The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Should Someone Walk The Plank for The China Mess?

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Chantal is back from Iceland and along with Bruce its time to put the China story in context.  And, should someone pay the price for it all?  That, plus Pierre Poilievre -- are we now seeing what the opposition leader is really like?

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa, and Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. And Chantelle, as I was telling listeners in the last couple of days, we've had a lot of mail saying, where is she? For those who didn't know. And get her to tell us about Iceland when she comes back. So obviously we've got lots to talk about on this program in terms of politics, but you better give us a briefing, first of all, on what that holiday was like. I highly recommend Iceland if you need to clear your mind

and your lungs at the same time. It's a beautiful place. Whenever I'm around so I can keep people posted for when I go back, there is sunshine. Apparently, weather can happen, but it was my fourth visit. I was up on the highlands on the east side. I had planned to do some cross-country skiing. I'm not good at it.

And climate change made it so that the snow disappeared. There was all ice. So I went out after day one and sat in the cabin in the middle of nowhere by myself in the middle of mountains. And the beautiful scenery, should I add middle of mountains and a beautiful scenery. Should I add that there was a hot tub, my meaning a hole in the ground with hot water to sit in? I have internet, and I have to say that from that great distance, the China interference story was interesting to follow, but it didn't read like the beginning of World War III, put it this way.

So if you ever have time to go somewhere else, there are direct flights. It's not very far. Iceland, you jump over Newfoundland and Groenland, and you're in a great place to be. And forgive me for possibly not being as engaged in the do or die debate over China interference in elections. It doesn't help that I did spend quite a bit of time in my life in Asia. So I am under no delusion that Canada would be better treated by China were our government to be an NDP or conservative. That's basically, at this point, the China approach to democracies that we're witnessing in action in this country.

What do you think, Bruce? Do you think she got a gift from the Icelandic Tourism Board for that wonderful endorsement? I hope so. Free tickets, please. If they're on their game, they're going to ask if they can run that little clip of that. And so they should. It's a great promotion. And what she was describing made me feel like uh like how i feel in scotland a lot like probably how you feel so good for you that you did that and thanks for sharing it okay i want to go now let's uh let's get to business obviously with the hottest

story of the day and i'm i'm anxious to see how you both react to this the announcement from buckingham palace by King Charles III that Prince Edward is now going to be called the Duke of Edinburgh. And I can tell from the shocked look on both of your faces that this was not what you were expecting to start off with. I got a kick out of it, I got to say, when I read that this morning. No, we're not going to talk about that. We are going to talk about the, I don't even know what to call it you know scandals have like nicknames and they usually

end it with gate and i don't know what i don't know what this one is but there's certainly been enough play on it in the last week especially the last couple of weeks ever since the globe first broke the story and the global television has followed up with a number of exclusives of its own. Nobody's looked good on it. Nobody. The Prime Minister hasn't looked good. He looks like he's bobbling the football, so to speak,

as he's been trying to navigate through these waters. The leader of the opposition has made some outrageous statements, at least many people think they were outrageous, and I think his own office thought so too, because he seemed to change course fairly quickly after the initial hits he took on it. And they shouldn't be forgotten. I don't think just because you change course,

suddenly it doesn't matter what you said the day before. I think it does matter. Anyway, aside from all that, what is the crux of this story? What is the issue? If you can boil it down to one thing, what is the issue here? Bruce. Well, I'm not going to accept the premise of your question that there's only one thing, but I will say I think there are two things. And I think that the two things are, is there a problem that we need to do more about

with respect to interference in our election campaigns, whether by malign domestic sources, by foreign sources, not just China? And I think the evidence is we do. And I think the evidence also is that the idea that we can do that all without it being, without the investigation or the discussion of it being in greater public display, I think that's wrong. I think we need to have more transparency about what's going on. We need more regular reporting from whatever body is going to do this kind of work on our behalf. And I think that the government made a miscalculation originally in the way that they designed this process. And they made a miscalculation more recently in the way that they defended their position.

In both cases, the same kind of problem, which is the notion that you can tell people that they should be concerned about this, but you can't tell them very much about what's happening. And that only leads to a level of mistrust and partisanship, which is unhelpful. The second issue, which I think is actually the, it's not the more serious issue, but it's the more politically charged issue, is whether or not the government has lost its ability to manage issues that at an earlier time, perhaps they would have managed more adeptly. This has been more shocking, I think, as an experience for liberal supporters, including elected people, than a lot of other things that have been issues that the government had to manage, in part because it was like a slow rolling train wreck that happened over several days.

And at any point in those several days, reasonable, thoughtful people with agility and political skills could have said, hold on now, we've got to stop doing this. We've got to put down the shovel, to use the other metaphor, stop digging the hole and get on a right path. The fact that that didn't happen, and I'll kind of stop here, is, well, the nicest word, the most gentle word is disconcerting to liberal supporters, I think. And it begs the question of whether or not this is the new standard of political management that they can expect. And if it is, it makes them worried, I think, going into an election, because it's not been

a great week at all for the government. Chantal? If that's the new standard, then I guess they should start looking at those seats across the aisle and try to figure out where they'd like to be sitting in opposition. Because I have to say on mismanagement, and I will answer your question with just one. But before that, I was taken aback when the prime minister announced on Monday this idea of a special independent expert to look into things. Because it was a no-brainer solution that was obvious. If you roll back the tape to our show the last Friday I was on, and I'm not a great political strategist, but it was a no-brainer. If you were going to do that 10 days later and playing catch-up,

the only way to get in front of that parade would have been to come up with a name at the same time, not to give the opposition parties a full week to doubt who that person would be and to give people who might agree to do this task for the government time to think of the many reasons why they might want to say no. So I understand that the House is not sitting next week, and I understand that the liberals feel that they can use the break to kind of complete their catch-up. But I'll come back to what I think is the main issue here. I believe our security services and Elections Canada are doing as much due diligence as they can and should. And I believe that the RCMP is conducting investigations in the way that it should. And I don't think that

any inquiry would want to second guess, absent a number of factors, the way that this file is being handled by the people who are paid to look into issues like that. So by now, to me, it boils down to an issue of political accountability. And the political accountability that is being questioned is that of the prime minister. After a week of evasions in the House of Commons, Philly bustling to keep his chief of staff outside of a committee room, you kind of wonder whether the prime minister and his staff are trying to feed the narrative that they have something that they desperately want to hide. I'm not saying that's the case. How in the world would I know? But that is what it looks like. And it isn't the opposition that has made it look like that.

It's the government itself with the incapacity of the prime minister to answer fairly basic questions about what he knew when and how and what he did about it, all those questions, and I've come to that school, could be answered in the context of a parliamentary committee by the prime minister himself. So if Justin Trudeau wants to put this behind him without having a public inquiry, and I still have doubts as to the merits of the exercise of a public inquiry, let him go sit in a parliamentary he said in the House, that anything he would do would still be doubted by many Canadians, maybe it's time he reconsiders whether he wants to be the prime minister. Whoa. Okay. Bruce. You know, I wanted to pick up on Chantal's point about how much effort is being put into avoiding testimony by the Prime Minister's chief of staff, who we've seen testify in public before and who's extremely adept at it, usually comes very, very well prepared and is a clear speaker. And so, you know, I don't know why they're putting that effort into that. But I also think that by allowing that to be such a point of conversation

for the opposition and allowing it to occupy two or three days, in the end, this issue, like many others, will go the way the others do to some degree. There will be a turning of the news cycle and a lot of people who, even people who follow politics somewhat, will forget about this to some degree. But I think the question of the fitness, the physical fitness, the political fitness of the government apparatus is really the thing that's standing out to me. And related to that, Chantal's point about the prime minister's evasive answers strikes me as one of those things where, yes, there are some times where you get asked questions and the best available political strategy is to dodge the question. I get that. I'm not naive about it. That does happen sometimes. And you can get away with it sometimes. But there are other situations, this is one, where you can't do that. Where if you can't answer the question

because of reasons of national security or whatever, at least you have to explain why you can't answer the question instead of talking about something else, which is what the prime minister has been doing for the last 24, 48 hours when he gets asked certain questions about this. And the presumption in doing that is that people won't stop and comment and notice that. And that's not right. People do in this situation. They want to know more and they're wondering why he isn't answering questions. And it's feeding this alternative narrative, which I don't believe is true, which is that maybe he does have something to hide. And I, you know, I read Andrew Coyne's piece this morning. I think he, I think it was

published this morning, might've been yesterday's, but he, in the piece, he talks about the fact that if you don't have anything to hide, answering questions in this fashion does not give people the opportunity to believe that. It feeds the alternative narrative. be an answer, which is, I can't answer this question for this reason, rather than the latest one, which is, no matter what I say, people won't believe me, which, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but it's a pretty hard statement to land successfully from a political strategy standpoint, if you're the prime minister. And I don't know what all of his MPs and ministers are supposed to do with that. Are they supposed to echo that? Whatever we say, nobody will believe us. So they need to get to someplace better. And they need to get there quickly because this is just a drip, drip, drip.

And, you know, Chantal's right. You know, a parliamentary committee would do it. So would a real interview that deals just with those questions. Yeah. Asking them one after another. And, you know, he's done bad interviews over the years. just with those questions, asking them one after another. And, you know, he's done bad interviews over the years. He's done good interviews over the years.

So I'm not quite sure what the issue is, why they're backing away from it. I'll get to it. I'll get to the chief of staff question in a moment. But I just want to ask something else because another thing that's kind of popped up over the last couple of days you've seen it from a number of people i saw ward alcock the former cesus director on uh on with hannah thibodeau the other day and he was basically saying there's nothing really new here we've known about this for years. And it's been in the public, you know, domain on that as well. And, you know, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. And it's true, it has been sort of out there on different levels. You know, the story has changed a little bit over the years,

but the basic fact that China was interfering, it was not new here or elsewhere. So it does kind of raise the question, and I ask this, I'm not sure I believe it, but I ask it because it's being asked by more and more people these days. Has this story been totally overblown? In the search for a story, Has this one been overblown? Chantal? Well, I'm going to go with anecdotal evidence that there was some of that when I came back from that week off. Sitting in the hot tub. Went back and sitting in a hot tub, reading Twitter and thinking, what are they doing out there where I come from?

And do I want to go back? When I went back to Radio-Canada, someone who, you know, finds interviewees for shows said last week was really, really hard. There was nothing except China because it was the school break in Quebec. And so there was no action. And absent some competing story, and Parliament wasn't sitting. So absent some competing story, of course, this story got a lot more oxygen

than it might have if it had happened on the week at the end of March when President Biden is visiting and on the week when the federal budget is presented. But there was absolutely no competing narrative. At the same time, the government broke the rule that said, don't feed a story if you want it to go away by feeding it every single day with no answers. And then on Monday, feeding it again by giving itself, because that seems to have been the point, giving itself an answer that was a non-answer, as in, wait till we appoint Superman who will tell us what we need to do and what the way forward is. So overblown, probably, but it became bigger and bigger with every passing day because of mishandling by the government.

Bruce? I agree with much of that. I'm a little bit different on one point. So I did watch that Ward Elcock interview, who's a former CSIS director, and I was glad that he gave it and was talking on the record and was adding some expert voice to the conversation. I think that his interview was characterized as though he was saying, there's nothing to be concerned about. And I don't think that's exactly what he was saying. And if it was, I don't agree with him. I think that there is something to be concerned about with respect to the trust levels that people have seen shaken in how our elections work. And my friend David Coletto put out a poll this morning.

And in the poll, you could look at the numbers and say, well, most people didn't think that our election was compromised. And I look at it and say, well, actually, millions of people aren't sure. And that's an important issue. And I think it's an important issue that we've seen play out in the United States. The creation of the division and the mistrust of how our systems work is a much bigger problem than it has been at any time in my lifetime. So I think it's a big deal. Now, I stopped probably 20 years ago measuring whether a thing was a big deal because the public was preoccupied with it because I watched how disengaged over time people became and how few issues actually became so salient for them. I also don't think it matters whether

it's affecting voting intention right now. It's the least important part of it, I suppose, but it tends to be the thing that gets the most attention is, did it move the numbers? Is the horse race different because Trudeau mismanaged the questions or because the opposition prosecution of this issue was particularly effective? I don't care. I don't think it matters. We're not having an election tomorrow. And the truth is that the nature of this issue is one where people can be concerned on the right or on is the question of the political management of this. But inside the bubble, it's not overblown because it is actually really important how these parties in the context of a minority government with an election at who knows what time for the incumbent party, which had pretty significant political management skills at

different times on display in the past. To look so disorganized is maybe the best way to put it and to make so many kind of self-inflicted errors. I think it's a big conversation inside the bubble for legitimate reasons. Okay. I also, I just want to say a word because Bruce mentioned that Abacus poll, and I am not here taking shots at the poll itself, but at the fact that, you know, you kind of pick and choose when you see a poll,

whatever suits your narrative thread. And one of the things to pick in there is that one in four conservatives seems to believe that the outcome of the election would have been different. Let me just provide some context here. A sizable number of conservative voters also believe Donald Trump was robbed from an election victory. And an even larger number believe that climate change is not a significant issue. So to say we are going to be measuring the damage to the faith in our democracy by that number would be a gross misrepresentation of reality if you don't put it in the context of the other beliefs that probably are shared by the same group. If you believe Donald Trump's election

was stolen, and you are likely to believe that yours was stolen too, that does not make it true, but that doesn't mean that anything the government could do on that score, I will agree with Justin Trudeau, would convince those people otherwise. So I just wanted to add this because I know those numbers are going to start percolating in the commentary. And taken alone, they are totally meaningless and they end up being part of manipulating reality. Okay, we should also keep in mind that all of the political leaders in Canada, including Pierre Pelliev, have said the outcome of the election was not impacted by this.

So what those people believe or don't believe runs up against that basic hard fact. It is not a hard fact, though. It isn't a hard fact. It wasn't impacted, isn't the same test as did a different party, was a different party declared the winner than should have been. And this is this kind of soft language, which I'm hearing leaders use, which I'm going, you actually don't know how many people were, whose thoughts and mental processes and voting choices ultimately were impacted. And so, yes, in aggregate, you can say it probably didn't change the outcome, but you can't say for sure it didn't change any outcomes,

it didn't change any votes. That's just not a plausible, it's not plausible as a fact. On Chantal's point, if I can just for a minute. I don't know, go ahead. But let me just say the hard fact I was talking about was that Polyev said that in his opinion it wasn't impacted that was a hard fact and whether he says whether it changed that is all i'm saying but whether it changed the vote or not in the given writing i think there is a fairly solid

consensus that it did not change the total outcome of the election if you could do that and just 12 writings because that is what we're talking about, then the anti-abortion movement, which has representation in a lot more ridings, will have a government that has for years forbidden abortion except under dire circumstances. There is political reality here. It's not just speculation about whose mind was changed. It is a strategy that was applied to the writings that have a large Chinese community that at best a dozen writings. Yeah, I don't, I'm not making the case that the election was broken or stolen. I'm making the case, I guess, that if we, if we lean on or lean into this idea that it wasn't, does it maybe minimize

the fact that this phenomena is growing and we need to be more vigilant about it as opposed to, let's put it away because nothing bad in the end really, you know, amounted to a grave transgression? I think the problem with the process that had been in place is that it would only be able to tell you if an election was broken after it was broken. And that seems like a pretty bad way to deal with something like this. You want to be able to apprehend something in advance of it becoming a big problem. But I just wanted to add one other thing on the polls, which is Chantel's right that there's a significant number, about 20% of conservative voters who believe Donald Trump had his election stolen and also that humans weren't ever on the moon and

that sort of thing. The number in the poll of conservative voters who think that this election might have been compromised against their interests is an increment higher than that. It's not double, but it's not the same number. And so all I'm doing is sort of saying, I think that the growth of this phenomena, we have to be a little bit careful about. And the last point is that the same number of liberal voters believe there should be a public inquiry as conservative voters who believe that. Now, that's not because people love public inquiries. They do understand that they don't always lead to perfect answers. They can cost money. They can take too long. But it does remind me that this isn't, for many people, a particularly partisan issue right now. It's just a question about the state of the world

and what we need to know about how our democracy is impacted. All right. I got to take a break. But if people want answers, they would not want a public inquiry because that answer might come after the election. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. Everybody's finished their last points? Or is there the four for Chantel? Do sell something then, Pete, if that's what you got.

Do what you need to do. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday edition. Good talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform,

or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Okay, I wanted to talk about this chief of staff issue because I think it's important, and we've all been around long enough to know these chiefs of staff change every once in a while in some offices. Katie Telford is the chief of staff for Justin Trudeau, and she's been in a senior position for Justin Trudeau since he was elected in 2015. And before that, I guess she was in the OLO, the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, before that too.

And she has her fans, she has her detractors. That's normal. It comes with the job. It comes with the territory. But when you go track back through history, not many prime ministers or presidents, for that matter, you just saw a change in Biden's office, there's a turnover in that matter. You just saw a change in Biden's office.

There's a turnover in that role, and sometimes it comes along because of a crisis. Other times it comes along just because they want a kind of fresh tone inside the office. That hasn't happened here at all in the seven or eight years that Trudeau's been in office with Katie Telford I mean there was the Jerry Butts uh time as well and and he ended up leaving um but you know we saw with Mulrooney we saw with Pierre Trudeau we saw with I think Jean Chrétien we saw numbers of chiefs of staff coming in and out, and the same with Harper. Is there, well, I don't know.

What do you think of this thing? Is it time for a change in that office? I mean, we talk in tones of, well, you know, they really had management problems, handling issues. And, you know, at some point this tracks to the chief of staff, right? Whether it's her or his fault or not, that's who takes the blame. Is there an issue in the senior staff around the prime minister of Canada? Who wants to take a run at that first? I think so.

But I also think it's too late to change chief of staff in the cycle. Why do I say that? Well, why do I think there is a problem? Because we have, since we came back from the New Year, spent an incredible amount of time talking about mismanaged issues that stem from the PMO. It actually dates back. I mean, the fiasco around the gun control legislation, the needless fiasco was one of those. But also the way that the appointment of a special advisor on Islamophobia was handled with what appeared like an absence of due diligence. And if you're not prepared for a storm, then you're not going to do well in a storm is another case in point. I am forever reminded over the past few days

that this is a government that has had both the challenge, but also the opportunity of focusing its energy on one big file over its previous two terms. In the first term, Donald Trump managing the relationship and the renegotiation of NAFTA, which ended up being a litmus test of its competence, as opposed to what they did or didn't do on electoral reform, go down the list. And then in the second term, the pandemic, which overshadowed anything else on the good or bad side. At this point, they don't have that kind of issue to focus on and say, well, I know that they devote a lot of energy to the Ukraine file.

But on a domestic front, this isn't top of mind for Canadians. And we'll see what the budget brings. But they are better at the big stuff, the healthcare accord, for instance, than they are at actually governing. Why I think it's too late? Well, for one, it's clear that Justin Trudeau's comfort zone includes Katie Telford. And I'm not sure you can wean him from this so late in his tenure. But I also believe the federal government, this government's capacity and this prime minister to attract top talent is not what it used to be. And that's normal because anyone who has a great career going is going to pause and think, do I really want to go to this place where it will take me a while to figure out where the washrooms are and the closets and what's in them for what may be six months, eight months, a year? of the longstanding chief of staffs being replaced towards the end of the cycle usually

have been a symptom of end of cycle rather than a way to give a second wind to the government. So if Justin Trudeau is going to make those changes, and he may have to, I'm not excluding that someone is going to have to walk the plank over this China story. You can only surmise from all this Philly bustering to keep Katie Telford out of a committee that she either cannot give answers that would not embarrass her boss or answers that would not embarrass her out of a job. It's speculation, but that speculation is fed by this desperate attempt to keep her from testifying. So, yes, there probably should have been a change, probably after the last election. It didn't happen, and I don't think that it would be easy to make such a transition this late in the game.

You know, I found one term you used there talking about Justin Trudeau revealing Chantal late in his tenure. Well, it is late by historical standards. It is late in his tenure. No incumbent has ever in recent history won a fourth consecutive term didn't happen right perhaps he thinks it's the first half he's just hitting that i suspect that's not the case okay well we'll remember that i'm going to write that on the blackboard here and keep that one in mind late in his tenure but i'm not the one who predicted he would be gone by the end of 2022 that would

come back well you open that door i'm going to enter it i thought we said you got a good memory should yeah you know if he wants to protect his legacy he should go before the end of 2021. That's not what you guys said. Sorry. There is thank you. Bruce, on the Chief of Staff issue. I think Kate Telford is an extraordinarily smart and talented person. I think that

she's done quite a good job with the, especially in the context, and Sean, tell tell me this point I think it's a really important one is that every chief of staff is only as good as the understanding of what it is that their boss wants and she has been for him given's no small feat. And so I think that criticisms naturally gravitate towards somebody in that job over a period of time. It's just that is like sand running out of an hourglass. It's very predictable how that goes. And sometimes it's fair and

sometimes it's not fair. And at the end of the the day if you're in those jobs you kind of understand that that comes with the territory and you develop a bit of a thick skin wherever she has had to or had the opportunity uh to uh represent herself and represent the government publicly i think she's done quite a you know an effective job of that on the we scandal in particular i think it is the one that comes to mind for me. So, but all of that having been said, I'm a fan of Formula One racing. I don't know if you are, but I was before even the Netflix series. And one of the things I'm going to use a metaphor that I always thought was interesting about watching that sport is that the faster that cars go, the more quickly their tires degrade. And the smartest strategists in that racing formula sometimes are the ones who figure out not to lose the grip on their tires by overcharging too much

through the course of the race. And Chantal made allusion to the Trump problem and the pandemic as being huge energy sucks for the government, which I think absolutely is true. In addition to that, this is a government that came to office and declared that it had some of the most enormous ambitions that you could ever have and mandate letters that run pages long of details that ministers are expected to execute on. So Katie Telford, in my view, needs to be measured a little bit in the context of what kind of, not just what kind of person she was serving and whether she did what he wanted her to do. I don't mean to put that in the past tense, whether she is doing what he wants her to do, but also in the context of this is a government that, you know, it's back

to the car metaphor. It's been running hard and fast to deal with problems unexpected, like the pandemic and Trump, and also to execute on a very deep and complicated, in many cases, agenda, plus to manage a series of three opposition leaders and the combustible nature of conservative populism these days. It's been a lot. I also, final point for me, is I agree with Chantal that if he was, or if they were going to agree to make a change, maybe the time for that was a little bit earlier because I do think these are not insignificant changes in terms of the impact on the way things work. They're hard to manage. Okay. The other thing I wanted to touch on that

is related to this story is the performance of Pierre Polyev. We've talked about this a couple of times this week. Chantel's first run at it on this program. You know, I mentioned last week that after all the talk about and the complaints about not doing media situations, scrums, news conferences, that he was starting to do them, but he didn't look very good on them. And that started last week, and then it followed up again this week. And perhaps that was the whole reason why he wasn't doing them in the first place,

because he gets carried away with the rhetoric, sometimes to his real disadvantage in saying things that are later condemned by a lot of different people. And he gave ammunition to the Liberals, at least for a while this week, by some of those things he said. So are we seeing, are we getting closer now? I mean, the question has always been, who's the real Pierre Polyev? Are we now starting to see that as a result of the fact that he's, you know,

he's going before the media more often? Chantal? Well, now we know why his team was willing to put money on the table to avoid the final debate in the leadership campaign. This is a political leader, and I don't think I've covered an official opposition leader. And I did cover Stockwell Day, Stephen Harper, Preston Manning, to name some fairly strong characters. I've never covered one that was as prickly and as bad at playing defense or accounting for himself and for his own party. Every news conference, I've been fascinated by his news conferences because they, in a number of instances over the past few weeks, they have tended to happen on the same day minister is an ace at the news conference in the sense that he does not make you come away thinking less of him than when you started watching.

And that is part of the trick that you do a news conference to explain your point and to account for yourself, not just to accuse others. Mr. Poiliev seems to only know one thing, and it is to point fingers at others. Now, that to me begs a much larger question, and I know I'm not the only one who has been watching, and it's not liberals, conservatives. How does someone in that kind of register of j'accuse and that finger pointing goes to anyone who is asking a question that would question or would ask the leader of the Conservative Party to account for his own party or his own policies? How does someone like that get through a 40-day campaign you are forever going to be given the opportunity to scorn at your opponents without having to speak for your own policies and getting some pushback to see if your tires have some air in them. The other question I asked myself watching this is, would the Conservative Party consider trying to buy itself out of leaders' debates? Because in a leaders' debate, Mr. Poiliev is not going to be in question period in the

role of lead accuser of the government. He will be taking a lot of fire. And at this point, I see on his part very little talent to deflect those shots or to turn them to his advantage. What I watched this week, the how do you or are you going to do anything about the three MPs who went and had lunch with an extreme right politician? And the answer being, no, I've answered the question. And why don't you ask Justin Trudeau how many times he dressed up or blackfaced himself over the years? Well, we've had two elections to cast judgment on the Prime Minister on this. It's not an answer. So, interesting, probably a good idea to do those

news conferences. Why? Because there is a chance that Mr. Poitier will fix his own mistakes. But if he's auditioning for the role of leader of the opposition, as he is, he will get that role. You know, you say that he can't get away with that over 40 days of an election campaign. You may be right. But we all remember what happened in 2016 in the U.S. Trump got away with it for a lot longer than 40 days. And the media went into a lot of self-criticism after that campaign saying, you know, we should have pursued this guy more. We didn't ask the right questions. We let him get away with,

you know, outrageous statements here, there, and wherever. So we have the proof that it can happen. And for those who say Polyev's playing by the Trump playbook, maybe he thinks he can get away with it again. So at the end of the day, the onus is going to be as much on the reporters who are covering the story as it is on the leader who will or will not answer questions. Except that leaders debates, right? You can't blame the reporters

or play the reporters when you're doing a leaders debate for one. For two, if we're going to say it happened in the US so it can happen here, well, it's also happening in the US that women are being stopped from getting abortions. I'm not sure a single politician in office would survive that in Canada. So, yes, it did happen, possibly because it happened. It left marks on people's psyche, but I can safely tell you that, at least on the French side of this,

there is no way that Pierre Poilievre can score with that style. It's just too, I'm not sure what the word would be, but it's too toxic for the kind of politics that will be tolerated here. And we have serious, hard debates in this province. But on facts, not on saying you're from Radio-Canada and that disqualifies you from asking a leader a question. That's not going to be happening very often. All right. Bruce wants in on this and he will get in on this, but we got

to take our final break. Here it is right now. And we're back for the final word on our good talk panel with Chantal and Bruce for this Friday. Thank you for joining us, as always. All right, Bruce, you wanted in on this issue of politics. Yeah, I think that prickly Pierre is not a great look. It's not a great posture for him if he wants to win an election. I think that it does work in some scenarios to remind the angriest part of his base that he's as angry as they are. And they need that constant reminder because their eyes wander over towards the People's Party. I get that math and I

don't really admire him for playing to it, but I understand the logic of staying in touch with the sentiments of the people who are the most rabidly anti-Trudeau, anti-liberal, anti-gatekeeper, anti-norms, what have you. But I think that Chantal's point for me is really important. When she talks about what do people look for in a leader who they want to be prime minister? And yes, sometimes I guess it's just they're so mad with the incumbents or they're so tired that they look at the change on offer and maybe they don't like it. They kind of half close their eyes and they go with it. That does happen sometimes. It doesn't happen that often, though. And the thing that sometimes is missing from an opposition politician's portrayal of who they are and what they represent is optimism, is a sense of hope, a sense of we that to some people, who's the standard that they're setting for, was it credible, is pretty low because they're unhappy with Trudeau and they're conservative supporters and they like his talk about gatekeeping and more freedom and that sort of thing. But get closer to an election and he's pitching to a bigger audience and their expectation

of a real natural sense of optimism, a real natural sense of we can come together, which is not a thing that he generally does very well. I don't think he likes to do that. I don't think it's his natural kind of temperament. I think if he doesn't connect with people on that level, he's going to struggle. He's going to find that he's hit some sort of a top line ceiling and that his negatives are going to continue to grow. Last thing I'll say is I think he believes that he's so fluent as a political communicator that none of this matters that the rules that bind other politicians to the ground he can avoid having to live by those rules he's so able to fashion a phrase and you can almost

see the way that he approaches a press conference even in in his prickly Pierre mode, is that he kind of likes the character that he's portraying. He feels like if he can intimidate or bully or castigate a reporter, it feels good to him. And I think he's grown up in a political context, and really that's all he's done for his adult life in which that was rewarded. That was considered to be what you should be trying to do. But I don't I think that the risk for him and his party is that it won't wear well when more people start paying attention and the choice that's about to be made has more significant consequences. I find it interesting that you make that argument that he's like, he's comfortable in his skin when you watch him doing that. Cause I,

I must say this week for the first time this week and last week, I was getting at times the opposite feeling that he's scrambling, that he, that he doesn't he's not comfortable with the direction he's having to go in to bat those questions off of the you know chantal's point about the you know the bringing up of the the blackface thing from you know decades ago as his his response to the three MPs, he looked desperate on that. Like he didn't look like a guy who was comfortable with the direction he was having to go to try and get away from the question.

So I don't know. You may be right. I mean, listen, we've all said and we've said it for years that he is a skilled guy on the communications level. It's just in this last little while, he hasn't looked so skilled. I feel like that. He also has to. Go ahead.

One of you go, Bruce. Lashing out, I think lashing out is, you know, it's a good example because that's what he did. And so you could look at it and say, well, it looked more philately than structured. And that's true. But the lashing out has been his modus operandi as a politician for all of his political life. And so when I say I think he's comfortable with that character, I don't mean to suggest that it looks comfortable to everybody else. It's his go-to when he's in a situation that he has to manage

because it's what, you know, he's gone from being a backbench MP to living in Stornoway, basically being this guy. All right. Chantal, you get the last word. You got a minute there. Well, for one, he doesn't look prime ministerial, if you were looking for the word of what he doesn't look like when he does that. But for two, I'm in your school. He also doesn't look in control. He looks like he can't do this properly.

And lesson one in broadcasting, as you know well, is that if you look comfortable in what you're doing, people are going to feel comfortable watching you do it. But if you look tense, uncomfortable, defensive, people are going to feel that discomfort. They're going to be uncomfortable with you. And I think by and large, he leaves people who are not his partisan and his fans feeling uncomfortable and doubtful about him. Well, it continues to set the stage for what's going to be an epic battle, unlike anything

we've seen. If it's these two guys in the election campaign, plus the other leaders, of course, it is going to be something unlike anything we've seen in many a year. And the stage continues to be set. It seems like every week there's yet another platform put on that stage for the leaders to go at each other on. Okay, we're going to leave it at that for this week. We didn't get anywhere near the other issues we were going to talk about. I guess an hour isn't long enough.

We'll just have to go for longer. We'll get carried away. It's that new relaxed Chantelle Hebert look. And I got to say, you do look relaxed. So good for you that you had a bit of a break. But we're glad you're back. I know everybody else is glad you're back as well. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, Chantel. We'll talk to you both again, obviously, in seven days. Meanwhile, the bridge returns after a nice weekend off. We all hope you enjoy yours.

We'll talk to you again on Monday.