The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Is The Liberal-NDP Deal Falling Apart?

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

The Conservative's double-digit lead in the polls seems to have the NDP nervous about its deal with the Liberals which helps keep Justin Trudeau in power. Every week it seems the NDP is looking for more concessions from the Liberals  to stay on board. How long can that last, how long will it last?  Bruce and Chantal are with us with their thoughts.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson are with me as well. It's another good day for Good Talk as we approach the end of yet another week. All right, I want to start with something that we kind of touched on last week, but Chantel, you know, made a good point. She said NDP are going to vote with the Conservatives on Monday of this week, this past Monday. But don't assume the Bloc is going to as well.

And this will, you know, make it survival for the Liberals through that vote, which is exactly what happened. But ever since that day, there's been a push, it seems, each day from the NDP on some of the things they want to see accomplished because of their deal with the Liberals. And there's a growing feeling, I guess you could say, that they are pushing the boundaries of this and that they just may say, you know what, we're out of here. We're not into this deal anymore. We may cancel the deal. How much of a real threat is that? Chantal? Antal? Actually, the suggestion that the NDP would want to cancel the deal

or would be thinking about it and it would be really fragile seems to mostly come from outside NDP ranks and from commentators who maybe are, like all of us, itching to have a federal election and are looking for a bit of drama. But I think what this week's vote demonstrated, like all of us, itching to have a federal election and are looking for a bit of drama. But I think what this week's vote demonstrated, the one on climate, is that the NDP has a lot to lose in this parliament by walking away from that pact. For first reason, it does not hold exclusively the balance of power, as we saw this week. Le Bloc also holds it. And Yves-François Blanchet is not going to be rushed into an election

just because the NDP suddenly wants to walk away. So if the NDP left the pact, it would go back to its fourth-party status with more or less influence, but certainly not the kind of leverage that it currently has on the liberals. I also don't believe that the liberals are all that sensitive to the assertion by the conservatives that they're now in league with the separatists. It's very hard for many people who are in good faith to believe that the Trudeau would actually be working towards separation. I don't know. It only takes a bit of history to know that the Trudeau would actually be working towards separation. I don't know. It only takes a bit of history to know that that's not the case. But the other thing is, this week, the NDP secured something that both the Bloc and the NDP had been trying

to get for, in the case of the NDP, decades in the shape of this legislation to ban replacement workers when there are strikes. That, which we call anti-scab legislation, has been on the books in Quebec for decades. But it does not apply to enterprises that are regulated by the federal government, banks, etc., etc. And the NDP tried to get this extended to all of Canada. It's been one of those iconic cases that the big labor, the union movement has been pushing for, and they got it this week. And it is a result of that pact with the liberals. So as long as Mr. Singh can show progress on signature issues, and this is a signature issue, and at the same time maybe score a bit of a goal in the net of Pierre Poiliev,

who's been trying to get the workers' votes. It is really hard to make a case that the NDP, with the polls looking the way they look for the party, should say, oh, I'm going to do myself a good service. I'm going to precipitate what may be an election that will result in a majority conservative government that won't give me the time of day. Bruce, your thought on this? I'm reminded that when I was younger, I used to follow boxing. I don't know if either of the two of you followed boxing, but in heavyweight boxing and even, you know, a rank down, there was always this syndrome of somebody would be catching fire as a boxer, winning fights, and they'd be moving up the ranks. And then they'd want to fight the number one boxer.

And then it was always this dance. And sometimes it would take two or three years for a fight to be arranged because everybody was kind of measuring their downside. What if the, you know, the up and comer wasn't quite ready, uh, and needed to do a couple more fights to put a little bit more money in the bank. What if the reigning champion, uh, was vulnerable and needed to train more? There was always kind of more conversation about about wouldn't it be great if this fight would happen because people want the drama, people wanted the experience of seeing that competition. And it is a little bit like that in politics where right now I think you have a situation where,

to Chantal's point, there's only one party in the House that could feel confident that the outcome of an election would be more seats for them. Just one, the Conservatives. In that scenario, what is the momentum behind any of the other parties deciding that they, I mean, if they were deeply aggrieved by something, some federal transgression into provincial affairs in Quebec. Yeah, that can happen. But this is not a government that's going to make those kinds of mistakes, I don't think. They'll make mistakes. We've talked about that a lot, but I don't think they're going to make that kind of mistake. There are some bumps in the road ahead on the relationship between the Liberals and the NDP. Pharmacare is clearly one.

Hardly a day goes by that there aren't warning shots issued by the NDP and signals by the Liberals that the cost of government, the cost to taxpayers, the size of government, the scale of government is a concern for them. And that's what's going on around that issue. And I could have imagined that the debate about carbon pricing and the changes that the government announced could have been a flashpoint that could create a rupture in that relationship. But as I look back on the days that have passed since then, that probably would have been me imagining the prospect of that heavyweight fight rather than the math really looking like it could produce that because at the end of the day, the NDP walked away from the opportunity to turn that into

a more explosive political issue. And they didn't do that by mistake. They did it by calculation. They said, we want to live to fight another day, to fight many more days, to be able to talk about many more initiatives that we work on with this government, because we don't see a scenario where we come out of an election now with more seats necessarily. that holds in perpetuity, I think the X factor really is Justin Trudeau and whether or not his popularity starts to rise again, whether it deteriorates further, whether there seems to be more turmoil in the Liberal Party. Those are factors that could affect that calculation on the part of the NDP, but that isn't happening yet, I don't think. Let me ask it from a different angle. Chantal, you said there's no apparent pressure from within that NDP caucus to pull the plug on the deal. How about the party as a whole? Because did we not see at their recent convention, whenever that was, time plays tricks on us this fall, it's been crazy.

But it was only a month or two months ago. There seemed to be some unrest within the party, the broader party, about the deal, what they were getting out of it. And I'm wondering whether this push to get more out of it now is as a result of that convention, or whether the caucus just feels very differently than general party membership? I'm not sure that people who attend the convention always speak

for general party members in the sense that parties are animals that have various body parts. And those that attend conventions are the body parts that are really more into ideology than those who are sympathetic to the party and still members of the party. So I am not convinced that if you did a plebiscite of NDP members, as opposed to a convention, you would get a massive vote to walk away from that pact. Of course, what you also saw at the NDP convention was what I call the fumes effect. People walk into a convention and everything becomes possible. Reality takes the

backseat to the feeling that you're all together and you'll win an election because you're the good guys. Once you go back out in the cold, reality is not changed and you're still in fourth position. So I'm not noticing that voices of influence are publicly calling on Jagmeet Singh to walk away from this deal. I also believe that among the voices of influence are publicly calling on Jagmeet Singh to walk away from this deal. I also believe that among the voices of influence, there are NDP premiers. And those two NDP premiers and NDP leaders, like Rachel Notley in Alberta, to name just her, have a tremendous amount of influence on the NDP voting with the conservatives earlier this week, because they were asking for the suspension of the carbon tax on heating oil to be extended to all forms of heating this winter.

And the NDP federally doesn't like to be at odds with provincial wings, especially on an issue that is so bread and butterish. But I'm like Bruce, I don't see that there would have been a smart calculation in using that as a step to walk away from the pact, because there are many NDP members who are also concerned about climate change, and the notion that this sends a message that the NDP is not only on the same page as the conservatives on heating costs, but it could also be on the same page as a conservative government in dismantling the climate policy that the liberals have put in place. That's dangerous for the NDP. It opens them to liberal attacks. It actually restores some of the liberal edge on the NDP if it goes to that. So I think they could only vote and then back off, which they did the next day by saying, let's just take

out the GST, their initial position, which was more in line with what they'd been saying all along. But I think they're happy enough to just walk away from this. I also believe that for labor unions, what happened with this anti-SCAP legislation is a major tool in the sense that Pierre Poiliev is going in an election with baggage on the union front. The previous conservative government had some pretty aggressive legislation on the books to restrain and flip the wings of unions. And this legislation allows the NDP and the liberals to bring that back on the radar. There are many working people who are union members who will take that baggage into consideration before they switch to the Conservatives. As you say, as we've said a number of times the past few months, Pauliev especially has been working hard at that union vote, trying to attract it. So this, whether this has an impact on that or not, you'd assume it probably would. But who knows? Bruce,

did you want to pick up on that point? Well, I did. But I was hoping that Chantal would forget the last point that she made, because then I was going to have an opportunity to say it. So I'll just applaud her perspicacity in making that point. But I think of the NDP as having kind of three layers to it. There's the leadership, which is responsible for figuring out how to make things happen in government and win election campaigns or succeed in election campaigns. There's the activists who tend to be the people who go to the conventions and are highly visible

and speak out on behalf of the party. And then there's the NDP voter. And I think those are all three different kind of species right now. If I'm at the leadership level, I'm as worried about voters wandering to the conservatives as I am about them wandering to the liberals, which would have been in the last couple of elections, the bigger worry. And it may be again, if the liberals kind of, you know, find some chemistry again with those voters, you would have, if you were the leadership, a two-front war, defending your voters from drifting to the liberals to avoid a Polyev government and some others drifting to Polyev because he sounds more populist and in line with the day-to-day priorities that they have.

Then if you think about the activists, they tend to be the people who push the hardest for ideas like single-payer pharmacare, which doesn't really have as much traction, based on my work, with the rank and file, most of whom are in unions that have group insurance plans and don't see a material benefit from the idea that the NDP are proposing. So I think if you're the leadership, you want to be really careful to to overestimate the vulnerability of others and the appeal that you might have to their voters. And be more cautious about the fact that you could end up in a situation where you're bleeding to the right and bleeding to the center, and you don't have the same sense of agenda that you might have found it easier to conjure up in the past.

Because people these days, and I've got some data coming out in the next little while, we're asked voters, what kind of government do you want in Canada? You want one with big, bold ambition or small set of practical priorities? And people say small set of practical priorities, including NDP voters. It is a gut it out, do the work, don't get out in front of your skis so much kind of mindset that exists out there now. If the NDP isn't feeling or Singh in particular, isn't feeling pressure at the moment in terms of abandoning, abandoning the deal, how much pressure is there on the liberals and, and, and Trudeau,

especially in terms of the arrangement with the NDP, is there a pressure that they're running the risk of, you know, giving away the farm to keep them in the tent? Or does it all come to a head on the pharmacare issue because of the expected cost of that, as well as other points on a pharmacare program? Pressure on the Liberals? Chantal? Up to a point, yes. And it's going to be interesting to see how the week after the break, there's a break next week. So the week after will be the fiscal update that Minister Freeland has to deliver. She will not have good news on the front of the deficit. It's going to be significantly higher than forecast last April. But somewhere in that, there are four weeks left when they come back on the 20th. So something somewhere on

pharmacare will have to be seen. And it's going to have to jive. And that's the challenge to the liberals with the tone of the fiscal update. You're not 2015 is not coming back. This is not a time when the public will be receptive to the idea of a larger deficit, just as you're telling them it keeps going up. I suspect that the groundwork is being laid for the NDP to accept less rather than more when it comes to the pharmacare bill. Possibly, there are so many variations, as you know, to anything that is a new program or a new initiative in the sense that you can craft it around provincial buy-in, for instance, which in this case would be very, very low. Quebec, Ontario, Alberta are not buying into a national pharmacare

program at this point. There is no interest on the part of those three governments. I am not convinced that BC with an NDP government is all that enthusiastic. So there are ways to do things that leave it to others to keep it very modest. But this is up for negotiations. Like Bruce, I don't believe that the NDP has a winning issue in walking away from the pact on this issue of pharmacare, not if it's going to deliver them a majority conservative government that will never mouth the words PharmaCare for four years. So if I had to pick an issue and I were the NDP, I would wait to see if there is one because they don't have one at this point.

Every issue they've tried, affordability, groceries, etc. It's there, but it's steeped. And if you look government, was because of what was happening in Quebec and the sense for NDP voters outside Quebec that maybe the NDP was on a roll. So in Ontario, the Liberals actually lost votes to the Conservatives and the NDP. But there are many things I would never bet on. But one thing I think I can bet a small amount of money on is on Jagmeet Singh not on the way to an orange wave in Quebec in any election anytime soon.

Bruce, you get the last word on this topic before we take our first break. Well, look, I think the Liberals do feel some pressure, but I don't think they feel it specifically about the NDP as much as they do this combination of, do we have an agenda that we think is compelling enough to the average voter who's kind of drifted away from us, most of whom have drifted away to Pierre-Paul Lievre at this point? And I don't think they know what that is. And I don't think they quite know how to fashion one that would draw those voters back without losing some of the voters who form the left side of their coalition. And inside their caucus, inside their cabinet, they have a lot of people who are very dialed into the real progressive bona fides, and they have others who are worried that they're going to lose their seats to conservatives because of the size of the deficit.

Not so much the number, but the sense that this government doesn't take it seriously enough and always wants to spend more money on any idea that comes along. So that tension is the real pressure that I think the Liberals and Justin Trudeau are feeling right now. I don't think they're feeling it so much from the standpoint of, will the NDP drop us and cause an election? And I think they shouldn't worry about that,

at least not in the imminent future, and certainly not on pharmacare. I think if we just stop for a minute and imagine that day when Jagmeet Singh stands in front of a bank of microphones on Parliament Hill and says, I needed to have this election make any sense to anybody that it should happen, I I'm going to ask one extra question on this. And it's this. We don't know how this is going to end, this agreement between the NDP and the Liberals. We don't know how it's going to end, when it's going to end. But at this point in history, because eventually in history, people will judge this agreement, who it was best for, what was accomplished, all of that.

At this point in history, what's the verdict on that? Well, for the NDP, it's hard to see that it was anything but a win-win. Why do I say that? Because until that deal came about, the NDP in fourth place, without even the balance of power, was kind of a fifth wheel in the current parliament with little choice but to support on an item by item basis, the liberals for the most part, because there was no appetite in the country for an election and they had no prospects for improvement in an election. So it gave them a lot more relevance in this parliament than Thomas Mulcair

ever had in official opposition facing a majority conservative government. From the liberals' perspective, I think we'll have to say time will tell whether it will have made the liberals friendly enough for the NDP to mobilize, NDP voters I don't need the party, to mobilize behind the liberals in the face of a possible

conservative majority but I mean there was some logic to making that pact for Justin Trudeau. I don't think he needed it in the way that it was presented. But I'm always reminded when I look at those agreements that when Bob Ray and David Peterson, because they were kind of the people who started off on this path in 1985, when they made the deal, they had a list of things that the liberals with Peterson would accomplish, and the NDP would support the liberals for two years. And so they did.

And Peterson was rewarded for that at first with a majority government in 87. But I don't believe that there would ever have been an NDP government in Ontario had there not been that experience of the NDP participating in government over those two years. And in 1990, the NDP did get a shot at power under the same leader who had made that deal. Back then it was Bob Ray. So I think the experience for the NDP has been positive in another way in that it has brought its caucus to the governing table and forced them to consider the compromises that come with the exercise of power. And in the future, it may lead to an NDP platform that is a bit different,

but maybe more attractive to middle of the road voters who will say, well, you know, they governed in support of the liberals and they weren't so crazy. We'll see. Yeah, I think it's unquestionably been a success for the progressive voters who support the Liberals or the NDP. I think that I tend to always kind of look at the broader public opinion numbers and find consistently that 60 to 65% of Canadians identify as progressives. The rest is conservative, small c, small p. And the challenge for a lot of progressives in many instances over the Harper years, for example, has been, well, how do we have more progressive voters who want more progressive policies, but we don't get them because of the outcome of our first-past-the-post system? an argument that this is a better substitute for those who favor a change in our electoral system. But it is a way in which our system produced results from a policy standpoint that were more aligned with the broad mass of progressive voters.

And so I think from that standpoint, for sure, it was successful. It was successful for the liberals so far because it allowed them plenty of room to run forward with the initiatives that they cared about and very, very little that they had to do that would have been distasteful to them. In fact, I'm struggling to think of what those things might have been, other than for some members of the cabinet and caucus probably spending more money than they might have otherwise done. The challenge, though, and this is where I don't know if you would look at it as a success, is that I think sometimes the scale of government ambition and announcements and movement on different policies, combined with the attention deficit of the public right now,

because we're all looking in 20,000 different ways, means fewer people are aware of the things that the government has done in cooperation with the NDP than might have been hoped for by either the NDP or the liberals. And so you have this chemistry now where people are saying, I'm kind of tired of them or I'm tired of this configuration. But they're not really asking themselves the hard question about, but did I get something out of this? And would I get more out of a continuation of this kind of thing than a switch to another party?

That thought process, I don't think, has really worked out that well for the liberals. And maybe part of that is just the vagaries of politics. If you're in charge for too long, people just grow tired listening to you. Maybe it's partly the way in which the government has kind of chewed up a lot of bandwidth with so many different things that people can't keep track of them. All right. We're going to take that break. When we come back, we're going to talk Mark Carney talk. That's right after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to the Bridge Friday episode, which, of course, is good talk. Chantel and Bruce are here. You're listening on Sirius 167, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or you're watching us on our YouTube channel, where the numbers just keep going up, which is pretty nice.

We're glad that whatever platform you choose to watch or listen to us, that you're there. All right, here's the next topic, the second topic for today. It's about Mark Carney, who a little more than a week ago, answered a question with the Globe and Mail saying that, you know, there could be a day where he'd be interested in running for the Liberal leadership. And of course, that set off a lot of discussion, a lot of talk, whether he intended for that or not, I don't know. One assumes he must have realized that people would be talking

and they have been talking for the last week. Here's my question about this. And Bruce, I'm going to ask you to start us off on this. My question about Mark Carney is, if Mark Carney is somebody who would be valued by the Liberal Party as an MP, as a cabinet minister, as a potential future leader somewhere down the road, why doesn't Justin Trudeau, who is, if you believe the polls, in serious trouble, why doesn't he bring this guy into the party now? Get him to run in a by-election, put him in the cabinet,

in a senior position that could have some influence. Why has that not happened? You're asking me to read the mind of Justin Trudeau on this? I can't speak for Justin Trudeau as to why that hasn't happened. Why do you think? You're supposed to read his mind. Yes, please. We're reading Betha's breath, everything.

Go ahead. Give it a try what what do you think is the reason he's not been invited in yet or you know maybe he has and he's turned it down i don't know does it not seem like something you'd want to do oh yeah absolutely yeah absolutely i think any any any party needs to be on the lookout for people, the skills and qualifications and energy level of Mark Carney. politics. And we these days mostly see people of great accomplishment or significant accomplishment kind of wandering away saying it doesn't feel like a way to spend a significant chunk of your life. And I quite understand that. So I'm a very big advocate of wanting to see Mark Carney be in politics. And so I'm happy that he's willing to consider it at some point in the

future. For Justin Trudeau, I don't know what he thinks about it. But if I were him, I would want to have Mark Carney by my side on the team, helping contribute ideas, helping contribute some thinking based on his expertise and understanding markets and understanding the world. And also, you know, he has a, he has an understanding of Canada coming from different, living in different parts of Canada that I think is valuable as well. But mostly I think it's just that we're talking about somebody who's really smart, who's really capable, who's got some energy and a desire to do some public service potentially. And the government would be wise to welcome him into that endeavor. Well, those are all reasons why he should.

What would be a reason why he shouldn't? Well, there are a variety of reasons that you're going to hear. And like Bruce, I don't read justin trudeau's mind but i have heard reasons pros and cons one reason that comes up in conversations uh not with the pmo so let's make that clear is uh well why would justin trudeau want him uh considering that he wants justin trudeau's job But that's kind of a fake argument, because if Justin Trudeau were thinking in those terms, he would be forgetting recent history

when Jean Chrétien totally used Paul Martin to secure that third majority and do better in the popular vote in Quebec than the Bloc Québécois in this last election. How did he do that? By putting Paul Martin front and center in every commercial, you would have believed that both were the best friends in the world, walking shoulder to shoulder in those shots,

which of course they were not. And we know what happened afterwards. But if you're the prime minister and you have an asset, do you want to use that asset? You don't start thinking about what's going to happen if this guy takes your job because voters can take away your job and this guy can help you keep that job. So that's one reason. Another that I hear about from other quarters is that if Mark Carney were to come in, the only thing that makes sense would be for him to come in and finance. Otherwise, it's just adding another green plant,

a nice green plant, to the green plants that sit around the cabinet table. And it's not enough to say Mark Carney is at the table. If anyone wants advice from Mark Carney in government, he doesn't need to go sit there and play nice when the prime minister is giving a news conference as part of the background. That opens two debates. The first is, what does Carissa Freeland think about this? Does she want really to stick around? Does she like being a finance minister? If not, is there an easy way to ease her out of finance and put Mark Carney in her place? She seemed to enjoy foreign affairs a lot more than she does finance, frankly. But if you're

Justin Trudeau, do you want to look like you're the person who pushed out the first female federal finance minister in favor of a white guy from some business place, as qualified as he may be. So the optics matter. And what Ms. Freeland thinks about this also matters. And then there's the third issue that the others raise, and it's a valid point. We tried the, let's have a finance minister who's never sat for a day in the House of Commons on his first day on the job. The name of that person was Bill Morneau. And what that experience demonstrated is that there is a learning curve. By the way, if Mr. Carney wants to be prime minister,

one would think that he might want to consider getting himself some political experience on the way there. So are you going to gamble on Mark Carney becoming the finance minister? What if he becomes another Morneau? There are already, you can see the attacks coming. I saw stuff on social media saying, well, he's a British citizen. He did go through that process to be the governor of the central bank in the UK. But all this does not tell you what you really want to know, which is why is Justin Trudeau not doing it? And I don't think that

Bruce or I can answer that question, but maybe we should give Trudeau a call. We should mention he still has a Canadian citizenship too. I mean, he has dual passports like a lot of us do. Let me, you know, another theory that was thrown out during the week, and you tell me, I'm not sure where I stand on it because everything's different, times are different. But when Pearson was prime minister in 65 and they were getting towards an election, he convinced a number of people, the three wise men from Quebec,

of which Trudeau the elder was one, to run. And it wasn't to run as prime minister. It was to run as, you know, if you win, he almost certainly was going to go into a cabinet, which he did. And gave him three years of experience. Pearson then eventually resigned. There was a leadership convention. Trudeau had the experience and ran and won.

So people were saying, well, you know, what about that argument? You know, Justin Trudeau's own father got in this way. Now, I know this was 50, 60 years ago, but is it in any way an argument in favor of doing this? Bruce? Well, I do think that it is part of the responsibility of a leader to imagine what succession looks like for their party. I don't think that leaders, as often as might be ideal, think about that in depth early on, or even, I would say early enough. So sometimes it comes

down to, you know, and for me, the most famous example of that was Brian Mulroney. You know, he put a finger on the scale for Kim Campbell instead of Jean Charest. And I think that he might dispute this, but I think that by the time that vote was held, he might have wondered whether he'd done the right thing. And quite possibly after that election where the Conservative Party was reduced to two seats, it wouldn't have only been him that wondered whether or not he did the right thing. Did he do it too late? Probably. Did he do it too hastily? Possibly, probably, maybe. So I think there are some lessons in the past that should condition how leaders think about this, but the most important one being that they should think about it, that they should understand that they have a custodial responsibility to the party that they lead, and they should think about it somewhat. Whether it goes to the point of, I should know who my logical successor is, I don't know. I think that's actually not that healthy. I do think it

is important to cultivate a field of candidates, to imagine that there should be a field of candidates, that you're developing talent. You're talking about Carney, and I was listening to that podcast that he did with the Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell, which is a great podcast if people want to listen to one and he was talking about aside from this one it's it's comparable in terms of the quality but a much bigger audience yeah and and so carney at one point was asked about his role as the governor of the bank of england what was that like he was talking about how there was a management responsibility in addition to the kind of the monetary policy role.

And he said leaders are there to develop people. And I think that is an important part of leadership. And I think it's something that Justin Trudeau must obviously think about as he thinks about who would be his candidates in the next election campaign and what kind of field of competitors there might be. But, you know, it's rare that leaders actually do spend as much time on that. And sometimes it just turns into a bit of a free for all and a bit of a disappointment, those leadership races.

I hope this won't be one. And I hope it, I hope this won't be one. And I hope it, I hope this won't be one. Let me leave it there. If you bring Mark Carney in at this point, you're doing two things that are collateral. The first one is Mark Carney's advantage by now is that he's not associated with this government. And that's become an advantage rather than a liability. But the other one is bring in Mark Carney. And what you are doing is creating an internal unofficial leadership battle inside the cabinet and inside caucus. Because even if Mark Carney came with pure intentions, I just want to help the country and I'm happy enough to bide my time and learn the ropes of politics.

No one else is going to believe that inside caucus and no one with leadership ambitions is going to believe that. And you know what happens then? It's a chain reaction. If they're all organizing for war against you, you organize for war. He has said publicly that he's not ruling out a run at the leadership. So it's not as if he was looking for a public service mission only if he ever says yes to this. So I am with Bruce. It's a good idea to have people interesting on the roster, but I'm not sure that leaders are comfortable with the notion that they're running someone with the subtext that if you vote them back in office, it's because they will be expected to resign so that someone replaces them. Maybe it's a bit

late in the game to think about strengthening cabinet in a way that becomes that this guy is going to be seen as the person who should be sitting in your seat, not too much, not soon after the election, whatever its result. There's one other point I wanted to make, which is that, you know, it's a bit of an occupational hazard for those of us who do what we're doing right now to want to see somebody swing for the fences and do it now. And because we want that action, drama that Chantal mentioned, it's, there's an impatience to the conversation that's logical because here we are, it's Friday and we're having our kind of impatient for improvements conversation.

But if you're on the other side, if you're in government, there are a lot of moving parts. There are things that always take longer and often should take longer. I've seen situations just in the last six months that from my standpoint, initiatives that this government took, which seemed too hasty, not because they shouldn't have done them, but because they might have worked through some of the challenges with them a little bit more before they did. And why do they do that? It's probably in significant measure because people are doing what we're doing, which is saying now, now, now, fix the problem now, now, now, now. And so your question about Mark Carney and what should Trudeau do and why hasn't he done it has a little bit of that flavoring for me, which is that maybe it will happen. Maybe it won't happen. But the urgency that we associate with any of these kinds of things is different from the pace in which people in government can actually move. And that's probably a healthy thing in many respects.

All right. Last quick point on this. Do the good possibilities outweigh the bad possibilities of bringing him in? I think the good outweighs the bad. There is no contest. And if Mark Kearney was looking to run for Pierre Poitier, I would be saying the same thing about Mark Kearney running for office because we should want the best and brightest to be in politics and not sitting on the sidelines being used as fodder

for a Friday morning podcast. We would all be better served with Mark Carney in the ring than Mark Carney as the kind of go-to topic to keep people listening to us. Listen, if he was in the ring, don't you think we'd be taking runs back and forth at him as well? But he would have a day job doing stuff for the country, not just feeding us with speculation as to what will happen to him over the next 10 years. Bruce, you get the final word. No, I think that's right. our impatience is entertaining to us, but it's not the way the government should operate or that leaders should make decisions in every instance. And it's probably if we could post a little kind

of a warning, don't take all of this too seriously. It would be a good idea to do it sometimes. You don't want to say that. I remember a mutual friend of ours I won't name who used to host one of those every evening political talk shows. And I would go on it a couple of times. And this interviewer would say, this host would say, you know, Bruce, is this thing that just happened? Is this the end of it all? Whatever it all was. And, you know, is public opinion just going to crater now and i would say no no it's not and the next week it would be the

same thing and eventually i wasn't going on the show very much because my answer too often was no it's not going to work that way yes as the as the world turns, the wheel turns. It's funny how on Friday you can't even remember what the last Friday's crisis was. Although lately, the last month or two, there have been some blockbusters. Okay, we're going to let you two go early this week. We appreciate the time. I've got a couple of things I have to clean up after the final break. So for the last couple of minutes of the program, that's what we'll do.

But for Chantel and Bruce, it's been great, as it always is, and we look forward to talking to you again next week. Back right after this. Good to see you both. Yep. Take care. Back after this. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. And back for the final segment of a good talk for this week. And a couple of things that I've got to pick up on. Yesterday, we had a very successful program on Remembrance Day, your thoughts. It was your turn, and it was kind of your thoughts and your family remembrances about Remembrance Day and about relatives who may have been in one of the great conflicts of the last hundred or so years, whether it was the First World War,

the Second World War, Korea, Afghanistan, you name it, they were all kind of there. And there were some quite wonderful letters, extremely thoughtful, some were quite emotional, and I've heard from a lot of you since about how much you enjoyed the program. However, there was one letter that appears that it totally sucked me in. It was a con job from all appearances. It was a letter, you may recall it, about the gold watch and how this watch should be handed down from a great-grandfather to what was the grandfather of the letter writer

and then the father through the First World War, the Second World War, Vietnam. This letter came from the States. And how it was now in the hands of the letter writer. And it had been saved through all of this time. And it was, you know, it was a very moving letter. Now, I call it a con job. Well, con me, it appears, because the letter was almost word for word

to the dialogue in the movie Pulp Fiction, in one particular scene that Christopher Walken was in. And one of our loyal listeners wrote in to say, hey, Peter, this is like word for word, and included the clip from the movie. And yeah, it was pretty much word to word. Now, you know I have a lot of faith in all of you who write in, and I ask for your name and where you're writing from

for a number of different reasons. But here, this one appears to have kind of sucked me in. I'm prepared to say it didn't, if the person writes in and explains how it just is an absolute coincidence that it's almost word for word from the dialogue of Pulp Fiction. However, here's my feeling about it. On any other subject, I would have kind of just laughed and said, you know what, I got taken. But the fact is, this is a very important topic. And people were sharing some of their deepest thoughts and emotions about Remembrance Day and about what it meant to their family.

And somebody tried to take advantage of it by, I don't know, was it a joke? Was it a trick? What was it? Anyway, I didn't find it funny when I realized what had happened. I found it kind of a little sick in a way. But I needed to share it with you just to let you know what had happened. The other two quick points. Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, and I hope you find a moment to share it.

I'm still in the UK coming back to Canada next week. These are the UK poppiesies if you're watching on YouTube. They're paper. It's environmental this year. They've gone for paper poppies. But I tell a story at the beginning of the newsletter. My new newsletter that's been coming out for a month or so now. And if you want to subscribe to it, it costs nothing. It's delivered every Saturday morning, 7 o'clock Eastern time to your inbox.

It's not long. It's just some of the stories that I've found interesting during the past week, plus a few of my own anecdotes to go along with it. So you can get the newsletter by going to nationalnewswatch.com. Okay, nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. Or just go to nationalnewswatch.com

and you'll see at the bottom of the screen subscribe to the Mansbridge newsletter. So that's how you do it. Just push that. Do it tonight and you'll get tomorrow's. If you wait until tomorrow, you won't get the first one until next week. So there you go on the newsletter. And one other thing to let you know, my new book written with Mark Bulguch,

my good colleague and friend for the last 40 years. We wrote Extraordinary Canadians together a few years ago, and this one, called How Canada Works, is kind of a similar nature, but it's different. And it comes out a week from Tuesday. And so Mark's going to be on the show in the next week or so, and we're going to talk about it. Then I'm going on a book tour. And if you want to know where I'm going,

if you want to come by, listen to a short talk, maybe get the book signed if you have a copy. If you want to see where I'm going, go to my website, thepetermansbridge.com, thepetermansbridge.com. Thepetermansbridge.com. And you'll see the book tour, which cities and towns that I'm going to. That'll be starting November 30th. But the book is actually released on November 21st.

So lots of time for you to go out and buy a copy. If you don't buy one at the site of the book tour. If you get a chance to come along, that'd be great to meet you. And to sign some books, have a short chat. So there we go. That's it for Good Talk for this

week. And I actually got to take a few minutes away from Bruce and Chantel. That doesn't happen often. And I'm sure I'll hear about it. But thanks for listening. It's been great to talk to you all this week, and we'll be back at it again on Monday. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Have a great weekend.