The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Is The NDP On The Verge of Collapse?

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

We start this week with a simple question -- where is all the money coming from to pay for massive new housing and school lunch programs? With a budget now less than two weeks ago and multi billion dollar programs being dropped almost daily it's an important question. But so is the future of the NDP, with some high profile new departures from Jagmeet Singh's next campaign candidate list. Rob Russo filling in for Bruce Anderson and Chantal Hebert have their say.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. I'm in Toronto, Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Rob Russo, filling in for Bruce Anderson, is in Ottawa today. Rob, it's always good to have you with us. The Canadian correspondent for The Economist magazine. So it's always good to have you with us. The Canadian correspondent for The Economist magazine. So it's a real highbrow. Rob, join us. I'm adjusting my ascot. I don't have my monocle with me this morning.

Right. Okay. There's lots to talk about today and here's how we're going to start. You know, there's a saying that I think we've all used over time, many times, and here's how we're going to start. You know, there's a saying that I think we've all used over time many times and it's been of use this week as well and I'm going to use it again now. That good politics isn't necessarily good policy. So with that in mind, we look at a week where the Liberals have dropped literally billions of dollars in new promises on housing, on school lunches. There's a whole question of how they're going to come up with this money. That's a separate.

Let's deal with the policy versus politics first of all. Chantel, why don't you start us? Is this all about politics given the state of play of the party standings and the party polls and election timing and all that? Is this all about politics? A lot of it is about politics and announcing or putting in place measures that would be hard for a conservative rival to eliminate and would make it hard for that conservative rival to not say what he would do with them once he gets the government. It's also politics in the sense that it gets other constituencies

to speak warmly of the liberals, people who deal with breakfast clubs, meals in schools, or just one example, many housing advocates, renters, champions had good things to say. It also gives the prime minister a lot more oxygen in the media. We've been talking mostly about Justin Trudeau and things that he is doing. Now, to your proposition, good politics and good policy, I would say that in this case, what is probably good politics is bad policymaking. I'm not saying bad policymaking. I'm not saying bad policy. Some of those policies are rightly welcomed by

groups who actually know those files. But in this country, the way federalism works is that you need a certain degree of cooperation between the federal government and the provinces for any of those programs to see the light of day or to succeed. And I mean, if I put it to you that I'm going to tell you what to do in your house, and I don't even give you a heads up to ask you, how do you feel, Peter, about me shuffling all these paintings that you have behind you? I have an idea that would make them look a lot better. And I announced this to you. You're bound to say, I don't even want to know because they're my paintings and it's my wall. The way you do it is you go to Peter and you say, you know, do you want to try something? And if the answer is I'm not interested, then, you know, you have a problem.

In this case, all of these announcements are coming out of left field from a federal government that is clearly not in a position to implement most of them unless the provinces or the municipalities cooperate. You do not get to a school board to deliver more meals without actually coordinating with someone somewhere. And so I fear that many Canadians are cheering on the prime minister saying who cares about jurisdictions, but in practice, the important thing is not what it says in the constitution. It is why it says it and where it means the expertise in education in housing actually is and it is not in parliament or on parliament hill rob where do you stand on this well as you noted at the top of the program you know i work for an international publication and they're often baffled at our federal system, which I think works quite

well. But one of the areas they're baffled at is we've looked at housing, some of the stuff that I've done for The Economist. And I try to explain to them that areas of jurisdiction in Canada are often shared. Housing is a shared jurisdiction, like health. And as a result, when things go wrong, many of the time, voters don't know who to blame. But right now, Justin Trudeau and the people around him feel like they're taking the vast burden of the blame when it comes to problems on both of those fronts. So as a result, they've decided that rather than lie inert against the ropes while they get pummeled by 10 premiers, they're going to fight back. Is it constitutional? Probably not. It would actually advance their files? Certainly not in the short term. And we actually advance their files,

but certainly not in the short term. And we can go into why, in particular in housing, those files aren't going to advance in the short term for other reasons, but Chantal is right. Unless you have a willing partner, you're not going to be able to advance those files in the short term. But does it manifest that they are no longer going to get pummeled by the provinces in areas of shared jurisdiction? Yes, they've decided to get off the mat and to fight. And in some instances, it's not a bad fight. When you hear Doug Ford say no to fourplexes, for instance, in the province of Ontario,

without any really good reason as to why, a lot of people, a lot of housing experts say they don't understand that. All you've got to do is go to a city like Montreal, walk around areas of Outre-Mont, walk around the plateau, where there are nothing but fourplexes in many instances, and see how desirable those neighbors, those apartments are, see how close they are to transportation, and see how well the city works as a result, where you don't need cars, and there are a lot more bikes and cars on many days in many of those neighborhoods and you say that's not a bad policy fight to have another area so there there is no real um policy reason or short-term policy gain to be had it's all about politics but this politics. But this is a government, let's not forget, that has sort of waffled between, it seems, indifference or inertia over the last year. They appear to be getting over the inertia part. And

what they've done in the last week in particular, where we've seen these waves of ministers out making the same announcement every single day, including the prime minister, suggests that they're getting over their policy indifference as well. Well, Chantal, better let her in here first, because, you know, we deal with federal provincial politics on the big picture. We deal with the rest of Canada and Quebec on good talk. And seeing as you used Montreal as an example on fourplexes, I got to see whether Chantelle has any disagreement on that before we move on. Well, having sons who are raising families in some of those apartments

and are doing just fine, thank you. I am not going to say that this is a model that doesn't work. It certainly beats, if you're going to create a neighborhood, it certainly beats a high-rise that suddenly springs up in between residential streets. That does change the character of a neighborhood a lot more than fourplexes. But I think where this becomes a conversation of the absurd is we are talking about the federal government deciding the size of the houses in selected Canadian cities. Really, in this province, since you raised it, you cannot interact if you're the federal government.

By law, you cannot make a deal with the city of Montreal or the city of Quebec without making a deal with the province. And then the province decides whether Montreal is going to get X or Quebec City is going to get Y. So there is something somewhat absurd in the notion. How about will we have the federal government decide what is a nutritious meal in a school while we're at it? The federal government deals with macro issues and the provinces and the municipalities with micro issues. And that's where the expertise has landed as a result of that. Now, that being said, on housing, what Justin Trudeau is proposing is no less respectful of provincial jurisdictions than what Pierre Poilievre is proposing. He too has a policy that would step all over

the province's jurisdiction on housing and the municipal responsibilities. So I figure the liberals have decided, well, you know, your choice in the next election is going to be a federal government that picks fight with provinces. The only question is, which provinces will they pick fights with? Now, some provinces between now and the next election will strike deals on these issues with the federal government. I think probably BC, probably Manitoba, and I'm not ruling out that Quebec will. Among others, there have been some silence from some provinces,

which tells me that the provinces are not uninterested. But watching what's happened over the past two weeks, all these announcements, I figure that one of the rationale for presenting a late federal budget and reversing the practice that used to be that the federal government came first and the provinces then took a cue from that to have their own budgets, they allowed a number of provinces, Quebec is one of those, Ontario is another, to present budgets that are frankly less than proactive on housing. And in the face of that now documented

vacuum, it is easier for the prime minister to step in and say, well, here's what I would do because they're not doing much of anything. And that makes it probably an interesting strategy. It also tells me that this government believes that it still has at least a full year in office before it has to face voters so that it can get some of this money rolled out. Okay, well... Go ahead, Peter. I was just going to say quickly that they will have premiers opposed to them

even after some sign-on, but they will have mayors across the country who are lining up to work with the federal government, mayors who feel like they are treated like toddlers by the premiers and mayors who many of whom have been insulted by Pierre Poignet as well. So if the prime minister's strategy is to go over the heads of premiers who are opposed to him and go to mayors who feel like they have been insulted by Pierre Poignet, it might not be a bad strategy politically as well. All right. Well, the mayors also see that big bag of cash that Trudeau's holding. And I want to get at that.

I want to get at that. Because no matter where you stand on federal-provincial relations, on the housing issue in general, and school lunches, et cetera, et cetera, you probably stand somewhere on money. And for a government that is deep in debt has a huge deficit to roll out at this time saying it's going to spend billions and billions of new dollars on these programs where are they going to get it from i mean my assumption is they're not going to run up continually run up the deficit because that just gives Polyamore to go with.

They'll look for a wedge issue, and wedge issues, taxes, and especially taxes on high-income earners. So is this the plan? Is this the plan? I mean, somewhere they've got to say where they're going to get the money. Okay, so first of all, your colleagues at Radio-Canada on the panel I was doing yesterday ran a slide of what was announced, but they only put on the slide the actual money that is being used for funding that is not a loan or a loan guarantee. add up to all that much. It sounds great to say $1 billion for school meals over five years, but when you break it down, it's 200 million, which 200 million is a lot to me, but it is a

drop in the federal bucket, seriously. So the impression that they're spending a lot of money is not necessarily matched by the actual numbers when you put them there. But do I believe that there is a strong chance that there will be taxes in the federal budget and those taxes will be aimed at higher income or people who actually make money out of short-term rentals, for instance, and the profits they get from that, yes, I think that's totally a possibility. And it's going to be very hard for Pierre Poiliev to stand up for whoever the target is because that target is probably not going to be the constituency that he's trying to attract in the next election.

And as you said earlier, I mean, these are programs that if Polyev ends up winning the election, he's unlikely to reverse. He's going to have to pay for it somewhere, too, and somehow. Rob, on the money. I'm looking at my daughter over there. She's in her early 20s. You asked where the money's coming from.

It's going to be coming from her. Look, these announcements, yes, a lot of them are loan guarantees. The big one is the apartment construction loan program, which is going to have an extra $15 billion added to it. But those are to provide loan guarantees. But a lot of them do involve real money. The Canadian Housing Infrastructure Fund, for instance, that's going up by $6 billion. That's a blizzard. And so what's the number that usually gets the most attention on budget day, particularly in this year's round of budgets? If you look at the budget in the province of Quebec and the province of Ontario, it's the enormous size of deficits relative to the size of deficits that we've had in the last few years. So by making these announcements now, they want people to pay attention to those numbers and not the number of the deficit, which almost everybody expects to increase substantially from the

projected deficit, which I believe is in the mid20 billion area. That was a projected deficit. Everybody expects it to be much, much higher than that. That is likely to be one of the big news items on Budget Day. But by getting these announcements out now, people are paying attention to what they're doing on the policy side and not who's going to pay for it and how much it's going to cost. That'll come on April the 16th. When you pointed at your daughter, what are you pointing at?

You're pointing at an age group that is going to have to carry this burden for years into the future, or is there something specific you're talking about? Yeah, that's what I mean. We are going to be paying for this, particularly as interest rates have gone up, in terms of debt servicing for a long, long time. We seem to have gotten out of the habit of even talking about balanced budgets. Nobody even has the kind of talk about far into the horizon when we might actually balance the budget. Everybody is at Keynesian now, in every province. It doesn't

matter if you're a Liberal or Conservative. Doug Ford has substantially increased the size of the budget in the province of Ontario. It's because people are hurting. It's because there isn't a politician right now who's going to talk about restraint in the face of an affordability crisis. And the price will have to be paid later on. Politically, nobody can pay that price of talking about restraint or talking about paying off or paying down deficits in the current affordability crunch. And don't forget the cost of climate change,

which we have not seen the end of for decades to come. Those changes, droughts, changes in climate that make cities run out of water because forest fires go down the list, those are all costs that will be borne in large part by you and me, via the government, but they will add to the burden that the fiscally governments are building. You know, this is kind of a side issue, but still kind of falls under the budget talk because seeing as you've raised the climate change issue,

as a result, you end up raising the carbon tax issue and carbon pricing. What do you make of the Liberals' attempts to turn the phrase of the day, which is axe the tax on the part of Polyev, to the Pierre doesn't care line from the Liberals about the Conservatives? Does this balance this debate in any way? People love to grasp, or at least some people love to grasp, the simple description of an issue.

And certainly Axe Attacks has won the day for at least the last year, if not more. The Pierre doesn't care line, does that work as a strategy? Go for it, Sean. I think it beats telling people they're getting rebates, because I think the fundamental proposition is, do you want a government that is interested in mitigating climate change? I think, while I totally agree with you that the axe the tax simplistic message has worked over the past year, it has also brought out to the forefront the argument that the alternatives to a carbon tax are more costly and less effective. The Premier of Saskatchewan last week told the Parliamentary Committee that this government had looked at alternative options, but they all costed more. Oh, well. So, this discussion has been Pierre Poiliev's to lead for a long, long time, but I think flipping the equation to what would you do that is less costly

and is effective is kind of working. And I do believe that there is a serious constituency of voters who actually want a government that has serious policies on climate. Rob, last word on this? Yeah, I think that was certainly true in 2019 when Andrew Scheer didn't have a climate policy and paid the price. Liberals very effectively wedged him on it. Right now, I'm not sure that that's true. I think that people do care about the climate. I've always said that Canadians are among the least virtuous virgins going

when it comes to the climate. We drive more than anybody else, consume more than anybody else. I know that part of the reason for that is our cold climate. We consume a lot more fuel. But we certainly don't drive vehicles like we care about the climate. We buy more SUVs, internal combustion engine SUVs, it seems, than a lot of other people do around the world. And right now, right now, it will be tied to the politician that wants to apply a tax broadly across the country. In a year and a half, is that going to be the case?

There are no facts in the future. It's one of the reasons why I pay very, very little attention to polls right now. But right now, I think it's a tough argument to make, no matter how snappy the slogan. Go ahead, Sean. And before you move away from the budget, but on a tangent, I think the one thing we can say about the past two weeks and all those announcements is that, and it's going to take all the fun out of those who cover politics when they go to the budget lockup. And it's the issue of whether the NDP will support that budget. I think you can take it to the back that they will.

This is a budget as disrespectful of provincial jurisdictions as the NDP can only dream of, as they have always been the party that didn't believe that the dividend of power should stand in the way of any initiative. So don't pack any bags for an election this summer. It's not happening. But just to close on that point, I mean, the strategy behind the Liberals is not to try and keep the NDP on side. It's to try and create a wedge against the Conservatives, right? With these announcements.

They are certainly more likely to keep the NDP on side with their current strategy than if they went for a so-called fiscal rigor budget. Yeah, that'll be a first when you're 15 to 20 points down a year from an election. Let's be fiscally conservative. But think that the tax the rich is also a mantra of the NDP looking at the April 16th budget. Well, that's where I'm putting my money on. The Prime Minister was very careful to say that there will be no tax increases on lower and middle income Canadians.

That left a great big open space. Yes, it sure did. And you know, not just on individuals, I assume on corporations and businesses too, that it's going to be one of those kind of budgets, and it'll be very interesting to see how it plays out over time. Okay, we're going to take our first break, and when we come back, I want to talk about a departure announced yesterday from the House of Commons, or at least in the next election, and what that may mean.

That's coming up right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert in Montreal, and Rob Russo sitting in for Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Well, a fixture in the House of Commons for the last couple of decades, really,

has been Charlie Angus of the NDP, Northern Ontario Riding, described by some as kind of a gadfly in the house. I mean, he's never been shy about making his position clear. He's also made a name for himself as a bit of a musician, as he's performed at any number of different House of Commons events over time. But Charlie Angus leaving, and not alone there, a couple of other NDP MPs announcing they're not going to run again in the next election. I know the Conservatives have been making real inroads

in that Northern Ontario riding of Charlie Angus, so I don't know how much that has to do with it. But having put that down as a possibility, how much should we read into this departure from NDP ranks that is unfolding? I mean, it's not like they have a big caucus. They don't. So three deciding they're not going to run again is not good news,

one assumes, for Jagmeet Singh. Rob, how do you look at this? I think it's a reflection of the troubles that the NDP faces. I take Mr. Angus at his word when he says that after 20 years, he's put in his time and he wants to spend time with his family. I absolutely take that verbatim at his word. If I were Jagmeet Singh, would I want him to stay? Absolutely.

The man has huge name recognition. He was a feisty leadership contestant and lost to Mr. Singh in 2017. I think he was kind of wounded after that loss. I think in the cases of all three who are departing, there's redistricting going on in their ridings that's going to make it a little tougher for them. And I think that you're right, Peter, the Conservative Party has changed under Pierre Poilievre. It is a party that is trying to channel the frustrations and the fears of working Canadians, far less interested in speaking to CEOs. The nature of conservatism is changing as a result, and I think it's reflective of global trends

as well as it tries to harness this frustration. And that's a threat to the New Democrats as much, if not more, than a threat to the Liberals. And if you look at what the NDP has gotten out of its association with the Liberals, you've got to ask yourself, was it worth it? Was it worth it? Because if you look at their line on the poll, it hasn't really changed very, very much over the last couple of years. Now you've got a direct threat coming to you in terms of a Conservative Party going after working class voters. If you're a redistricted New Democrat trying to convince new people to come to you, it's a tougher fight. But if you're Jagmeet Singh, you don't want these

people to leave. They have name recognition, they have networks, and you're going to have to start over again in all of those instances. Chantal? They're also not the only ones to leave. They are this week's announcement, but it comes on the announcements of two or three others. So when you do the math, Mr. Singh is literally losing what people who are considered the backbone of his caucus in parliament. And they would, for the most part, I believe, stick around if they believed that the NDP had a shot at something that looks like victory. Thomas Mulcair didn't lose many veterans when he ran in 2015 because a lot of them figured that they would stick around to see whether that shot that they had at government would pan out. And many of them could have become or have made up a serious cabinet. Going in the next election, looking at the candidates that Mr. Singh will be leading,

it's going to be harder to make that argument because a lot of the people that you would have looked like, Daniel Blakey, who's gone to work for the premier of Manitoba, Charlie Angus, but also, you know, Carol Hughes and some of the B.C. MPs who aren't running again, you could have seen in the cabinet. But newcomers, you're not going to say sight unseen this would make for a minister. At the same time, the polls are worse than flat. I mean, even as Jagmeet Singh was claiming victory on pharmacare and reminding people of dental care, a popular program by the numbers, his numbers were not only flat but soft.

There was a poll out this week, the NOS weekly poll, showed the race tightening, and that's an overstatement between the liberals and the conservatives. But the gap has narrowed because the NDP is shedding support. Now, to Charlie Angus, yes, he did lose that leadership battle. But for many, many people who vote NDP, Charlie Angus represents what the traditional NDP was, a party that is close to indigenous communities, that is close to working people, to the unions. He brings, or he brought to the election table a number of features that Jagmeet Singh has not managed to incorporate since he's become leader. If you're sitting in a union hall, and I've done, and you guys probably have too, I've spoken to large unions,

especially blue-collar unions, on days when Mr. Singh was also speaking to them. And the connection was not what it would have been if Ed Broadbent or Alexa McDonough or Charlie Angus had been speaking to them. So this is a real loss because it's not just the conservatives that seem to have changed. It's the idea of, you know, who is a New Democrat and what the party actually stands for. And the calculation for many New Democrats strategists after the leadership campaign was the old guard, people like Charlie Angus, will not leave us. And Jagmeet Singh is going to bring us those diverse suburbs, especially in Ontario, that we need if we're going to grow.

Well, not only did that not happen, but over the time that Mr. Singh has been leader, whatever was left of the orange wave in Quebec and Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair's work is completely dissipated. All right. You two have me intrigued now. I thought of this as a kind of a throwaway one question, one answer situation. But the way've both described it sounds to me like we're closer to a discussion about the emerging collapse of the ndp is that yeah look i think i think the threat to the ndp is existential i i really do. And I can tell you that lots of new Democrats feel that way as well. They never thought that they were going to have to worry about a conservative stealing their votes in southwestern Ontario, northern Ontario. And that is the case. The rallies that Poiliev is organizing, where he's attracting thousands of people between, let's say, Hamilton and Windsor in particular, are the people who traditionally would vote New Democrat.

And those people seem to have abandoned the party that has traditionally carried the cause for those who have less of a chance at getting the house of their dreams. That's now the trophy that's held aloft by Pierre Poiliev. I'm not sure how they're going to wrestle that back. Wallyev was very, very good at identifying housing in particular as an issue that could lever votes, lurch votes in a direction that they hadn't gone in, you know, really since R.B. Bennett. So we're talking almost 100 years. So I think the threat to the New Democrats at the federal level is existential. And at the same time, if you watch what's happening, for instance, in Alberta, where the NDP is having a leadership campaign to replace Rachel Notley, one of the items that is being discussed as part of that leadership campaign is to, if not sever, at least create more

distance between the federal NDP and the provincial NDP, i.e. if you're a member of the Alberta NDP, you would not anymore automatically be part of the federal NDP. And you can see that distance growing between NDP governments, and that's been a long time in the making, that NDP governments in the prairies were closer to liberal governments than they were to the federal NDP. But the issue of pipelines has created a lot of friction between the federal NDP and the Saskatchewan and the Alberta wings of the party, where the party has been in power. The NDP in Saskatchewan has had no time for Jagmeet Singh now for a number of years over the treatment of at least one NDP caucus member, but also from a sense that he really doesn't connect

to what Saskatchewan New Democrats want to promote to try to win back power in Regina. And this happens. I was talking to a friend this week. We were trying to think with Ed Broadbent gone and Alexa McDonough and Roy Romano not on the radar anymore And John Horgan, the former premier of BC, busy being the ambassador in Europe. Who is an elder states person for the NDP these days?

Who does the party look to, to find its way going forward? And my mind was a bit blank, I have to say. And this was just before Charlie Angus and others announced that they were moving on to some other places. So I'm with Rob. I do believe that the NDP is in serious peril in the next election. Does the leader seem to recognize that? Is he doing anything that would say to you? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think he knows that. I think that this began not just with Pierre Poilievre. I think they knew that they were in very, very serious trouble in the 2021 election. People talked about that as a disappointing result for the new Democrats. But their strategy in 2021 was really just to hang on to what they got. Success was, can we come back with, you know, between 20 and 25

seats? And they considered that a successful campaign, because they were able to crawl back to that to that level, given the the support that was out there for them. So this is something that they have been wrestling with and have been wrestling with since Jagmeet Singh became leader, really. It was kind of a collapse of the Liberal vote in 2019 that represented an opportunity for them that they didn't really seize. But 2021 was a sobering campaign for New Democrats. This one here may be a reckoning campaign for them. Do you want to weigh in on that?

To your next question, it's really hard to see them changing leaders before the next election. There's no convention in the making. But also, it's not in the culture of the NDP to backstab a leader. Yes, they did vote Thomas Mulcair. That was stabbing in the front. They wasn't backstab a leader. Yes, they did vote Thomas Mulcair out, but that was stabbing in the front. They wasn't backstabbing. So I don't see a process that leads to a renewal of the leadership.

And I think it's probably too late in any event. One of the things that the NDP has always had is also kind of like brilliant, maybe brilliant is too strong a word, but really smart people in the background in terms of the, you know, the backroom organizers and thoughtful people about campaigns. They seem to have lost some of that of late as well i mean it's not just oh i'm not in front i'm not sure that that that that that's true although it is true that if you're a new democrat and you want to go where it's happening you're going to winnipeg and you're you're going to victoria these days right they they you know uh daniel blakey's moved to to Winnipeg is endemic, I think, of where a lot of them see action.

You know, they see action actually governing and fresh off a campaign. We talked about the lack of elder statesmen earlier. is seen as a fresh new face, a real possibility, surprising people with his toughness and with his pragmatism in Winnipeg, you know, bilingual guy. A lot of people are already talking him up for possibilities at the federal level. If you're a young New Democrat and you're looking for action, people are going to the provinces. But you can only deal with what you've got. And what you've got at the federal level right now is a steamroller. You've got a prime minister who has, in effect, co-opted the New Democrats. We used to talk, you know, 10, 15 years ago about should the liberals and the NDP merge?

Well, in many ways they have, but the merger has been more of a liberal takeover of the New Democrats as Justin Trudeau's movement to the left. But you've got that, you know, you're getting squeezed from there and you're also getting squeezed from the conservatives as well. So they're in a vice. At the federal level, the vice is closing. And don't forget, there are elections coming this year in Saskatchewan and BC, and those are two places where the NDP tends to put resources. And where at least in BC, the party is in power,

and by the numbers, could be headed for a seriously solid election result. Some of the ministers in BC these days used to be members of Thomas Mulcair's and Jack Layton's caucus, which kind of speaks to the kind of movement that Rob is talking about. You go where you can make a difference and not just be doing more of the same. I'm glad you raised the Daniel Blakey thing because I think that really hurt. Daniel Blakey, of course, was the son of a former NDP member, Bill Blakey, who was very well regarded, not only within the NDP caucus but on the Hill in general.

And Daniel Blakey seemed to be heading in the same direction. I watched him give a speech. I guess it was early last year. You know, he was really good. He was on the track. He was on the right track to become this kind of national player. And then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, although clearly out of a lot of respect for Wap Kanu, he decided to head back to Winnipeg as a chief of staff.

I think he's in one of the senior positions in Wap Kanu's office in Winnipeg. So that was a loss on Parliament Hill for the NDP and for those who like politics. The other thing that you mentioned about Wap Kanu is, and I declare my bias because I used to work with him when he was a CBC journalist, and he was a damn good one. I wasn't afraid at all to rock the boat internally as well as externally. But at the Mulrooney funeral a couple of weeks ago, Wab Kanu was there, and watching him in that long two-hour period while we were waiting for the service to begin inside the Basilica, just his walk up the aisle to his seat took him about an hour because everybody wanted to shake his hand.

Liberals, conservatives, you name it. He is the rising star at the moment. No question about that. We'll see how it plays out. We see a lot of premiers come into the game and kind of flame out after a while. But Wab Kanu doesn't look like that kind. But we'll see. Okay, we're going to take our final break and we come back.

We've got foreign interference to talk about. At times it looks like just about everybody wanted to interfere in our elections. How bad was it? We'll talk about that when we come back. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantelle Hebert in Montreal, Rob Russo filling in for Bruce Anderson in Ottawa, and Peter Mansbridge in Toronto today. All right, the final topic for discussion today, the Inquiry Commission, whatever they call it,

looking into foreign interference in the last election has been underway. And most of the time taken up this week with Aaron O'Toole's testimony about what was happening during the last election campaign, where he said there was no question that there was interference on a number of ridings, and he was aware of it. At the end of the day, he doesn't think it impacted the final result, but he was very concerned about what was, in fact, happening. And since his testimony, it's also come out now that, and that was foreign interference by China.

Since then, it's come out that both India and Pakistan were interfering with the Canadian election as well. Now, the process. Now, how much of this should we be actually surprised about? And what indications are there that anything is going to be done about it? Rob, why don't you start on this? Well, I think we should be concerned. How much are we surprised by? It's been there. I mean,

all of us remember Brian Mulroney, and all of us remember him rounding up people from the old Mission Brewery in Montreal to make sure that he got votes. It caused a bit of a sensation then, but it really caused very few changes. I think the thing that comes out of this that we have to be immediately seized with is that the nature of our system is so open to being tampered with. And we've known about it for a while and we haven't changed it. Handong ran as a Liberal candidate, ran for the nomination in Don Valley. And he said that he knew that there were probably international students working on his behalf, some of them as young as 14 years old. And is that something that should be allowed to happen? No. But the truth is, it's, you know, when I was a kid, I used to love hanging around the treehouse and we'd always have a, we'd elect a leader at the treehouse and the leader would then make decisions by fiat. essentially the same way. There are very, very few rules widely open to being abused. And in recent decades, people were lauded if they could rack them and stack them, right?

Somebody who could fill a room with people who were instant members was considered a great organizer. That was one of the standards for political success. And I think it's clear that if we want to make our system less susceptible to foreign interference or to interference of any kind that's not democratic, we've got to do something about that. Chantal? Yes. Canadian political parties, the federal ones in particular, have always been, because of the laxity of their rules when it comes to votes for the leadership or when it comes to selecting candidates, they've always been open to strategies from singleue groups. Back in the 80s, the anti-abortion movement targeted the liberals.

You'll remember that John Turner lost his two co-chairs who wanted to run for him as MPs. It lost nomination battles to anti-abortion organizations packing the room. So the notion that foreign governments would see their interest in advancing bonds by manipulating results at the local level and ending up with candidates for various federal parties that reflect the views of choose your country and choose your regime. Well, it's almost child's play. But what I found really interesting this week, in the not great sense of the word, is when the main organizers for the three main parties, the NDP, the liberals, and the conservatives, testified this to the kind of advice they'd received from this group of top civil servants and security officials who were supposed to supervise the election for instances of foreign interference. And basically what they got, and they were unanimous on this, was a crash course in, you know, don't click on the wrong link, basic cybersecurity 101. And at the same time, as a result of the work of the commission,

it is now a fact that this same group did have information that went well beyond precautions into events that were happening or that could be described as interference happening. What I also found really striking was, well, two things. One, this group is made up of high-placed public servants, fine, and security officials, but it doesn't include anyone who's ever run a campaign or has any knowledge of running a campaign, which doesn't give them a lot of expertise as to how you would actually manipulate the results on the ground. And two, it sits way up there on top of a mountain when if you're going to interfere in an election, it's happening on the ground, at ground level, in local constituencies. It's not happening in the big picture. And so you look at

both the makeup of the group that is supposed to safeguard elections and the way that they approach the issue. It's not good enough to just say, well, you know, in the end, it didn't impact the outcome of the last election. That also bodes for a future unless there's serious tightening up of the rules and a serious acknowledgement of how elections are played is that you are going to end up with foreign interest groups commanding the loyalty of sections of the caucus, not because the views of some of the people who would be part of that constituency are wrong or illegal or disloyal, but because a critical mass of them will have been placed inside the machinery of parliament and government

and that their importance will not reflect the actual reality of Canadian society. And clear manipulation will now be happening from the inside. Rob, do you think any of the parties are really spending a lot of time thinking about this or caring about this? And I ask because, you know, perhaps you gave us some of the history. You know, perhaps they're not that interested in tightening up to take advantage of these rules in order to make sure that the candidate of their choice is nominated in ridings. You know, they'll call a nomination meeting, they'll say it's wide open, and then they'll say the meeting has to happen in two days, for instance. So people who aren't already organized and funded by the parties have no time to actually contest the nominations.

But I think at that level, I'd be surprised. I'm hopeful, but I'd be very surprised if those around a leader made changes. I do think we're going to see party campaign officials who are brought in by security people for these briefings be less reticent about maintaining secrecy. I remember during the 2019 campaign, I was at a lunch with somebody who was helping to run, if not run, the Conservative campaign. And he had to leave that lunch like that. Why? Because he was called to an urgent security meeting. Very, very important. Couldn't tell me what it was about. He shouldn't have even told me it was a security meeting, because, of course, that instantly got my antenna bristling and I scrambled a bunch of cameras all over the place,

including cameras to hand down his nomination meeting. But I think they came they went into that meeting and they came out and said nothing. And Waleed Solomon, who was involved in running the conservative campaign, testified this week saying, I don't know that I'm going to be as quiet. We were too quiet. I should have complained about it. I should have gone public about it. And I think transparency and sunlight might be a very, very healthy thing when these kinds of warnings are issued in the future. Okay, and on that, we're going to leave it for this week. Thank Rob for filling in for Bruce this week. Good of you to do that, and Chantel, as always.

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