The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Notwithstanding What Exactly?

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

Three main topics on tap with Bruce and Chantal in this episode.  First up, new data after the initial few weeks of the Convoy Inquiry, on how Canadians are feeling about the way the government handled the situation. And some pretty interesting testimony this week from the various convoy organizers.  Then Doug Ford is using the notwithstanding clause to ensure that kids stay in strike-threatened schools in Ontario which could lead to a Supreme Court fight.  And Ottawa drops its economic statement - what to make of it?

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here along with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. Lots to talk about on this day. Obviously we'll talk about yesterday's economic statement that was handed down by the Trudeau government through Christopher Freeland, the finance minister. We also want to talk a little bit about Doug Ford and his use of the notwithstanding clause to try and ensure that schools stay open in Ontario. That's caused some consternation. But we're going to start with the convoy because I still find this story fascinating. One of the things that this convoy commission of inquiry is supposed to determine, not the only thing for sure,

but one of the things it may well determine by the time its final report comes out in February, is whether the government did the right thing by introducing the Emergencies Act, whether it actually achieved anything, and what, in fact, it did achieve. So there'll be a number of things on that, all kind of funneling down into this question, for Canadians, do you approve of what the Trudeau government did by using the Emergencies Act?

Well, we don't know the answer to that question, and we won't know until the Commission reports in, I think, February. However, we have an early indication through public opinion surveys, including one by Abacus Data, which is just about to be released. It'll be the first time we get a sense through some form of surveying how the public is reacting to what they're hearing through this commission of inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act. So, Bruce, why don't you start us off by giving us the headlines of what you're seeing out of your survey? Sure, Peter. Probably we should just clarify. I don't know, and maybe you and Chantel can clarify this, but I think you said that the commission was going to

determine what was accomplished by the use of the Emergencies Act. And I'm not sure that's in the mandate. I think it's really just going to look at what was the rationale that the government used, and did it seem like an appropriate use of that power. To get to the data, really interesting. The data that we're publishing today only goes up to October 26th, I believe, which isn't obviously the last several days of testimony that involved a lot of questions being asked of the people who were part of the convoy so most of what we were picking up was reaction to the earlier testimony principally of people in the policing side of things and what it shows first of all is just as the convoy itself attracted a very large audience of Canadians the the commission is as well one in four said that they were following it closely. Another 45 or so

percent said that they were following it a little bit. We asked that kind of question about a lot of things. And those numbers are really large. They suggest that there is quite a bit of attentiveness to this doesn't mean that people are going and watching it live on YouTube, as they can do. But it does mean that people are interested in this story, interested in the stories that are coming out, the human dynamics, as well as the sense of who was trying to accomplish what during that period of time. The second point I would make is consistent with what Chantel was saying last week. Most people who are watching the commission are ending up feeling that what they're hearing reinforces the position, the opinion that they had before. Two-thirds say that they believe that

the government had no better choice but to use the Emergencies Act. And roughly two-thirds say that their observations from the Commission hearings reinforce that position. So there remain, you know, about a third of Canadians who say, no, I don't think it was the right thing to do, and who are watching the Commission saying, I even more perhaps think it wasn't the right thing to do. But the majority, and maybe most interestingly, from the standpoint of the politics of it, the party politics of it, it's a bare majority in the prairie provinces and a larger majority in every other part of the country who think that the use of the Emergencies Act was the best available choice for the government. And that's a signal, I think, to conservatives as well, that almost half of their voters

think it was probably the right choice. That may have something to do with how the conservatives are being relatively quiet, I think, on this during the course of these commission hearings, at least up till now. Chantal, you want to react to that? Oh, well, a number of things. By the time politicians, federal politicians, show up to testify towards the end of the process, so I'm guessing in a couple of weeks,

because the hearings per se are supposed to end on November 25th, it's going to be really hard for them. And I'm not dismissing their capacity to kind of shoot themselves in the foot. Politicians notoriously have always exceeded expectations on those scores. But it would be really hard for a federal minister or the prime minister to say something that makes them look worse than on his contention that he does not have to and that it would be a breach of parliamentary privilege will come next week. But even he wouldn't look quite as bad if he went. He probably would make the federal government look good because the policy of the Ford government over that period, even without testimony from Premier Ford, was a hands-off

approach. We don't want to touch this with a 10-foot pole. An election is coming. Part of our base is actually against those vaccine mandates that we imposed. So let the Ottawa police and the federal government settle something happening in their own backyard. That's not how it ended. An emergency order was decreed by the government of Ontario. I'm also curious, one of the risks of using the Emergencies Act is to normalize it. That word normalizing will come back later in the show about something other. And I find that this exercise and the way it's unfolding is really useful regardless of its conclusions and regardless of where public opinion in the end goes. I suspect it will stay where Bruce has put it and will not be shaken back into the they shouldn't have done that camp. But regardless of that, it offers a rather powerful deterrent to know that these kinds of autopsies

to a live political body will be taking place if that happens and that the autopsy is not going to be taking place within three, four, five years. It's going to be happening while events are still fresh. I find that the exercise overall, very healthy for the political conversation, very healthy for democracy. One of the things about this autopsy in this past week is Bruce mentions that his data is based on basically earlier testimony from before this week. So mainly, as he said said the police officials security officials

that testified this week has been interesting from the point of view if you're wondering how the protesters uh are reacting to the use of the emergencies act and to the whole way things unfolded in Ottawa earlier this year um it's been something to behold because you would have thought these groups, which clearly had their differences during the protest, would kind of figured out a way to sound like some form of a united front at the hearings. But that's not what it sounded like. They've sounded, you know, if they add differences back during the protests, the millions and millions and millions of dollars

they were collecting through different forms of donations, both in Canada and in the United States. I mean, there was, remember at the time, there was talk that it was coming in from the States and then that was kind of knocked down and denied that it was not coming in in any significant numbers. But the data that was released this week by the protesters' lawyers themselves would indicate there was actually quite a bit of money coming in from the states.

But this sense that they were, you know, very much of differing opinions on strategy, use of money, how to challenge the government, all of these things have been laid bare this week. And I can't imagine, Bruce, that that's going to do anything to help the numbers that you've been started to calculate. I tend to think that, pardon me, not much will change, but that's always a risky assumption.

And Chantel mentioned one situation that could change that when federal officials testify. But I just also want to associate myself with her thoughts about this being a healthy thing, this autopsy. And healthy, not just in the sense of how it helps us understand the choice that was made with this particular thing, but healthy as a deterrent for future use of this piece of legislation, because people in political life do not like to have to go through this kind of public forensic examination of their emails, their text messages, the choices that they were grappling with, the conversations they were having, the ones that were having about them that they weren't part of. All of that is so messy, so ugly that people will think really hard about using this law

in the future, which is how it should be. I've been watching fairly carefully the testimony by some of the convoy participants this week, and I think that it's possible that people, reasonable people who are looking at this with an open mind might from it that this was anything but a super organized effort to overthrow government in Canada. It's possible that the idea that the state of our democracy at threat loses some credibility because of the chaos, because of the different motivations, because of the sloppiness of the organizational effort, all of that that's coming out. I don't, though, think that it will, even if that does happen, I don't think it will make people feel that the government had another alternative. Because at the end of the day, it was pretty clear that police were dropping the ball. And in some cases, maybe on purpose, which is perhaps one of the more striking and worrying aspects of the testimony that's coming out that police sources might have

been leaking information to convoy organizers is something that needs to be addressed separately and in some with some energy i think second thing i would say is that the convoy was a mix of people um but some chaos certainly different motivations and there were certainly some people there one of whom testified this week at, one of whom testified this week, at least one of whom testified this week, whose views most people would not want to associate themselves with, including probably many of the people who were part of the mix. And those were views that police forces and security authorities need to take seriously because we can see around us in the world and to some degree in Canada what the risks are if we don't take those kinds of pressures, those kinds of individuals more seriously than we have in the past. And the last thing I will say is that even some of the more, I don't want to say rational sounding. Well, I guess I just did rational sounding people who were testifying this week still said some things that I think for most Canadians will strike them as being odd.

You had one individual yesterday who was saying that he was, you know, a central part of the effort, and he never saw any harassment. He never really heard anything that most other people had been hearing in terms of horn honking and kind of abuse and harassment, that sort of thing. You know, and another individual who kind of upended his entire life because of the vaccine mandate and said it made him terrified for the future of the country. Now, people are entitled to hold those views, obviously. I respect that. I also feel, though, that the average Canadian hearing that will deduce that these are not mainstream opinions and they were not, you know, that government shouldn't be threatened in terms of a disruption based on any movement, be it environmental, indigenous, the Quebec sovereignty movement, go down the list. The difference here is that those fringe views

were not fringe views, they were views held by people who were at the forefront of the movement. And that is what makes them interesting. This isn't just, as Canadians saw this week, this wasn't the media going to the very fringy groups to showcase them. There was no need to look really hard and do investigative journalism to find people with creepy extreme views who were at the forefront of the movement. And that doesn't mean that everyone in the convoy shared those views, but surely some of the people that held leadership positions did so. It has also become clear this week that there was no exit strategy, or at least no common

exit strategy, to the point where you start looking and thinking, in the end, the Emergencies Act allowed them to find a way out of something they'd maneuvered themselves into. How else would they have left if they had not been given a more compelling reason, excuse to say, okay, we're done, we're leaving? And it's going to look like a strange parallel, but I was looking this week and thinking, why does this look so familiar? The police organizations, now the convoy organizers, Premier Ford, eventually federal ministers.

A few years ago, I went around and asked everyone who was a big player on both sides of the Quebec referendum campaign how they saw what would happen the next day if the yes won. And the main conclusion from the exercise is nobody really had a plan. Everyone had one plan, but none of them would have lasted more than 24 hours before chaos erupted. And that is a bit what this commission has shown about this convoy. Nobody really had a plan. And in the end, the only plan left was the Emergencies Act. At this point, that's where the narrative seems to be going.

Now, I'm done. You mentioned they didn't have a common exit strategy they didn't really have a common entry strategy either like they were differing throughout this thing as as the testimony is clearly uh beginning to show let me ask just one last question on on this issue before we uh move on and that is both your points about how this has basically been good for democracy the way we're seeing this commission work and work very closely to the actual date all this happened is there and i appreciate that that's what has to happen on the use of the emergencies act but is there any way of picking this up and using it elsewhere any appetite appetite to do that within the system. I mean, we saw outside the system, Preston Manning this week,

wanting to do, I guess, some kind of a similar autopsy on the way the COVID situation ran. That's going to be interesting to watch because he doesn't have the clout or the power to demand testimony from people. But is there any way of trying to use this within the system to better, you know, inform Canadians about decision-making that has taken place? Bruce?

I don't think we should normalize the use of this kind of thing across a whole range of things. I think that the expense and the sense of it becoming super politicized would become really apparent over time. It would end up being a frustrating scenario. That doesn't mean that, for example, in the case of governments deciding to use the notwithstanding clause, that there shouldn't be some sort of post hoc test or evaluation of what was what went into that. You know, realistically, I don't see politicians agreeing to use this format many more or even any more times. That doesn't mean that they have to hate it now. But it does mean that they're human beings and their own motivations

will make them want to look for other tools and i also think on the preston manning thing uh this this is a disappointing idea from someone who had a lot of um standing and respect in politics that's my personal view um other people will probably see it differently, but it can't seem to me that the purpose behind this is to rationally and coolly and apolitically evaluate the choices that people in public office had to make when this once in a generation or a century pandemic came upon us. So I'm disappointed to see that happen. I'm sure it will be what it will be. Chantal? An exercise like that is one that has credibility when there is a perception of independence on the part of people leading it. To me, this idea of Preston Manning is kind of a sideshow, possibly a gong show,

something that is meant to affirm bias rather than to shed more light into realities. And on that basis, I wonder if Mr. Manning was bored and looking for a make-work project. Well, that's possible. You know what happens when you reach that retirement age? Yes. You have your little retirement party. Apparently.

Anyway, let's move on. i believe he has highland cattle as well as a project so you know i that's that's an interesting project preston manning has highland cattle i'm told wow well maybe that would be interesting uh to look at uh we're going to take a quick pause when we come back. Doug Ford wants to use the notwithstanding clause. Justin Trudeau says that's wrong and inappropriate. We'll talk about that right after this. And we're back with Good Talk on the Bridge.

You can hear us on SiriusXM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. And you can watch Good Talk, just like you can watch Smoke Mirrors and the Truth on Wednesdays, on our YouTube channel. Go to my bio on Twitter or Instagram, and it'll take you right there. Okay. Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, says his goal right now is to ensure that schools in Ontario remain open. That after two years of back and forth closings that the kids need schools open and he's going to do whatever he has to to ensure that well education workers uh were positioned

to go on strike as this week ends and um he's getting in the way of that by threatening to use the notwithstanding clause, which has caused some consternation from a number of people, including the Prime Minister. It's ironic to me, my irony of the week is that all those people who were protesting earlier in the convoy because they thought they were losing their freedoms through the mandates, they're not saying a word about all the, what is it, 40,000 education workers who are losing the freedom they'd earned through workers' rights and labor rights to be able to go on strike. Nobody's saying they shouldn't be doing that. No truckers, convoys on that one.

But maybe that's a stretch. What do we make of this story? Chantelle, you love the now withstanding clause discussion. Of course I do. Tell me about it. How could I not? It's going to keep us alive for another three, four years, I suspect. So the Premier Ford has used the notwithstanding clause. And it's going to keep us alive for another three, four years, I suspect.

So the Premier Ford has used the notwithstanding clause. The bill that forbids the education workers to go on strike did pass, and it is now law. It is a kind of bill that has been seen before in Canada in the sense that it prevents a strike and has some components that make it really costly for the union or the union members to not abide by the law. $4,000 a day. That will not stop today's strike from happening, but it certainly will at some point act as a deterrent. In the past, governments that have gone that route have often found themselves facing litigation in the courts. That happened in Ontario in 2012, I believe, and ended up having to pay significant amounts of money to unions because they were found by the courts to have infringed

on the charter rights of workers and thrown a wrench in the collective bargaining process. Basically, a law like that does that. What it basically does is remove your leverage to strike and poison the well of collective bargaining and basically gives the government the entire, the total power to set working conditions. That is what that law does. What is new is that for the first time, a government in this country has used the notwithstanding clause to protect itself from after-the-fact litigation. It's basically saying we don't need to worry about whether we are respecting the charter on this because we are just going to preventively say it doesn't matter what the charter says. This is our law. This is where it goes. I'm not sure Mr. Ford has measured what he has done in the sense that he is now made not QP or the education existential threat to the capacity of public service workers

in particular across the country and i mean teachers nurses uh to negotiate uh at the bargaining table as they should why would you if you can just say well you know i don't like i don't i'm not going to do uh or give my nurses what they're asking for. I'm just going to pass a law that forces them to stay at work beyond the essential services requirement. I'm going to dictate their contract and I'm going to tell them, well, you know, suck it up because you can't sue me. I'm using the notwithstanding clause. Politically, I believe this is a big, big opportunity for Justin Trudeau to become more proactive in the ongoing conversation on this clause, in the sense that he now has a rationale

for asking the Supreme Court whether the use of the clause preemptively is an appropriate way to go about this. Why Trudeau has not done that so far? He's been content to wait for challenges to the clause use in Quebec to make its way through the Quebec courts before intervening in the Supreme Court, in large part because until this week it made a lot of strategic sense to allow the Quebec courts to have a kick at the Quebec bills before the Supreme Court came. But now he's got a much larger rationale to say, I want some answers. There's no guarantee, by the way, about the answers.

I want some answers on this from the Supreme Court. And I would like the court to tell us whether this is a proper use of it. Court hasn't looked at the notwithstanding clause since the mid 80s. A lot has changed in this country since then. So I would not be surprised if over the next few weeks, you suddenly saw a more proactive federal government on this issue. Bruce? I think there are probably people who believe that what Premier Ford is doing is part of an effort to fashion public opinion against unions, to kind of rally his base, almost a sword issue rather than a shield issue.

I don't think that's the case. I think that probably the Premier and his advisors looked at the situation that they have in the healthcare system and the risks of students being pitched out of school and said those are the two most important services that public opinion measures us by or measures our competency by, and we can't afford to have a protracted stoppage alongside the failures and the sense that the healthcare system is crumbling. That, in and of itself, doesn't mean that he found a risk-free way to solve that. In fact, I'm with Chantal. I think he created a much bigger problem for himself

potentially, than he needed to. And I think it's, you know, it is probably part of why he's not out there championing the use of the notwithstanding clause, you've got his education minister, who's not had a terribly good run of success, I think, as a political communicator during the last couple of years, saying the only thing to know is that kids should be in school. It is more complicated than that, obviously. And there are bigger issues associated with the use of the notwithstanding clause. I also agree with Chantal that it's time for the federal government to be more punchy and aggressive and assertive in dealing with this issue, because the risk is that the public won't pay very much attention to the technique that's used to keep students in school, that the news cycle will turn and attentiveness to another bit of unraveling of this notion of the rights that we all share in common based on our foundational documents goes unremarked on by the public, or at least people pay attention for a short period of time, and then it kind of goes away. I think part of the issue that the Prime Minister and the federal government need to bear in mind is that, yes, it's a good idea to get court opinions. And yes, it's important to kind of make the case about the notwithstanding clause.

But sometimes those aspects can feel kind of remote the case about the notwithstanding clause. But sometimes those aspects can feel kind of remote, and maybe a little confusing for the average voter who doesn't who hasn't followed this as much as we have for as long as we have. The use of the notwithstanding clause, I think for those who are concerned about it, should be described as saying, well, this premier decided your rights were optional, and that he could opt out of allowing you to have your rights. I think the language needs to be more plain, it needs to be more, is that the society that we really want? And it's not just a question of will the courts decide that this was an appropriate use of that power? I think that's an important part of it.

But sometimes the federal government can get itself into a situation where it rests its political argument too much on things that don't resonate, don't deliver that clearly from a communication standpoint. I think this is a time for the federal liberals to kind of step up their communications game on this. And the last point I would make is I was watching a little bit of NDP leader Merit Stiles in the Ontario legislature. And I think she's making a meal out of this. I think this is a really important opportunity for the NDP as well. I think she's an effective communicator. I think she's driving a message that many people will hear and say, I like what she's saying and I like how she's saying it. And I think

that should be a lesson, I think, that the liberals federally take a look at as well and say, you need to prosecute this issue in a way that a lot of people can understand. So it doesn't sound like a constitutional kind of legal case. Chantal? A couple of points. One, Premier Ford could very well have stopped a strike from starting today without using the notwithstanding clause. He could have had the same bill, the same rather drastic or radical fines and the same work contract in it and stopped that strike without the notwithstanding clause. What would have happened subsequently would have been trashed

out in the courts. But if the goal was to keep the schools open now, the schools would have been kept open. It's interesting coming from the premier who probably kept school closed during the pandemic more so than any comparable premier, including the one of the province where I live. So interesting defender. Second, the federal government can up its game up to a point. There is merit in having the Supreme Court, which is an arbiter of such disputes, have its say in the same way that there was more merit in having the Supreme Court talk about secession and whether Quebec could secede before the liberals in Ottawa under Jean Chrétien came up with the Clarity Act. To provide a common foundation, you will not find it in the political arena. Now, what are the options? Lots of people don't like the notwithstanding clause, never liked

it. And it was put in, as you know, because you were around and I was too back in 1982. It was put in reluctantly by Pierre Trudeau to get the agreement of the prairie provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, to its Charter of Rights and Freedom. And the rationale that the premiers of those provinces put forward, one from the NDP and two conservatives, for the record, was that legislatures should have the last word on the courts, on issues, on legislation that the courts may not find our charter proof. If the federal government wanted to get rid of it, it could not. It would require substantial, if not unanimous, consent from every province to dispose of it. That's never going to happen. So forget about

going to the constitutional table to haggle over the notwithstanding clause. It will lead nowhere. The other method that some have raised this week is called disallowance. There is a power in the constitution that allows the federal government to say about a provincial law, I'm disallowing this law. I don't care what you want to do, province. Your law is no longer on the books. That has to be done within the first year or two of the law coming into effect. It has not been used since the 1940s, and it is not clear that this power would be vetted by courts.

And believe you me, if that power were used by Justin Trudeau, not only would we have not a constitutional crisis, but a unity crisis, but they would all head to court. There is no solution that doesn't government that did this disallowance measure would not be told by the Supreme Court, sorry, but the times have changed and this power that you have not used in almost 100 years is no longer a power that is suitable to the way the federation works. Remember, Pierre Trudeau believed he could patriate the Constitution without the provinces, went to court, and the Supreme Court said, well, yes, but it wouldn't be legitimate. And legitimacy matters in issues like that. So that leaves you with the end game being getting the Supreme Court to say whether it has more to say on the notwithstanding clause, whether over the past 30 years it has come to different conclusions as to how it should be used. There is no guarantee that the federal government will like the answer or the provinces will like the answer, but there is no other venue. And why I call this an opportunity for Justin Trudeau is that Premier

Ford, by going after collective bargaining rights, has now built a constituency in Quebec that would approve a reference on the notwithstanding clause, because labor rights in Quebec tend to be big deals. And so this is a battle for the entire labor movement. It's not just outside Quebec, the SASN, the FPQ, everyone who saw this happen. Big labor unions thought this is an existential threat to what we do at the negotiating table. It's the real thing. It's not just the charter being turned into an empty shell. It's the collective bargaining process. And so, if the federal government sits back and says, we're still going to wait for a Quebec court to pronounce on the Quebec bills that are controversial before we move on this, I think

they will have missed a major, major opportunity to shed more light on this issue. You know, I'm smiling because I've so missed constitutional crises in Canada. And here we have the potential of going into another one. You know, only in Canada, they say, which is probably not fair because, you know, the Americans are having their issues with various amendments to their constitution. But nevertheless, the memories this brings back are something else. I would, just on that, Peter, I would love to see a First Minister's televised conference, the kind of which we used to have, where they are all required to sit there and talk about the

appropriateness and the uses of the notwithstanding clause and to talk about this idea of the Alberta Sovereignty Act. And, you know, they won't all show up or they won't want to show up, but I feel like it's time for these issues to be elevated. And, you know, I take Chantal's point, I wasn't disputing whether or not the legal remedies should be pursued, and the courts need to be used, and we need to protect the role of those institutional voices. But the politics of this, if the federal government doesn't take it on as a major, major issue, it can easily get away from us that the fundamentals of how we govern ourselves, the collective bargaining process that has succeeded for the most part in serving the country's interests over the years. A lot of things are at risk if we don't take seriously

these guardrails that exist within our policy. I can just imagine if Jean Chrétien had called the first ministers after the 1995 referendum to let them rant about secession, how greatly it would have improved the situation and tensions. I tend to think that first minister conferences on issues like that only polarize conversations. You've watched and I've watched people fight as if their life was at stake over an amending formula, quote unquote. That is what happens when you start talking about fundamental ways that governments see the country. Me, I think it's better to diffuse those situations based on the experience that we've all witnessed over those discussions. So, no, I wouldn't be calling the premiers because Justin Trudeau is a lightning rod. And if you sit him at the end of a table looking like father knows best on this with the current

crop of premiers, you are not going to like the result. Although I, as a journalist, and so will Peter, will think, well, this is a return to the great old days of having something really meaty to cover. But I do not believe it would lead to anything that is a solution to this conversation. Well, I understand the instinct not to, you know, just see the drama for drama's sake. And I take your point about Trudeau, but I guess, you know, the last thought for me is that without escalating this at some point, the water is running out of the bucket. People aren't paying enough attention to some of these issues and it is going

to take some degree of drama to galvanize a conversation that otherwise is, you know, around an idea that's being lost a little bit taking it to the supreme court will be escalation the you can see how most premiers would come out to say this is the federal government trying and they will face off in court if that happens big time okay we got to move on. I mean, I do miss those days of those, you know, First Minister's conferences that we saw during the, you know, the late 70s and the early 80s that led to, well, it led to, among other things, one province being shut out

and a deal cut in the middle of the night without their, you know, without their agreement and the problems that that's created ever since. But still, I'm with Bruce. Let me see these guys, who are mainly guys, you know, one woman, around that table, sorry, two women now, around that table, saying it like it is for them. Let's see exactly where they are on these things because partly because of what happened in the early 80s,

for the most part, those kind of in-public sessions have disappeared. And they were pretty, they were dramatic television. Were they helpful to the state of the country? That's a good argument to have, but it would be nice to see some of that. One, you know, we've got to get to the economic statement. We've only got, you know, 10 minutes left here,

but very briefly, Bruce, we started this with your take on what Canadians were feeling about the commission of inquiry. What is your suspicion if Ontarians were asked, do you agree with Doug Ford using whatever mechanism he can to keep schools open, how that would fly? Do you want to even hazard a guess? This is a classic case where what you put into the question will determine what comes out the other end.

If you don't incorporate the notion that using the notwithstanding clause, if it comes with no penalty, could mean that it gets used more and more, and you have to give people some examples. Now, some would look at a question like that and say, well, that's putting a real finger on the scale. Others would look at it and say, if you don't put that, then all you're really doing is asking people if they want kids in school, because they won't know what the notwithstanding clause is in many cases, let alone whether or not it's a bad thing to use it. It's part of the problem with terms like a notwithstanding clause being at the center of this conversation is that it separates people who are hugely engaged in politics from people who aren't, which is a much larger proportion of the population and who don't

relate to or necessarily understand the background of those terms. So I don't think that Ontarians, back to Chantal's point, if they knew that there was a way for kids to be in school without using this tool, they would say, do that. And if it causes legal challenges, so be it, that's a smaller price to pay. But that would require in order to unearth that public opinion, that would require questions that include a fair bit of education along the way. And everybody, when they see those questions tends to be a little bit suspicious of them because you're not exactly measuring public opinion. You're measuring what would happen to public opinion if it was sufficiently informed in a variety of ways. One last point.

Me, I'm more interested, and I suspect many Canadians, in seeing the premiers and the prime minister talk publicly about where they think the health care system is going and what they're doing about it. Agreed. And there was one meeting in the Martin years where they were on camera. We know where that ended up. Okay. We're going to take a last break and then come back for a couple of minutes on yesterday's economic statement by Chrystia Freeland. But first, this. and come back for a couple of minutes on yesterday's economic statement by Christopher Freeland.

But first this. All right. We're back with our final segment here on good talk on the bridge on Sirius XM channel one, six, seven Canada talks or your favorite podcast platform, or on our YouTube channel. You can find it by going to my bio in Twitter or Instagram. All right, Christopher Freeland gives the economic statement yesterday.

It's kind of like a mini budget of some sort. In fact, there were some suggested tax measures, so it was more than just a statement. What's the bottom line here? Let's jump to the bottom line, given our time on it. I mean, it's just very clear that we're heading towards the R word, the recession, if we're not already in it. There have been some indications in the last little while

of some good numbers on the economic front. Well, not good, but more encouraging than perhaps some people had thought. But she kind of moved that aside in her statement yesterday to say that it's going to be difficult, very difficult. What do we make of what we heard yesterday? Bruce, you start us on this one well i think miss freeland was not trying for a home run she wasn't trying to escalate interest in this necessarily and create a sense that this is going to be a landmark

uh announcement quite the contrary i think that there's a a more subdued quality to the messages that she was trying to get out i think she was trying to land a few things. And from the coverage that I saw, probably with some success. First of all, that the government is fiscally not as reckless as people might think that it has been. That remains to be debated out and seen in the course of time. And the government put out different scenarios in terms of what the impact of a recession might be on the fiscal situation, but overall had a story to tell that was better than

maybe had been anticipated, well, better than had been anticipated last year. Second message is that they're trying to do some things along the way to help people with the cost of living. Some people will find those measures useful, others will say they don't really apply to me or they're not enough. But it was on the radar screen of the key messages, Ifriendly posture for the government remains to be seen, and more will be known, I guess, next year when the budget comes out. But I think there are probably a lot of blue liberals who are hoping that that is part of what they can interpret from how Ms. Freeland talked about the economy and the role of investment in the economy going

forward. So, you know, it remains to be seen whether the public will really react to this. But I think as far as government communications goes, it probably did what they wanted it to do. Chantal? I agree. And I think she punted a lot of the heavy lifting to the spring budget and hopefully a clearer economic picture than the one she has now. But there were a number of political goals that she had to set for herself. And I think this morning, the liberal strategists are probably thinking this has done as much as it could for us. The first, as a minority government, was to ensure continued NDP support.

And despite the harsh words coming from the NDP, that support is guaranteed. There will be legislation coming out of this fiscal update, and the government would not survive without the NDP voting for some of those, for that legislation. That's going to happen. So first things first, you survive to fight another day. Second thing, I think they really wanted to have the words prudence and responsible make their way in the news reporting.

And did those words ever make it? Possibly by contrast. I mean, if you're always perceived as spending, the second that you put 25 cents in your piggy bank, you're suddenly looking fiscally responsible, which is basically what we're seeing at this point. Proof will be in the pudding. And I think that they're setting themselves up for a campaign against Pierre Poitier. What yesterday's announcement did is basically commit the liberals to campaign on balancing the books in the next federal election. Because for the first time since Justin Trudeau came to power, Chrystia Freeland set a target

date for balancing the budget, 2027-28. That's beyond the next federal election. That is a pivot from a government that initially came to office promising deficits. It was a signature promise in all senses of the word that Justin Trudeau put forward in 2015. I don't know that that target date is credible in budget terms, but I do see it as something that they will peg their platform on in the next election to fend off the perception. And some of Bruce's abacus numbers showed that they need to move in that direction to change the perception that when it comes to managing the economy, the conservatives are better than the liberals.

At this point, that is where public opinion is, and that's not a good place for the liberals to be. And Polyev still has, you know, he has inflation on his side. He has interest rates on his side. He has a crashing housing market in many parts of the country on his side in the sense of that fight i mean you could you can forecast as you point out chantal a balanced budget by 27 28 really it doesn't mean anything they might not even be the government in 27 28 so like but it does change shift the channel to uh we're fiscally responsible but But Pierre Poiliev has all those things. He also has premiers who are inconvenient allies to deal with, to go in an election.

I'm not sure he wants to spend a lot of time shoulder to shoulder with the new premier of Alberta, for instance. That's just one example. You have 30 seconds, Bruce, to close. Yeah, last thing for me, I think it's always been a lesson I've learned in watching how people react to recessions in the past and similarly to how they're reacting to inflation. Inflation isn't the same for everybody.

And it isn't the case that recessions are the same for everybody. Lots of people remain employed and confident even during recessions. And so we tend to, I think, overstate the degree to which public opinion goes up or down based on these global economic statistics. When in fact, how people really relate to the economy is their own personal situation and whether they can afford the things they need now and can have the dreams that they want to have for the future. And I think that we're in a period of uncertainty about that right now. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week on Good Talk. Hope you enjoyed it. I know I certainly did.

I thought it was riveting in many parts. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Chantel. Not bad for a retirement project. Not bad. Not bad. Okay, we're done. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you again on Monday. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.