Elon Musk to Twitter, and it's been a kind of a disaster. Having said that, the question of whether it's immoral or amoral to continue using the platform, to me, is not something that is easy to settle, because there are ways in which it is quite helpful to people to share information, to share ideas, to converse on this. And the fact that they do it doesn't mean that they're endorsing the horrible behaviors that also exist on the platform. And the last point I would make is that for organizations that are thinking about exiting the platform, the challenge is it is widely used by media, by journalists as a way of capturing information and a way of pushing their work out. It is widely used by organizations that want to reach consumers,

want to reach people with an opinion or a point of view. And there's a lot of value in that. It would be better if there was a better platform than this. But people like us have probably been saying that for five years now or more, and there isn't yet. So that's where I am. Do you have a bottom line vote on whether government should stay on Twitter? Well, I think government should stay on Twitter? Well, I think government should stay on Twitter, but not enthusiastically in the sense of,

I think that what it should do is use the platform to deliver essential information and content that it believes people need to know about. But I think it should stop short of endorsing the behaviors of Musk, and it should continue as a regulator to look carefully at what is the right role of government in preventing disinformation and polarization and extremism from being spread on this platform and other platforms.

Chantal? I don't know how I'll feel about Twitter a week from now, let alone a year from now, given how up, down, sideways the platform keeps going. I have noticed, though, and it's been interesting, that this blue tick notion that you were going to take away the blue checkmark next to the names of so-called verified people, none of us ever asked for that. It was Twitter that verified that Peter Mansbridge, who was on Twitter, was actually Peter Mansbridge, the person that most people assume he is. Same for me. But I looked yesterday at who was left when they took off that blue checkmark. And it seemed to me that they've done better on the right than anywhere else.

But they haven't done very well at all in the sense that, for instance, as far as one could tell this morning, 12 conservative MPs have retained that blue checkmark, including Mr. Poiliev. I'm assuming they have decided to pay for it. No liberal, no Bloc Québécois member, no new Democrat member. Well, a few liberals, a handful of liberals. But what that basically tells you, and a lot of people who have anonymous accounts, which tells you that going forward, it could be that this blue checkmark will mean you're a bot or a troll, as opposed to meaning you are the person that you say you are. So congratulations for this very valuable operation that brings very little money. The downside to leaving is that you are actually, in this context, leaving more space for disinformation.

That if everyone who feels that the platform has deteriorated on content leaves, it's going to leave behind an echo chamber for disinformation. And that's an argument, I guess, for politicians of all stripes to stay on. And for people who aren't keen on Elon Musk to stay on for a while and see where everything goes. Because if you take out, as the CBC this week suspended its account, if everyone starts mainstream news reporting, starts vacating Twitter, Twitter will live on. But we will all be leaving a lot of people behind. And I'm not there yet. Okay. I'm sure I'll hear a lot from listeners on the Twitter topic.

So don't be shy. Let your voice be heard. We're going to take our final break. When we come back, we're going to talk about, you know, a massive strike through the federal employees of the government of Canada. I think it's 150,000 are on strike. What impact that is having and what it says about government's relationship with the people who work for it.

But we're going to take a quick break. Final break. Here it is. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantel and Bruce are with us. The final topic for today is the strike that is going on in different parts of the country,

having an impact on various public services. 150,000 people, in some cases, asking for increases, double-digit percentage increases. The government's offering, I think, four and a half percent and saying they don't have any more money, that that's the best they can do. What's the impact of this strike? And what does it say about the relationship

between the government and the people who work for it? Chantelle, you start. Well, by and large, the history of the relationship between the Trudeau government and the civil service has been pretty good. The conservatives have a more adversarial relationship to unions in general and to the public service in particular. And their relationship was very much based on reciprocal suspicion.

That was not the case of Justin Trudeau when he arrived. And this is a liberal party that in many ways is different from previous incarnations in the sense that there has been a real strategic effort on the part of the Trudeau brain trust to bring the unions more into the fold of the government and the party. The Canadian Labour Congress had, you know, could walking in and out of the prime minister's office in a way that had never been seen in the past. Unifor had people sitting on the team that renegotiated NAFTA. That's pretty much unheard of in the history of federal government relationships with unions. But at the same time, the government of Canada is an employer. And what that employer does

in the public sector kind of trickles down to what provinces will end up having to do at the negotiating table. And so when the federal government decides how much it's going to raise salaries in the public service, provinces know that they're going to be asked to match those increases at a time when governments, in particular the federal government, is trying to, through the Bank of Canada, to cool down inflation. So that's one issue. The other issue, which I think is just as important,

is how far do you go to make working from home part and parcel of a regular negotiation and a regular union contract? And that, too, will set an example for where we are going from there. So you can understand that the government of Canada is kind of, in a way, having to decide how far it can go on those issues, because it is setting a model for other jurisdictions. And that does matter. That doesn't mean that the liberals are not in a lose-lose situation, in the sense that whatever they grant will be judged too generous by a lot of people. But if the strike persists, the onus will be on the liberals and only on them for having allowed it to happen and having allowed it to continue. And Justin Trudeau's capacity to end it, called back-to-work legislation, one would probably destroy part of the efforts that

the government and the liberals have invested in cozying up to big labor. And that's not a criticism. I think it's a constructive thing to do to engage more with big labor. But it would also suit the NDP. So the NDP will never support the Liberals in back-to-work legislation because they are trying to win back some of the space that they have been losing under Justin Trudeau. The Bloc Québécois, for the same reason, has a very strong affiliation to major labor unions in Quebec. So it's not going to be playing in the back to work legislation model. And the conservatives, I suspect, will be happy enough to hang the liberals out to dry on this strike for as long as is tenable, especially given the fact that Pierre Poilievre has been making a plea for union votes and bluear votes. So when you put all of that together, you have a government that really needs a settlement, but that is at risk of crossing lines that will make people say, well, there they go again. They're buying off the civil service to get rid of a strike

at cost to the Canadian economy. So not the easiest issue to handle. Bruce? Well, you know, as is always the case on Fridays, I was listening carefully to Chantal to see if there was anything that she was going to miss. And as is always the case, there really wasn't anything. So I'll just kind of reinforce two or three quick points. First of all, their point about the chemistry between the labor movement or labor leadership

and the liberal government, I think is a really important one. And it has been a hugely important strategic advantage for the liberals to have invested in those relationships. And to some degree, I see that paying off a little bit right now and that the nature of the public tension around this negotiation seems quite mild relative to what it could sometimes be. And that, I think, allows negotiations to proceed in a more orderly fashion and for people not to feel as though the end of the world is upon us because this strike is happening. But obviously, if the strike endures for too long and services really do start to feel like they're falling apart for people, there are other consequences for government in that area. The second thing is that the biggest political risk for the government to some degree is inflation and whether they're doing enough to bring it down. And what they decide to do here

from a cost of living standpoint will be seen as either kind of contributing to the problem that they say they're trying to solve or contributing to the solution that they believe they are already helping solve. And that has huge consequences politically, at least in the near term. But, you know, as we know, the news cycle turns and people's attention turns to something else. If inflation keeps on coming down, people aren't going to particularly remember the number that was baked into the cost of living at the end of this contract negotiation. There is also the cost of government. And I think that a vulnerability for the Liberals going into the next election is the notion that the cost of government. And I think that a vulnerability for the Liberals going into the next election is the notion that the cost of government has gone up, that the size of government

has gone up, that the number of people working for the government has gone up, that the size of the deficit has gone up, and that the services don't seem to be delivered to the same degree of the standard that people are looking for. And that's a vulnerability on the right and to some degree, I suppose, on the left. The right would come at it from the standpoint of saying we're spending a lot of money, a lot more money, hiring a lot more people and getting less from it. On the left, it's a little bit of a the government doesn't know how to manage people and outsources too much and all that kind of thing. But in the end, it's a management challenge for the government. And so I think there's a fair bit riding on it.

But reading between the tea leaves, it feels like these sides aren't bracing for a long, prolonged strike. More that they expect that this negotiation will wrap itself up in a relatively short order. And I may regret by next Friday having said that. Well, that would be two Fridays in a row where you would have regretted saying something. I have regrets every Friday, but I get over them on the weekend. Chantal thinks you're safe on this one. He's safer on this than he was on Elon Musk, I suspect. All right. Listen, you two, thanks very much.

You know, thank you for the discussion today. I'm not sure how into the people are out there on the thing that we spend most of our time on today on the CBC. But obviously there's, you know, some interest on our parts, you know, certainly on mine. Chantelle may not watch, but she's been a part of the CBC for the last whatever number of years now. I started at Radio-Canada 48 years ago on Tuesday.

Just a kid, just a baby. All right, that's it. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks, Chantelle. We'll talk to you again in seven days before Good Talk. The Bridge will be back

on Monday with a whole week of exciting programming in store. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again on Monday.