The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Is There A Deal Brewing Between The Liberals And The NDP?

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

Minority governments sometimes service by secret deals between parties.  Is there one brewing right now between the Liberals and the NDP? Also, is a new Covid pill a changemaker on the pandemic? Plus the flag decision -- what will it take to find comfort on this issue?

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there from Dornick, Scotland. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Montreal, Chantelle Hebert in Ottawa, Bruce Anderson. It's Good Talk Friday. And we've got some good talk for you on this day. Let me tell you, first of all, here in Dornick, this is Guy Fawkes Day across the United Kingdom and celebrated in other different parts of the world. And so tonight there will be like bonfires and fireworks

and all kinds of various forms of rowdiness. In celebration or in marking the 1605 attempt by a guy named Guy Fawkes and his band of merry men to basically blow up the Houses of Parliament. It was an attempt to displace the Protestant king with a Catholic leader. Didn't work. So the assumption given the name Guy Fawkes Day,

the assumption by some people anyway, is that, man, they must be celebrating this guy who, you know, performed treason and tried to blow up parliament. No, they're celebrating the fact that he was not successful. Now, I'm sure some Americans will look at this and say, hey, January 6th, that should be some kind of special day. We have fireworks and bonfires and et cetera, et cetera, to mark that. This was 1605.

We're talking more than 400 years ago, and they still celebrate the fact that it was a failure, not a success. Anyway, enough about Guy Fawkes. But I just thought I'd let you know what I'll be doing tonight. Meanwhile, the headlines in this country and in other parts of the world are talking about a new drug, a pill, that if you've got coronavirus, if you've got COVID, take this pill, it will drastically lessen the effects of COVID. Now, that seems on the face of it to be a game changer. There have been a couple of these out in the last little while. Today, another one with, I think, 90% efficacy or something like that.

And so it will now go through the testing procedures. But pill, not versus vaccine. Vaccine would prevent you prevent you hopefully from getting anything but if you got it the pill would certainly put you in a better shape if in fact it works as well as it said to so bruce is it a game changer well potentially it's a very big game changer, Peter. I think that there's still a couple of steps, obviously, to go through in terms of the FDA approval and then the approval of other health authorities. But assuming that both Merck and Pfizer, the two companies that have said that they have pills that work are correct and those pills are accepted. This development has the potential to really change the dynamic around the coronavirus around the world.

Now, there will still be issues associated with how many pills can be manufactured, how quickly. Merck, for example, I think has said that it has potentially 10 million doses, which isn't very much for a world that has 219 million cases, cumulatively to now. But the second company to announce its pill said that it will have 50 million doses and is looking for ways to ramp up more. So that's potentially very significant. And then the other issue, of course, is who can afford it and how many of these doses will go to places where vaccines are not particularly available right now or not available at all right now. And so there's a rich poor nation, a dynamic and, you know, I've read some stories that say maybe that that first drug costs $18

to make and and the price tag might be $700 per course. So I think there's going to be a lot of work for governments and others to sort through to make sure that the drug is ubiquitously available at reasonable prices. Because the combination, as you say, Peter, of vaccinations being more and more available, even if there are still a small portion of the population that don't take them, and a pill to solve for, according to this morning's data, 90% of the hospitalizations has the potential to really put us on a path pretty quickly towards what will feel more normal, and especially in those areas where our healthcare systems are really feeling the strain, to alleviate that strain and to let delayed surgeries and other health treatments get back on track. So it's a good morning in

terms of news that can make us feel hopeful about this pandemic. But it comes with a serious downside in the immediate, because as Bruce has just walked you through all the steps between today's news, preliminary news, and the actual hitting the shelves, this stands to comfort and harden resistance to vaccines from the basis of, why should I get vaccinated?

There's a pill that's coming. I can take that pill if I ever get it. And since governments are very much focused and are about to be very much focused on children and vaccines for children, because that will obviously be coming first, parties, Christmas parties, gatherings, we are still in the vaccine phase of this battle. And I don't think that today's news are going to make that battle anything but harder in the short term.

You know, what I find interesting about the potential on this in terms of those who are still resisting, part of that resistance factor against the vaccines is they don't trust the drug makers who make the vaccines and they don't trust that the process has lasted long enough to test these vaccines out right that's that's what they put up front for you know there could be any number of reasons but that's the one one of the ones they put up front in the window saying this is why I'm resisting. Well, if they're resisting vaccines for those reasons, one assumes they might also want to resist pills for the same reason.

Same drug makers, same short-term run at coming up with a solution in terms of a pill. It would sound like it's the same thing now i you know i we don't want to dwell i don't want to dwell on the on the minority group like an extreme minority now it's whatever it is 15 20 max in uh in north america and here in the UK. But nevertheless, they're the ones who get a lot of attention in terms of the resistance, so to speak. We've got other things. I would argue you're looking for logic where there often is not in your reasoning, which is totally logical.

But one reason many or one rationale being offered, Maxime Bernier in this country is a case in point, is that COVID is no big deal. And the COVID is no big deal becomes a stronger argument when you can say, and besides, if I ever get it, there's now a pill that ensures that it's no big deal. So I think if you're looking for an excuse not to get a vaccine, every reason is good, but that does not follow that you are stopping yourself from taking

antibiotics for a bad infection or pills for a flu or even the flu shot. So I don't think it's worth our while to try to find a logical thread and the reasons why people don't get vaccinated. This pill for sure won't cure stupid or selfish. Those are conditions that we see out there around this vaccine debate. And I know that some people, Peter, are probably going to write you and say why is bruce being so mean to the stupid and selfish but look that is my view i feel like it is stupid or selfish to refuse to take the vaccine and that number has been holding at six percent in canadian society for months now um i mean i read a piece yesterday that said uh because of stuff that traveled the internet a whole bunch of

people went down to texas because they were expecting to see john kennedy senior and john kennedy jr so we live in a world where a certain amount of that can't be solved i do also think that chantal touched on something that's relevant politically which is that we'll um i don't want to say chicken hearted politicians, politicians who kind of have drawn a line and then rubbed it out around vaccine mandates. But basically the politicians who are afraid of the blowback from the 6%, will they use this pill as an opportunity to kind of migrate their position more towards take the vaccine if you want. But if you don't, we'll get the pills for you. I think that's likely. I think that we saw developments in Quebec and Ontario that suggest that politicians are, some politicians are afraid of this fight over vaccines. And I think it would be the wrong decision to kind of step

back from that, because the more that we fray our collective commitment to information and science and medical advice, there's going to be another event down the road where we're going to wish we hadn't done that. And so I'm a little bit concerned about that. But that having been said, we are at a very high vaccination rate in Canada. And that means that probably the combination of this pill or these pills and vaccinations mean that people who were suffering from health problems that they couldn't get dealt with, and people who are wondering if their lives were ever going to feel like they're back to normal, can feel some hope today. Can I take issue with the chicken-hearted politicians who would be backing off vaccine mandates since I live in a province where I don't for a second believe and there is no sense that the François Legault's government is chicken-hearted in its handling of the pandemic? Certainly not the only jurisdiction that imposed a curfew on its people and held them to it for months on end to control the pandemic. Certainly not the only jurisdiction that imposed a curfew on its people and held them to it for months on end to control the pandemic and managed to keep its schools open in the face of

other jurisdictions, the one next door, Ontario, not being able to do so. But at this point this week, when the Quebec government announced that it was renouncing its battle to force everyone who works in the health care system to be adequately vaccinated, the government was facing a choice of two evils. on their work premises or suspend them, which would have resulted in closing ICU beds, emergency wards, and putting a greater burden on an already overburdened personnel that has gotten adequately vaccinated. In clear, the people most punished, along with the unvaccinated, would have been people who get sick and need treatment, or people who actually work in the healthcare system and who have been fighting this pandemic for almost two years. And so, I'm not in the chicken-hearted camp. It's hard for a politician to back off. But between the time when the Minister of Health had extended

the period to get vaccinated, and this week's announcement that he wasn't going to push it anymore, very few of the holdouts had gotten vaccinated. Fair point. So let's exclude Premier Legault from the list of the chicken hearted and you may say none of them are but in my view uh premier kenny premier moe premier ford and if i look at that conservative caucus including this new civic rights caucus those are all politicians who who know better and who have chosen what felt to them like the path of least resistance, meaning I don't want to get attacked by anti-vaxxers. And I think that's bad public policy. And I don't think it's brave, but I take your point about Premier Legault. And, you know, there was another, I think, another difference between Ontario and Quebec on this, taking similar paths in terms of hospital workers, care workers,

and not having to be fully vaccinated. The other difference, it appears to me anyway, maybe I'm wrong, but in Ontario, there were a lot of different groups that work in hospitals who came out very strongly against this, the government taking this position. Doctors, nurses, associations, hospitals, all pleading with the government not to go that way. But the government went that way. Now, people will make their own determinations about that.

And obviously, people will be watching very closely outbreaks in hospitals over the next little while. If there are none, well, there already are some. There already were some, but they're minuscule compared with the number of hospitals in the province. But if that number changes and goes up, they're going to have trouble explaining themselves on this one. But, you know, we'll see. Can I pick up on this, what they call themselves?

The Civil Liberties Caucus. Civil Liberties Caucus in the Conservative Party. And it's all based, once again, around vaccines and COVID. And it just seems that whichever way Aaron O'Toole turns, something pops up in his way of trying to, you know, look like a party that's, you know, similar to the other parties in terms of its position on vaccines. But this latest one, and with that name, to the other parties in terms of its position on vaccines.

But this latest one, and with that name, who does it represent? Is it a large number of Conservative MPs? And what are they actually doing? Who wants to... Chantelle, you want to start on that? Okay, I think it was the Hill Times that broke the story. So this is secondhand. But they were using a number of 15 to 30 senators now and MPs. And I suspect more MPs than senators because the vaccine issue does not seem to have been a major issue in the Senate,

where the same rule is going to be applied in the House of Commons. It's also been adopted. Hard to know who these people are. I suspect many of them are vaccinated, but the number also includes some who obviously are not. Two issues and two questions for Erin O'Toole. Well, three, actually. Come November 22nd, are any of the unvaccinated MPs going to try to storm the doors of the House of Commons Economy ruling on the premise that it is not up to that board to decide who gets to sit in the House of Commons. Second question, knowing the existence of this caucus, which is, as far as anyone understands, meant to defend the right of people to not be vaccinated or not publish their vaccination status. Mr. O'Toole is yet to announce his shadow cabinet. Do any of the people who defend those arguments and who belong to that caucus, do they have

a seat at the table? There are other informal caucuses within parties. There's a pro-life caucus, anti-abortion caucus, and some of its members belong to the conservative shadow cabinet. And the other question that will come inevitably after November 22nd is, if there are people who are defying MPs, who are defying the House of Orders order, especially once it has been confirmed by a vote of the full House. Will Mr. O'Toole allow them to remain in the Conservative caucus, or will he invite them to sit as independents? That's a lot of questions that the official opposition would like not to have to respond to as the House of Commons reopens, because meanwhile, anything else the party does to act as the chief critic of the government will get lost in that shuffle.

And as I said earlier, every time he turns around, the focus is still on him, and it's not on where he wants it to be. So it's not a good position to be in. Bruce? For as long as the three of us have been following conservative caucuses or is that caucuses? No, it is caucuses. I said caucuses a couple of weeks ago as a joke and I got a lot of letters from people saying, look in a dictionary for crying out loud. Well, thank you for looking in the dictionary for me or getting that letter.

But anyway, as long as we've been following the parliamentary group representing the various forms of the Conservative Party in Ottawa, it has been, I would say, harder on average to manage internal tensions within the Conservative side of things than the other parties. And yesterday's announcement of this is the latest and most potentially really difficult issue for Erin O'Toole, probably won't be the last one. But it squarely puts the question of, is he the leader? Does he command authority within the caucus on the table? Marilyn Gladue, the woman who the MP for Sarnia, I believe, Sarnia Lampton, who spoke publicly about the formation of this caucus, said in her comments, according to the CBC story, that she had not informed Aaron O'Toole that they were doing this. And that she expected to get a call from him. And the implication and the way that she said that was that she expected to be reprimanded for it. And she went on to say that it's my party and I wanted to stay united. But this is a very strange way to express your desire to keep your party united.

And, you know, Ms. Ladue was a leadership candidate. She did drop out of the race at some point but it's obvious that the people who decided to allow this news to be put out by Ms. Gladue had decided that it wasn't necessary for them to clear it with the leader it wasn't really a consideration for them how it would make him look. And with that November 22nd deadline fast approaching, he's got a real issue to manage on his hands. And it's not really just an issue about vaccinations or civil liberties. It's an issue of do they want him as leader? Does he have that strength that sometimes is manifested by taking strong action against people who decide

that they want to try to carve a different path for the party? It's going to be a tough weekend for him. I expect that he'll be under pressure to say something about it today. Got to take a break. But before I do that, are you telling me bruce that the kennedys did not turn up in dealey plaza in dallas the other day i've been looking for the pictures i haven't seen anything that suggests that that happened you know i i don't know. The fact that he looked for the pictures is actually worrisome. Yeah.

Isn't it? You know, I've been, as I'm sure maybe you guys have been, I've been to D.V. Plaza, in fact, a number of times. And the last time I was there, there were all these, they didn't call themselves QAnon then, but there were a lot of these like deep conspiracy theorists type people selling magazines and CDs. There's a back in the CD-ROM day.

Was Elvis there? Elvis is probably there too. Elvis was not there because he's in Tweed, Ontario and hasn't left there. But anyway, that story was, it was what it was. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, is there a deal happening on Parliament Hill? We'll talk about that in a moment. Our podcast is brought to you by Questrade, Canada's fastest growing and award-winning online broker.

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I'm in Dornick, Scotland for a few more days yet. Back in Canada next week. It's been great over here, but it's time to go home. All right, rumbles. There are always rumbles around Ottawa about this or that, maybe it's happening. And whenever you end up with a minority government, there are always rumbles about, gee, maybe there could be some kind of a deal between enough parties together to ensure some survivability for this parliament without having to worry every time there's a vote. And those rumbles exist once again, and they surround, not surprisingly, the Liberals and the NDP. So what do we know that is tangible at this point? Chantal?

We know that the, quote-unquote, senior leadership of the Liberal and New Democrat leaders' offices, chief of staff and chief of staff, have been kicking around the idea of a possible agreement between the NDP and the liberals that would last for three years and that would see the NDP guarantee its support to the liberals on confidence votes, meaning the government would be bulletproof to an opposition vote that would see it have to go in an election for three years in exchange,

obviously, for some specified concessions or policies that the government would undertake to implement between now and the end, the expiry of that agreement. This would be tailored. I got interested in this notion when I saw a fleeting piece of information many weeks back that said that Bob Ray was having some input into the transition to the new parliament. Bob Ray is our ambassador at the United Nations. He was an interim liberal leader. But the reason why it caught my eye was because Bob Ray was one of the architects with David Peterson of a similar deal in 1985 that ensured that David Peterson could rule despite having less seats than the conservatives, but with a guarantee of support of the NDP for two years on the basis of an

agreement that spelled out what the items of agreement were and what the government, the minority government was undertaking. More recently, John Horgan in BC made a similar deal with the Green Party over his first term. And that is how the NDP got to govern until the last BC election where John Horgan secured the majority government. So, will this lead to anything, this kicking around? It's high-level kicking around of an idea, but that does not necessarily mean it will pan out. And I'll let Bruce have a go at it, but I have reasons to think there are some conditions

that don't really match the Ontario and BC examples. All right. I think it's probably a healthy thing that a conversation like that is happening. I think it's, you know, as of today, it kind of feels to me more likely than not that there will be some gear grinding, but that in the end, there are enough reasons for both parties in those discussions to want to conclude an arrangement that they feel is durable and that they can kind of plan their lives around. I think for the NDP, there's no real desire to have an election in the near term. That's true for the Liberals as well. I think that if we think about the map of

different agenda items that separated the two parties in the last election campaign, you kind of had the NDP saying the problem with the Liberals is Justin Trudeau's all talk. And the Liberals were saying about the NDP, the problem with the NDP is they don't know how to get things done. I'm obviously kind of simplifying or oversimplifying the choice. But my point is really that there aren't huge differences in the kinds of things that both those parties would want to have on the public agenda. There are some important differences, but there's more potentially in common. And I think that for the average progressive voter, the voter who might choose between the Liberal and the NDP parties in casting their vote.

You know, while partisans might say, I don't want my party to make a deal with the party that I just fought against in the trenches in an election campaign, the regular voter might look at this and say, I don't want an election, especially if Parliament can find a way to work together to accomplish a lot of the progressive agenda items that I care about. And so that we don't have to hear this constant sense of drama and kind of performative saber rattling coming out of Ottawa, which a lot of voters find more of a show than actually work done on their behalf. And so I don't think it's obviously not done yet. And when it's done, we may never actually hear the terms and conditions of it if it does get done. But it doesn't sound like an affront to democracy from my standpoint. It actually sounds like

something fairly practical that these parties should be trying to do. So two points, terms and conditions. I think the very least that NDP voters, for instance, would require of their party under such a deal is to know what, if anything, the NDP is getting for that guarantee of support. Transparency, you cannot be in opposition and keep harping about transparency and then make a deal, but not let the terms and conditions be known. And that would be a first. In BC, for instance, the Green Party secured a referendum, another plebiscite on proportional representation. In Ontario, the NDP secured the end of extra billing for medical doctors. And those things were up front, and they showed why this deal was advancing the agenda that people who had voted for that party got in exchange for that.

The reasons or the differences that I think may stand in the way of this is that, as opposed to David Peterson and John Horgan in their times, Justin Trudeau does not need that deal to become or to be the prime minister. David Peterson had won four seats less than the outgoing conservatives when he made a deal with Bob Ri. John Horgan was also the second on election night. He wasn't first. And if either of them had not struck a deal with the NDP in one case and the Green Party in the other,

they would not have been able to offer the lieutenant governor a guarantee that they could run a stable government. There is no such incentive to push Justin Trudeau's liberals down that road. The liberals do have a choice in this parliament as in the previous one of allies. They can shop support from the Bloc or even the conservatives if they ever have back-to-work legislation to move forward. I think all the reasons Bruce gave for going down that route are all excellent public policy reasons, but the politics of it are more complicated than they were in those provinces. Final point on substance. I think Justin Trudeau wants to have negotiations with the provinces on healthcare, for instance, and with Quebec in particular, not only on healthcare but on language, would have to be cautious of the notion that he is making an alliance that literally stacks the deck in favor of a stronger central

government and reduces possibly his room to maneuver on the negotiating front in particular, but not exclusively for health care. Well, you know, there's risk involved, obviously, in a deal like this. It may be good for the country. It may not be good for individual parties, you know, in the long run. You know, history suggests that it's usually not, usually does not work in the favor of the lesser in terms of numbers of two parties, if there are just two parties involved in a deal like this. Chantel pointed to one that was not the historical pattern, and that was the Peterson-Ray deal, because Ray ended up eventually becoming premier.

But there are enough examples around of other occasions where it didn't work so well. I mean, Pierre Trudeau didn't have to make a deal with David Lewis, and he never did in a big public fashion, but clearly there was some arrangement there it worked great for the liberals they won a majority two years later and the NDP you know basically ended David Lewis's leadership here in Britain in 2010 when David Cameron won a minority position in in the parliament he brought the Liberal Democrats on board,

and Nick Clegg, who was the Liberal Democrat leader, became the deputy prime minister. Where is he today? He's the flack for Facebook, right? I mean, he has some highfalutin title at Facebook, but basically he's the guy they shove in front of the cameras when they need, you know, a presentable position. So there are risks and there are risks for somebody like Jagmeet Singh

on any kind of a deal like this. Although I think weighing in favor of a deal would simply be the suggestion that are they seriously going to try and bring down the government? I don't think so. Not after campaigning two months ago that it was outrageous that there was an election right now because of COVID. But I don't know. We love stories like this because it's all intrigue and it's backroom dealing and none of it's done in the open. And at the end of the day, you may never know, as Bruce suggested,

what the deal was, although there will be pressures, as Chantel suggested, if the NDP are involved by certain elements of that party that we want to know. We want to know up front and out in the open what the arrangement is. Anyway, I'm ready to move on unless somebody else has a comment. Yeah, well, to our fascination for this story, you do understand that such deals are exciting for us to watch as they unfold, but they will deprive us of the suspense if it happens of all those confidence votes that will suddenly be non-stories because there won't be any suspense. So we are trading fascination for one thing over the short term

for a long-term pleasure that will be sacrificed over the next two years. That's a trade I'll make 100 times out of 100. Yes, but you are so highly minded. We can't all be so motivated. And we know what he thinks of the media. So, I mean, really, he wants to take all our toys away. Just some. Okay, we're going to take a break. And then, you know, I'm totally puzzled by,

and I would imagine a lot of people are totally puzzled by, the issue around the flag story in Canada. I'm not sure whether it's about to be resolved or whether it can be resolved in some fashion that makes all sides comfortable. But we're going to talk about that when we come back. Our Black Product Sponsor is The Economist. If you don't already know, its expertise lies in making sense of the world's most important developments. It offers completely independent opinion and analysis, giving you a balanced global view of an issue instead of a biased or politically motivated opinion. And don't be fooled by the name. It covers pretty much everything from

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All right, back with Good Talk. Chantal Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. You're listening either on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Wherever you're listening, we're glad you're with us. All right, when the story first circulated, well, actually it wasn't when it first circulated, well, it actually wasn't when it first circulated, but when it got enormous coverage earlier this year of the unmarked graves.

At first, the former residential school in Kamloops and then others. And there was outrage and outcry across the country in many different parts. And the government decided they was going to lower the flag, the Canadian flag on all federal public buildings across the country. And they didn't set a date on this. They just said they were going to lower them. Well, they're still lowered and it's been months now. And as we approach Remembrance Day, there are those who feel they need to be raised so they can be lowered on Remembrance Day.

I'm not sure once you get yourself into this situation how you actually find the moment to get out of it, because I'm not sure once it's been this long, what in fact are you looking for that's going to signal, okay, it's all right now to raise the flag. I'm glad this is not a decision that I have to make because I'm not sure with the various arguments that are at play on this how to deal with it. Bruce, why don't you start? Sure. It does feel to me that the conversations that have been happening around this have resulted in a resolution of it that when I read the quote of the chief of the Cowessess First Nation, the community where

many graves were discovered, the chief said that he's fine with the idea of raising the flag to lower it again. He also went on to say that he understood that, from his perspective anyway, that people will be mourning the deaths of those children for years to come. So I think he was giving some space to the advocates of Remembrance Day gestures and to the government to resolve this without making it become politically contentious. So it does feel to me like this is one of those things where people of good faith have come together and figured out a way to solve it. So you think it's done? I do. I think so too. But I do think there is a lesson there. To lower the flag is to mark something. It's meant to make you think of something when you see it. If you see flags that are lowered day after day after day

after day, you start not noticing them anymore. And you have kind of lost the purpose of that gesture. You're trivializing it by not putting a time limit that makes you say, oops, why is the flag at half mass? Oh, this happened. A lot of jurisdictions in this country, municipalities, provincial governments, others have lowered flags for the same reason last spring. But all of them, it's at a time limit. We're doing this for one day. We're doing this for X number of days for the number of graves that were found. And the lesson is, if you're going to lower the flag, you need to know when you're going to raise it again, or else you're going to end up in the situation that we are in.

But like Bruce, everything I've heard is that this will be resolved. I think everything I have read from the Assembly of First Nations to other First Nations groups and Indigenous organizations has opened the door for the government to raise the flag so they can be lowered on November 11. But I'm going to tie all of this. We are spending more time at this point agonizing over the federal decision over lowering or raising the flag than we are spending on the decision to appeal compensation for Indigenous children and an order from the Human Rights Commission. And why I tie the two together is because let me predict that when the government decides

to raise the flag to lower it on Remembrance Day, it will be announced in a time of the day and the week when there will be coverage, as opposed to the decision to appeal Indigenous compensation, which was released in the graveyard of news reporting last Friday at five o'clock. And to me, it all goes back to this government likes to publicize its gestures, but it does not like to be accountable for its more controversial decisions. And that's been true, not just of the Indigenous file, but of a number of other sensitive files where words have not always matched actions. You know, it is not in any way in defense of their timing on the Friday night thing. That's kind of a time-honored tradition going back quite a few governments

to bury stuff on a fray, sorry for the phrase, on a Friday evening, late evening or late afternoon, decisions that aren't going to be popular. I, you know, I'm equally puzzled by the decision, obviously, to go ahead and appeal. I know there are some, you know, they finessed a few points around that decision, but still the bottom line is they're going to appeal part of that decision, which I think is potentially a problem on the flag issue because has the Prime

Minister not said that he will keep the flags lowered until indigenous groups say to him, it's okay now to raise them. You know, I heard what you said, Bruce, I heard what you read from the, from the chief of the first nation involved in one of the residential school

areas. But it's going to take more than just one per one chief saying something for this to happen. Look, I think that like almost everybody who cares about this issue, there was a sense of disappointment and dismay at the idea that the government was continuing its legal course last Friday. At the same time, I've tried to spend some time kind of digging into what is exactly going on, what is and isn't the state of play of the issue. And so from my standpoint, I would say that the question of good faith is now on a clock with the government. Some would say, well, the clock expired a couple of times already, but it does feel to me like the government has declared that it has a period of time, of days, not years,

in which it intends to work out the terms of settlements on this. And so I'm going to hold my powder to see how that goes, because I also understand that there are issues of public policy governance here that are complicated, and that they're very difficult to explain. They're very difficult to explain. They're very difficult to explain to a population that feels as though the language and judgments has been blunt. The damage done to Indigenous people has been clear and the time to get to a solution has been too long. So, you know, from my standpoint, I think the flag issue is separate. I think that is, you know from my standpoint i think the flag issue is separate i think that is

you know there has been a an understanding reached on that but i don't think that i think for the prime minister this is a legacy issue indigenous relations is a legacy issue uh i think he's got probably his best minister working on it and we'll see what the results of that work is in a couple of months. And, you know, I'm hopeful, but obviously there's a lot of work that's not done yet. We got a couple of minutes left here and I'm sorry, I'm going to throw something at you that I didn't warn you of earlier. So you either will or will not have something to say on it. Speaking of best ministers, one of my favorites from the last government

or the last parliament was Anita Anand and the way she handled the vaccines issue. So she's now got defense and the mess that that's in, in terms of the sexual harassment charges that are being leveled at more than a few senior officers in the defense force. She makes a decision in the last couple of days, and I want to have somebody tell me the significance of that decision. Those who are under investigation will now be under investigation by civilian authorities as opposed to military authorities. What kind of difference can that make? Chantelle, do you want to take a run difference that this was the key recommendation of a report that has been sitting on the desk of the prime minister and the former minister of defense for six years. A recommendation that was, again, made by another former Supreme Court justice. So the first report six years ago, Maggie Deschamps report report ordered by Stephen Harper, handed to Justin Trudeau, recommendation ignored.

Morris Fish, another former Supreme Court justice, makes the same recommendation in June. Lo and behold, Madame Arbour, who is the latest former Supreme Court justice to be asked to look at the same thing and make a recommendation, makes the same interim recommendation. That this recommendation keeps coming should be no surprise, that it took three former Supreme Court justices saying the same thing, or that it was inevitable that this would happen, probably says more about the fact that the government didn't have a choice anymore than

about the arrival of an otherwise promising and talented minister who has not, I would argue, provided in this simple gesture of accepting the inevitable, provided a token of leadership. It's fine, but that is not the test of her tenure as a minister. This was the no-brainer and no-choice decision. But what it does do for her, one assumes, is it takes, you know, the constant coming to the minister and say, well, what about this guy? What about this guy? What about this guy? As the different charges come out, she can at least say now, this is now in the hands of, you know, totally independent from the military investigation. I am focusing now on trying to

root out the problem in that department, and it's going to happen. Yes, you're right. But can you imagine any scenario where she wouldn't have done that? Having found on her desk a letter dated October 20th from Louise Arbour to the former minister, who was undoubtedly told to leave that decision to his successor so that she would start on that footing. But this is not a decision. It's like accepting that winter is coming and you acknowledge winter. There is no scenario where she would have exercised a choice that was not that choice.

Bruce? You know, I think there's a good deal of truth to the inevitability of this choice, but I do think that there's a way to do this and to look like you've accepted with a certain degree of kind of enthusiasm and firmness the evidence and the determination that something on the government's watch has not been going right. Ms. Anand's comments used language that is unusual in terms of a minister describing something that was happening on the watch of a government that's been in office for six years. She said it's clear that a crisis exists in the military. That was probably an uncomfortable moment for her predecessor to see that language or hear that language used. And good for her for saying it um i think the i i want to say one other thing about this um which is that um she also said that uh the piece that um justice arbore is looking at now which is whether this

change should be permanent she said if she recommends that we will act on it so i think she's you know chantal's right i believe on the question of it became an inevitability that this kind of action was going to be taken. And then the question of the timing became, you know, more like, let's let a new minister kind of start fresh with the opportunity to make this announcement. That having been said, there's been enough time before the election where this action should have been taken and wasn't. So there's some change that's for the better there. And the last point I want to make, especially because sometimes I'm maybe inordinately critical of some in the news media, is I don't think this story would have resulted in this measure, this significant action without the work of some journalists who've been very persistent

in going after this story and getting details and supporting the work of the whistleblowers who were willing to bring some of these stories to light and good for journalism to do that. As for the acknowledgement that there was a crisis, Stephen Harper did not order a report from Maggie Deschamps to look into this because the system was going well. The Deschamps report makes it clear that there is a crisis. So there is nowhere or nothing more blind than a government that tries not to see for years on end until, as Bruce points out, journalists force it to focus its eyes on what it does not want to see. You know, there were a number of journalists who have done extraordinary work on this file in the last few years. I'll just mention two, Mercedes Stevenson from Global and Ashley Burke from CBC. Ashley Burke, yeah.

Yeah, who did, both of whom did remarkable work on this story. Okay, listen, that's going to wrap it up from the Scotland-based Good Talk for the last few weeks. As I said earlier, I'll be back in Canada next week. And on Monday, we have a special show that's actually done from here that'll set you up for Remembrance Day later next week. So it's a unique Canadian story. At least I found it unique. And then Thursday of next week on Remembrance Day, because we come on after the ceremonies that take place on Parliament Hill, a special program on, wait for it, libraries.

You're going to want to listen to it. It's really fascinating. And the way the Carnegie name has had such an impact on libraries around the world, both here for sure in Scotland, where he was from, and in Canada. All right, Chantel, thanks very much for this, and Bruce as well. We will be back in one week's time, right here on Good Talk.