The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Pierre Poilievre's Joe Rogan Experience

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

The Conservative leader went on the most popular podcast in the United States yesterday and kept the conversation going for more than two hours and twenty minutes.  And if you believe Bruce and Chantal he did very well.  Will it make a difference?  Also on Good Talk, the Iran war and America's allies, just where do they, including Canada, stand?  And more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Aver and Bruce Anderson. It's your Friday Good Talk, and it's always lots to talk about. Joe Rogan, I got to tell you, when Pierre Polyev was on this program, just a couple of weeks ago, he didn't bring any gifts for me. There were no kettlebells or whatever you call those things, and this is probably a good thing. I don't think this was going to be about you.

Is this going to be about you? Yeah. No, you've never warned us about this. I didn't get my gift thing. Well, it's a good thing. He didn't bring me one of those because from the look of it, I don't think I could have ever lifted it anyway. All right.

We won't talk about me. We'll talk about what happened on this program. Because clearly on Joe Rogan's program, because clearly, Pollyev, as he witnessed, said to us a couple of weeks ago, he's looking for new audiences and access to more and more people, and he certainly would get access to a lot of people,

not Canadian voters in the U.S., but nevertheless, an audience. What did you make of it yesterday when it aired? Bruce, why don't you start us? Well, he may have done a better interview than that, but I can't remember one. I think it was a really effective interview for him. And I thought it was that because of a number of things.

First of all, I think his whole approach this year is a recognition of the idea that he needed to shift what he was doing. He's talking to more people. He's put himself in situations. Now, it was never going to be unfriendly on Joe Rogan, but he's putting himself in more situations where he looks like somebody who feels, like he should explain himself to people. He should answer questions. He should lay out kind of a point of view and not be this kind of braggy, self-aggrandizing person,

which is, I think, what really marked an earlier part of his leadership. You know, all of that peer-for-PM stuff felt so different to the more humble guy that he came across as in this interview. I mean, even when he was talking about his wrestling prowess as a young man, or as a old boy, he was kind of careful to say he wasn't that good. Now, these are small things, I get that. But there's stylistic clues to, I think, what he's trying to accomplish, which is to allow people a chance to get to know him a little bit differently,

maybe to like him a little bit more. There was a lot less rage farming in this. There were topics that came up where he could have decided to do what he did not very long ago, a few weeks ago in Europe. where he raged farm about climate change. He seemed to want to avoid doing that with Rogan, which I think was a good choice for him. He was far more nationalistic in the sense of Canada's a great place.

You didn't really hear Canada's a broken place. Complete 180 in terms of the way that he describes the country, which I think was also a good thing for him. A good thing for the country, too. There's a big audience. And I think, you know, there's going to be some people in Canada who are going to go, well, it's his audience. It's not going to matter that much.

It won't reverberate in Canada. I don't accept any of that personally. I think it is a big audience. I think that people will notice to some degree the way that he's approaching, talking about the country. It was different also in the sense that he had an opportunity to continue to rage farm about Justin Trudeau and to kind of carry that over into personal criticism of Mark Carney and he didn't do any of that.

He almost didn't want to talk about Mark Carney except to say that they're like text buddies. He's kind of keeping him informed about what he's doing. And he said, I don't go to Washington because, you know, one prime minister at a time. And also, I won't criticize the Canadian prime minister when I'm outside the country. Those are all grace notes that somebody who's not. Well, that the old Pierre-Poliev, and I don't really want to go too far down this road because the old Pierre-Poliev could come back tomorrow. We don't really want to over-bid on this.

But the last thing I would say is that on trade, I think he was helpful. I do think that the more Americans hear arguments about not just we've been friends and mutually beneficial, I think those are helpful things to lay out. but he talks about aluminum and how America can't make the aluminum that it needs doesn't have the energy, doesn't have the box site, talks about lumber and that cost of housing. Those are good points to put on the table

for an American audience all the time. And so good for him for doing it. He approached the conversation about Trump in a way that was pro-Canada and critical of Trump. And so I don't know what his base, so-called base, we'll think about it, but I think he did himself some good. He did country some good too.

Chantelle. We have a tendency sometimes to look at things that the political leaders, the prime minister, whoever on the foreign scene do, in terms of what will it do to them at home, how much good did they do to themselves, as opposed to what did they do to advance Canada. And I talked

yesterday, the first question was, did it help Canada in the current Canada-US debate? And the answer to that is a clear yes. Why is that? When people dismiss it by saying he was speaking

to his own base, yeah, well, he was speaking to Donald Trump's base. At a time when doubts are emerging about the wisdom of some of the terror for, issues and the costs to Americans, especially in the context of what's happening in the Middle East. So if you do not want to talk to the very people who have the most influence on the person that you are negotiating with,

then you're probably cutting yourself off from being an effective negotiator. And on that score, Mr. Poyev was speaking to the right audience and doing it in terms. that actually worked well with the host, and that also matters. When Joe Rogan says I would vote for you tomorrow, if I had the opportunity, that does matter because it gives credibility to whatever message Piaplayaev brought to the U.S.

I also thought on a larger picture issue that Canada came out well in the sense of these, civilized approach that he took to his relationship with the liberal government. And, you know, you come out of the exercise thinking, this is in such sharp contrast to what Americans are seeing of their own politicians and their own leadership. That cannot be anything but striking. If you like Canada, which is basically where the instincts of a vast majority of Americans are, you are going to come out of this liking Canada as much or more,

which actually matters. And at a time when the president seems to think that Mark Carney is some person that he can go after and score points on. On the more domestic front, I agree with Bruce. I saw off the top how the conservative leader would not go to the Justin Trudeau. and God knows he was invited onto the let's bash Justin Trudeau territory right off the top. And I thought, maybe this is the day when Pierre Puelev finally put Justin Trudeau behind him. Like, this is done, I can't resuscitate him. And that goes to a Canadian audience.

Obviously, in the polls tell us that week after week after week. It doesn't really work to try to say Mark Carney is just Justin Trudeau with a dress. different suit in a time. And that was kind of reflected in the interview. As to not rage farming on climate, I would have been a bit difficult to do, considering that the person who pushed back on climate versus oil was Joe Rogan. And if I were the conservative brain trust, I would take from that the notion that it won't be enough to just say, It's BS to say that there are environmental footprints to the development of natural resources. When Joe Rogan is asking you about the environmental footprint of natural resources expansion,

maybe it's time you get it into your head that, yes, you can advance those issues and probably you can do a lot better at advancing them by not telling voters that anything else doesn't matter. So overall, I thought it was, yeah, I agree with Bruce. I don't know if it's Mr. Puellyov's best interview. I haven't watched all of them, but it was certainly one of his best on balance. And it is a feat for any politician to spend three hours with someone and not give himself so much rope that he ends up hanging himself over the course of that interview. And that didn't happen yesterday.

Yeah, there didn't seem to be. a moment where the deal lived a regret in the future. Over two hours and whatever it was, two hours, 23 minutes or something. There was a giant section on martial arts, which I read the transcript so I didn't have to listen to it. It's not my opinion. You know when you were watching it,

because I was watching it at that point, you didn't kind of know I advised a few friends who were looking for news to kind of skip to the last 10 minutes when that started, but you have to walk through it to know to say that. But what actually happened, which I thought, you know, most of us couldn't have done that, is at some point, just before the martial arts section, you can tell that Joe Rogan is basically run through his political questions.

And he's gotten to how did you lose, which Piaplayaev wisely alluded, And it's Pia Puele, who's actually interviewing Joe Rogan for a long, long time, which is an actual great way to kill time. But at the same time, I'm not so sure that you would have been able to show enough knowledge of martial arts to keep this time for so long. You know, there's a degree of sucking up there. I mean, let's face it. Let's not kid ourselves about what was going on there.

But let me ask this question about, not in particular about that interview, but the way things are changing in terms of the way the politicians are trying to access the public. And we've witnessed this over the last year or so. I mean, what was Carney's first interview was with, you know, John Stewart, the first interview when he was running for or about to run for prime minister, or a liberal leader. But this whole idea of moving away from traditional interview situations to the social media aspect

and the way they go about it, I mean, back in the day when I would do big interviews with prime ministers and opposition leaders, you would request the time and you'd have to fight for it and it would be a long process of negotiating how long the interview would be, where would it be, when would it air, all that kind of stuff. This is different. They come to you.

Now, Joe Rogan apparently tried to get Polyev on last year during the election campaign. Polyev decided against. It appears to this time it was the other way round. The Polyev people organized a campaign to convince Rogan have him on the program. When he was on this program a couple of weeks ago, it was initiated by his office. They called, ask whether I'd be interested. And you, you know, you, you see that and you hear that in a lot of other areas. He's out there looking for time. So this is not just about Polyev. It's about the process and how things have changed and why they've changed for politicians,

or if they've changed, that politicians are seeking different avenues to get their message across, that we have reached a really different time than we used to. At least that's the way it appears to me. Well, it may be that Quebec came to it before the rest of Canada in that case, because too much... Doesn't that always happen?

The Sunday night talk show, as we raised interviews, and the Sunday night talk show is, what, 15, 20 years old now. And politicians have been coming. When there is an election campaign, you see the, and it will be the case next fall, except that the season doesn't start maybe early enough. They're going to have to figure that out

or put a few leaders on the same night. But now, a tradition of election campaigns in Quebec is every leader showing up on the set of Toulmonde en-parl. And that's been the case going back to, Jean Charrayette 2007. And what people are watching, yes, leaders debates for sure. But they're also

tuning in and those interviews are what makes the news. If you do well on Toulmonde en It won't change your life but if you do poorly it affect the outcome of the election.

So in the case of Poiliev, 15 months ago, he was running a front-runner campaign, taking no risks, speaking to his own audience. He had the polls that showed for that. I'm not sure how often Mark Carney has called you up to do an interview. He is now the front-runner. So that kind of hasn't changed.

There are conservatives that are saying he should have gone last year during the campaign on Joe Rogan. I'm not sure it's that black and white. back last year, Pierre Puelev was being compared to Donald Trump very, very easily. But Joe Rogan was also much more into the Donald Trump thing than he is today. And on the Canada issue, it wasn't yet as much on the radar of people like Joe Rogan. Why are we having this battle with our friends in Canada as it is today? So me, I think the interview yesterday was timely, good idea, to call back and say, can we do the interviews?

Same with yours. But I'm not sure that the Joe Rogan venture in the last campaign would have been as helpful as people seem to assume today. Bruce. You know, not just the Rogan thing, but the overall sense. And I accept Chantel's point about the Quebec situation. But I'm talking about when you're off mainstream and you're going elsewhere.

Yeah. So before I answer that question, I want to just go back if I can to the earlier discussion, just to add one other point to it. I've done the little finger-raised thing. Yeah, I saw that. You got to ignore. I saw that. Did you?

Right? Yes. So, you know, I don't. We just wanted a test to see whether you would push it. Yeah, I know. Now that you have where you go. One of the things that Pollyev did that I thought was, interesting and I don't know whether it was deliberate

is that he described himself as having the job of being a government in waiting. And I mean, we all occasionally characterize the role of the opposition like that, but it isn't always operated that way. I mean, you know, a lot of the time it's just let's throw stuff out of wall and see what sticks. Let's try to, you know, get people hyped up and angry.

And those kinds of things don't necessarily look like a government and waiting. And the reason it's interesting to me is I think if I were advising Pierre Pauli, what would be your best chance ever of becoming prime minister? It would be sort of to sound like a spare Carney, you know, so that if people decide that Mark Carney isn't the person they want at some point, that they don't have to choose something radically different from it, somebody whose personality is so unlikeable relative to Carnies whose skill set and ideas are so different from Carnies. And so I don't know if that's what he's doing.

But I do think that nobody would ever articulate it, because basically what you'd be saying is we're always going to finish second as long as this guy's probably in the picture, Carney, that is. And because a big part of the Conservative Party would say, well, no, we're not going to emulate a liberal. But Mark Carney is as popular as he is because at the center of the spectrum. And a lot of people are saying this is, you know, we don't agree with

everything, but a lot of what we're seeing we like. So I wanted to just put that point on the table. I think, Peter, I agree with your observation that there is a shift. And I think that we can look at it and say, is it the politicians deciding it or is it the consumer marketplace saying we don't always want a friction-filled conversation. Sometimes we just want a dialogue. Sometimes we just want a dialogue. And I think a lot of podcasts are succeeding because people want a dialogue. They don't want the friction. I think a lot of the traditional version of journalist and politician doing an interview is filled with friction, designed to have friction. And so politicians not surprisingly go, well, do I need the friction or do I want the friction? And if the answer to those questions is no,

then you sort of punt it to another day. One of the reasons, why, and this is not to flatter you, but it will make you happy, that you ended up doing as many of those long-form interviews as you did, it's because you didn't put a lot of friction in it. You did on certain key points where you really wanted to get to the heart of the thing, but people could approach a conversation with you thinking it's going to be a conversation, and the audience could enjoy it because they didn't feel like they were always going to be their appetite for friction and stress was always going to be tested.

And I would say that over the years, the amount of doom scrolling and stress that people feel in the news, in the world on their screens has gone up so much that it has created a bigger appetite. And that appetite is being responded to in significant measure by podcasts for conversations where people can hear different ideas and have an exchange, and it doesn't have to feel the same degree of oppositional aspects of the conversation.

Chantelle has her finger. I totally agree with that, but based on recent personal experience, I will admit that I dreaded spending two and a half hours listening to a Pierre Puehliv interview because his interviews have tended to be civil adversarial that at some point you would think, I don't need this. And I totally enjoyed the two and a half hours. The martial arts section, I have to say. I was going to say, you don't know my heart.

On the diet part? How are the diet? No, the diet thing, I happen to be with someone who also believes that processed foods are not good for you. So I didn't have any issues. Oh, you count me in. No, I'm pretty big on just trying to get real food and making it yourself. So that part, I thought, this is weird. I am on the same wavelength from

a lot of this with Joe Rogan. I didn't expect that. But the fact that I could listen to it and not feel that I was being subjected to this point scoring adversarial. I'm going to, I mean, the Apple conversation came up, you know, Pierre Puebuev, chewing on an apple and being very, I thought, arrogant to the person he was speaking with. And that's the kind of thing that is really corrosive and that you watch and you think, do I really need to be watching stuff like this? Is it really telling me more about the person

who is indulging in the bullying in the bad sense of the word than telling me anything about this person's idea? So I think the 24th, seven news environment is also brought about something that probably means that people have even less appetite for a match between interviewer and interviewer. And it is the multiplication of adversarial panels. Yeah. We're basically sitting on a panel not to offer a different perspective, but to just offer a rebuttal to whatever is someone else who is wearing a different jacket

from a different party is saying. And at the end, all you are, have left or all you're left with is a lot of noise. And on that score, I totally understand that people would tune out or that leaders would choose to go to places where they can actually speak for themselves rather than... Finish a point. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. To be able to finish a point without being interrupted with the...

Yeah, but... Yes, but. Yes, but. thing, yeah. Yeah. So what are we saying here at the end of the day? Are we circling this date, this week's date, and saying this was a moment where things changed for Pierre Poliyev?

No, we're not saying that. We're not. I don't know if it was a very good interview. Maybe the best he's ever done. We're not saying that, but we may be saying that what Mark Carney and now Pierre Polyev are doing is started. to talk to voters as if voters are adults, which way are. And there's a nice change from the slogan era of,

we have your back or we are going to ax the tax. We have your back for those who don't remember is the Trudeau line that kept coming back and ax the tax obviously. So maybe it is a welcome development to have leaders who actually speak to you as if they were adults speaking to, to other adults. And me, the shift I see in Pierre Puev, and I don't know if it will last,

but it goes to Bruce's point about government and waiting. I think he has shifted, for now at least, from if you say black or say white, to if you say one thing, I can say it, but show how I would do it better. Yes, yeah, I think that's right. Okay, that's a good way of summing it up. and we'll see.

You know, only time we'll tell as to how things move forward from here. We're going to take our break and come back and move on to a different topic right after this. And welcome back. You're listening and watching our YouTube version of Good Talk for this Friday. I'm Peter Mansbridge, along with Chantelle-A-Barre and Bruce Anderson. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, or on your favorite podcast platform. or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us wherever you are joining us from.

All right, the war in Iran. Last week, over the past week, we've seen the kind of core allies of the United States from many years, which include Canada and the UK and France, etc. You know the list. They went from basically slapping Trump in the face, when he asked for their support right away on the Straits of Hormuz, saying we're not getting involved in this,

stuff like this is not our war, to by the end of the week, that same core group, or at least parts of them, saying we could be involved in a post-war kind of cleanup in the Persian Gulf. We could help on that front. So an interesting, an interesting, change over a couple of days.

And I'm just wondering how you both feel about that and Canada's positioning on that. I don't see a change. I see an evolution, which is really different. I think the message, I also don't agree necessarily that they slapped Trump's face by refusing to engage, but I do see a distinction. I looked at yesterday's statement.

I agree it's a major development in the language. But it was the third statement, as far as I can tell over the past two weeks on various angles of this issue that was signed by the G7 minus one, i. every country in the G7 minus the United States. Yesterday's statement also included the Netherlands. And I think the core message remains the same. The U.S. allies are not about to engage in the Iran and Middle East file under the direction and the leadership of the United States. I think that is the core point, that they would be part of a solution independently of the leadership of the White House.

sounds more to me like how this should be read than a sudden attempt at coming back into the submissive form of saying, yes, dear leader, we will ultimately understand that your threats against us if we don't comply are real. And I also believe that it is part of a process that is inevitably leading Canada and Europe to be looking at,

the world and their own backyards and their own defense differently than they have or have until Donald Trump's return to the White House. All right. I don't disagree with that last point. I think you and I are on different sides on the earlier part. I don't think I was suggesting they were suddenly being submissive by weeks end. I think they were very deliberate in what they said by weeks in. And I still think they slapped him in the face.

I think they humiliated him. at the beginning of the week, and he looked like it, and it forced him into saying all kinds of stupid things, including yesterday sitting next to the Japanese prime minister, saying what he said. I think that all kind of unfolded as a result of the... But did you think France and Canada had humiliated George W. Bush by not joining the operation on Iraq?

No, but partly because there were all kinds of other countries that, in fact, did join. But here they all... said no, and they all said no, in some cases, very strongly, especially the German leader. It's not our war. We're not getting into it. But anyway, we disagree a bit on that front. But, Bruce, your thoughts on it? Well, I'll kind of in between. Oh, sure.

So here's, here's a surprise. There's got to be a reason to go third. There's got to be a reason to go third on some of these situations. I think that Trump was humiliated, but I think that he created the humiliation cage and he walked into it. And his whole intervention in Iran is so shambolic and embarrassing and incoherent that it's going to snow here today, Shantel tells me. And it's like if I said, Peter, I need you to come over and help show my snow. No, never mind, if you're not ready to come over. But no, there's no snow. Don't worry.

But no, really, I need you to. And if you don't, I'm never going to. It's all that kind of conversation that he used in which what are the chances, the end of which, what are the chances you're going to come over and only shuffle the snow? You're going to find a reason why you're busy doing other things. And hopefully I'll stop being such an incoherent pain in the ass at some point down the road. I think that what these countries decided to do was sign an agreement among themselves, not including the United States, as I understand it,

which is about restoring some sort of economic sanity to what's going on in the Straits of Hormuz and around the region, which is entirely consistent with what mature leaders, should be trying to do in this situation. And it's separate from the prosecution of this chaotic, shambolic, ridiculous kind of intervention that I say ridiculous, with all respect to the people who say the regime is terrible, and I agree with that, and has been a source of terror, and I agree with that. But it's really hard to feel convinced that Trump and Hegsseth are going to solve either of those problems at this point. And it's really easy to see the mounting economic problems that they're

causing for their own country and for other parts of the world. So I think it was a gesture of kind of maturity and thoughtfulness that these countries got together and said, this is what we can do or we can help in this area, terms and conditions to be decided down the road. You raised Pearl Harbor and the comment in front of the Japanese PM. And not only was kind of astounding to watch, like, where do we think we're going here? But in a way, Donald Trump was comparing his operation on Iran to Pearl Harbor. Well, that didn't happen well. No.

So you can understand that other world leaders would be rightly concerned about what's happening. It's a serious issue, but that they would want to carve out a place away. from this disorder. And to jump, and I've seen, I'm not saying you said that in any way, shape or form, but to jump to the conclusion that some seem to be doing this morning that we are on a slippery slope to participate in a war with the United States and Iran is completely wrong.

It's a misread of the situation, but somebody somewhere is going to have to say, Bruce talks about a voice of reason, yes, And I think they're trying to be part of the voice of reason. And in the face of Israel that's got an agenda, that's not necessarily the U.S.'s agenda, and the U.S., which clearly is thinking in terms that are not likely to lead to any solution. And as for the regime, it's not clear to me that it's even on the radar of Donald Trump or his people at this point to bring about regime changed. They're all into trying to find a way out of a trap that they set up for themselves.

Yeah, I agree with all that. You know, you talk about a voice of reason. It would be nice to think there was one voice of reason within that Trump circle. You know, Vance's people are trying to put out, you know, quietly that he's really against all this. But he doesn't have the courage to stand up and say it or stand up and resign. over it if he felt so strongly, if he felt half as strongly as he did in the campaign about getting involved in Iran.

Anyway, so far there's no voice of reason in there anywhere, but as we all know, tomorrow could be a tackle day. Who knows? It could suddenly... It's a measure also of the dysfunction in the U.S. political system, and I was really struck and appreciated what Chantal was saying about the contrast

that would be so evident to Americans listening to the Rogan thing about how our politics works, which we sometimes think is pretty polarized and pretty tendentious. But it's nothing compared to what they have down there. And I was listening to this discussion about why more Democrats aren't railing about the fact that America is deep into the billions and billions of dollars spent on a war that never went through Congress for approval. And the thesis that I was listening to was that part of why,

they're not railing about it is that they don't want to cast a vote. The Democrats don't. They would rather be able to say we didn't get asked than to have to say we're against this war. And, you know, again, that's another sign of a dysfunctional system in the United States. And it's why the rest of the world is increasingly doing what I think the Prime Minister talked about in Dallas, which is saying, well, let's kind of work around this problem. and not try to confront it, not pretend that we can bend it to our will.

Okay, we're rapidly running out of time, but we do have some things to get to. So give me a quick answer each on this, you know, Jameson Greer, who's the head sort of U.S. negotiator on the Kuzma stuff, says yesterday that Canada's behind Mexico in the process here, that we haven't moved along as quickly as Mexico has. is that just a negotiating ploy, do you think?

Or is there something we should be concerned about that? Well, everybody who agreed to a deal doesn't know if they have a deal. So, you know, there are certain people might say, well, wouldn't it have been great if we got a deal a while ago, but who knows whether or not that would have been better. Does it matter that we're ahead of Mexico or behind Mexico? I don't think so. I think that at the end of the day,

We're about 220 days away from what I think will be a significant reset of the political dynamic in the United States. That's when the midterm elections are going to happen. I'm pretty convinced that the Democrats are going to win the House of Representatives. There's at least a 50% chance that they'll flip the Senate as well. And both of those houses don't like tariffs. So I don't think that we should rush into an agreement. And I think if Jameson Greer is trying to put a little pressure on us, he's not doing it for us.

He, you know, that's not, he's not making the argument, this would be great for Canada. I think he's making the argument that this would be better for America if we got into a deal with Canada sooner rather than later. Shonto. Well, it wasn't Canada that shut down talks for the fit of a peak over some commercial by a premier. It was the US for one, two, all of Bruce's points.

But three, there, I think. think it also shows there are two things. Yes, it is a pressure point in corporate Canada when you hear that. There is a lot more anguish than we are seeing in public in corporate circles over what is going to happen. And when that line has thrown out, the calculation would be that it puts more pressure on the government of Canada from internally. But the reverse is also true. There is a lot of pressure on the US side in this negotiation. And it can only increase because of the war on Iran. Why?

Because aluminum, for instance. And Mr. Poliev made that point very forcefully. He didn't throw into the mix the Iran issue, but he could have wisely stayed away for all kinds of diplomatic reasons. But the U.S. needs aluminum. A lot of it comes from the Strait of Ormuz, the world supply. it's been tariffing Canadian aluminum

at the time when aluminum is going to become scarce i.e. if the aluminum industry in this country wants to continue to find other markets it certainly will and the U.S. will be left high and dry paying a very high price for aluminum and all of those things have

an effect it would be wrong not to see the economic consequences of the Iran conflict an initiative as not having an impact on the Kuzma negotiations, regardless of this referee that suddenly thinks, oh, this guy is a bit behind on the race to what in any event? Okay. We're going to take our final break because we come back.

We've got a couple of things we want to get to do that right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantel, Bruce, Peter, all here for you. happiness that's such an important element of any person any country and happiness apparently is something we are dropping down the scale on internationally we're looked at as well not having happiness as a quality chantal explain to me why this is important well it is it is interesting more for sociologists, I believe,

than probably for political analysts in the sense that part of this decline were in 25th place. We used to be in the top 10 for those who wonder what we're talking about. But part of the reason for the decline nationally is among the younger generation of respondents who are less happy

and so bringing down those things. numbers. And I think that's important because it says something about how the cost of living issues and the current economic circumstances are hitting younger Canadians harder than their older companions. Why? Because it's harder. You've seen the stuff about summer jobs. University costs a lot. It's hard to find housing that is independent from parents. Go down the list. So those, and I saw some analysis. I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to go there. It also says the prevalence of social media amongst younger Canadians

contributes to the doom and gloom sense that they may feel. I don't think the climate crisis is helping at all, because the longer timeline kind of makes you worry even more about what's happening on climate. But what I found really interesting also is, The press got the criteria for those standings and applied them to Quebec only. And I'll have you know that if Quebec were taken out of Canada, it would be fifth for happiness, which basically means the rest of you are a lot more unhappy than 25th place. We're actually keeping Canada in the 20th percentile as opposed to the 30th.

And why is that? I don't think it's just that that they find that our kids use social media less. They probably do a bit because the social media is very much dominated by English. And that does make a difference.

But it had to do with the sense of community. They found that the place in Canada where people are most likely to trust their neighbors is actually where I live. Me, I think it's all, this happiness relatively stems from the fact. that Quebec has seen, you know, head offices moving out, people leaving over the course of its conversations over the political future of the province. And there is maybe a bit more of a

resilience in a time when bad things are happening. People are worried. Not all singing on my street, but this notion that we will get true with may be more prevalent here because of past experiences then it is in other areas of the country. This is such a good opportunity for Peter in the week when we're talking about Don Cherry as a country for him to kind of connect these dots. Why is Quebec making us less happy and should Don Cherry be in the order of Canada?

Did you want to just pick up on that? We're actually making you more happy. Yes. The proposition. I don't want to pick up on that point. Okay, fine. I think we've done enough on that point. And everybody's joined in this.

week following Chantel's warning to us last Friday. This was an issue in certainly in Quebec of significant proportions, but not only Quebec, but certainly what we saw this week. But Jenna, you know, you crunch numbers, Bruce. Does this happiness stuff make sense to you, the, what we're seeing? It does. It does. In our surveys, one question that I've been asking in the last year or two is just a

statement, you know, one of those you agree or disagree type things. And it's, I'm feeling so much stress, I'm overwhelmed today. And that number is really high across the country, and it's 15 points higher among people who are under 40. And I think it is a combination of if your entire experience as an adult started with, let's say, 9-11, and had the climate crisis and a financial crisis and two Donald Trump terms, you don't know what clear air looks like. You've only known a series of increasingly threatening scenarios that in the aggregate make it harder for you to plan a life that you thought you were going to be able to plan for, make it harder for you to feel that you are going to get on the right side of that

halves and have-nots economic line, which is increasingly visible in our economy and society. Add on top of that, the kind of the fertilizer of unhappiness, which is the role that social media platforms play, and it's so comprehensively documented that that is in effect, and that young people use those platforms more. And yeah, it makes sense to me. the difference is though between countries i think we need to be a little bit careful because sometimes the difference between number one and number 25 is not that material and i remember going over to copenhagen a couple of years ago and the researcher in me would go into coffee shops and say look you're supposedly number one in happiness in the world we thought we were why are you so happy

and they said well come back in the winter we're not that happy And so I understood that it was a little bit relative. Yeah. Yes. That's entirely possible, especially if they did Copenhagen in the summer and they did Canada in the winter, right? Yeah, I'm pretty unhappy with that. Okay.

What has become our new last question, and it's provoked some good stuff, actually. What's on your mind? Chantal. So we're having, as you know, little leadership campaign to determine our next premier. And what happens when we do that is membership numbers come up. So I discovered this week that about 23,000 people will vote for the next

premier. That's how many members the Coalition Avenir Quebec currently holds. And compared to the other Quebec parties, it's pretty much average, except for the Patsquequequeque, that's got 40,000. But it got me thinking, maybe it's me. I've been covering these national leadership votes. with huge numbers, this looks really small. So I crunch some numbers.

They're not easy to find because parties only really tell you when they have a leadership vote. But yes, Quebecers these days, and we have this theory that has been true for most of my life, that Quebecers care more about what happens in the National Assembly than in Parliament and in federal politics. But that is not what the numbers show. When Pierre-Pa-Ran to be leader, 50 some thousand Quebecers signed up to vote in that leadership battle. That's twice and more than twice as many as are signing up to vote for the next Premier.

When Mark Carney ran last year, the Liberal Party ran to 400,000 members. Considering how many members they have in Quebec, easily there were thousands and thousands more Quebecers engaged in federal politics than the federal liberal party than in any of the Quebec parties. And what that tells me is our issues have become so much more global than back when we were discussing Constitution and Quebec's future, that increasingly Quebecers have engaged in national politics more than provincial politics because that is where the climate game is being played, the trade game is being played. It is an interesting development when you look at those numbers.

If you're going to be engaged in politics in Quebec these days, you're more likely to be engaged in federal politics than provincial politics. And that is a shift from 30 years ago when we were covering Meach and Charlotte Down. And then a really interesting shift. Just to clarify, what did you say the overall number was for Quebec parties, running. Okay, so the, on average, except for the Patskhevicoa, 20,000 members. Per party. For the Quebec, for the CEQ in the middle of a leadership campaign has less than well, about 25,000, put it this way, not below 25,000. The Patski Vecuquevique is 40,000.

But every other party is in the 20,000 range. And, and at first there was, analyzed as a decline in political participation. Me, I think that part of it is we've had a shift on the provincial scene too, diversifying from the CAC, Quebec Salidares. It's no longer just federalist sovereignists, which means a lot of people have shifted party over the past decade and a half. And if you've been shifting parties, you're less likely to buy a membership card and feel a lot of attachment to a given party.

because you may, you know, people voted for the Coalition of Neer-Khebeck in the past few elections. If you look at polls now, they're all going to other places, leaving the Coalition Avenir-Khequebec with a very small section of the electorate, but that does not make you a, you know, I'm, PQ, born and bred, or federalism runs through my bones in my veins, so I'm a Quebec liberal. but federally more engagement with non-Khequev leaders. Mark Carney and Pierre Poitiov. Bruce, you got a minute for what's on your mind. Corn or soybeans.

Those are the things that I'm reading about that I'm really interested in because we are within two to three weeks, as I understand it, from pea planting decisions in a lot of red states in the United States. and for those farmers who are trying to decide what to plant, the price of fertilizer is a huge, huge input cost. And if the price of fertilizer does what it feels like it's going to do or is already starting to do because of the conflict in the Middle East, then a lot of farmers are going to go,

I can't make money planting corn, I'm going to plant soybeans. The cascading effect of the Iran conflict on decisions like that in the U.S. economy. I talked about this last week, is really pronounced. And in this area of farming, you could already see the United States saying, we're going to unlock fertilizer from Belarus, just as they say, we're going to unsanction Russian oil, and we're going to maybe allow some Iranian oil to be sold as well.

So it's creating dynamics in the U.S. administration that I don't think we're anticipated and are going to be painful for them. Yeah, no, I'm glad you raised it because the farming issue is a huge one that has come up very quickly as a result of the Iran war. And we're going to see it unfold more, as you say, in these next critical couple of weeks. Okay, that's going to do it for today. Thanks for the conversation, as always, to Chantal, Bruce. Have great weekends. And for those of you in the audience, have a great weekend as well.

I'm Peter Ransbridge. See you Monday. Have a good weekend.