The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The Budget Fallout from Economics to Leadership

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Lots to talk about this week and much of it connected to the fallout from the new budget. With some Liberals calling for a move to the centre did the budget simply go further left? Is Pierre Poilievre starting to answer questions about just what he would do if he got into government? And what's Dominic LeBlanc really doing? Bruce and Chantal have the answers.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Ransbridge here. Welcome to Friday. Welcome to Good Talk. Sean Talley Bears in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. You know, for most of the, at least the last year, there have been a lot of liberals kind of fleeing the party, saying the party's moved too far to the left. I've got to pull it back. I've got to get back to the center. So the brain trust goes, well, okay, there's a budget coming up.

Let's see what we can do to make everybody happy. So what do they do? They go after the super rich. I don't know. It sounds kind of like the kind of thing that the left might do. So what do they do? They go after the super rich. I don't know. It sounds kind of like the kind of thing that the left might do. So I'm not sure. What do we make here in the couple of days after the budget?

It's always, you know, Chantel's always advised us for years now, you've got to be careful. There's always things buried in the budget nobody notices at the beginning, and it takes a while sometimes to really come to grips with the impact it might have. But when you look at just that basic fact and the headlines that come out of the budget, most of which, not all of which, but most of which have dealt with this capital gains issue and the appearance that they're attacking the super rich,

what do you make of it? How does it change or not change the kind of landscape we're looking at right now? Chantal. I think the liberals liked the headlines the day after headlines on the taxing the super rich better than the headlines that followed in some of the analysis because those, you're right, those early headlines were all about taxing the super rich better than the headlines that followed in some of the analysis, because those, you're right, those early headlines were all about taxing the super rich. And I don't think you can actually lose a political battle in this country. It's not a left-right thing as much as a class thing.

Most people in this economic environment do not have a lot of sympathy for the super rich or the notion that those who own second properties or etc. actually pay a lot less tax on the revenue they get from it and capital gains than you and me get back once we've paid income tax on our normal wages. So that's day one. I think the headlines that worried them more over the course of the next few days were the analysis that said this might catch a lot of middle class earners for all kinds of reasons, including obviously people like doctors or lawyers who have corporations. I'm not sure you would qualify as middle class when you are in the range of a doctor or a specialist's salary, but still you're talking actual individuals, not some blob whose face you don't know. The good news for them, I think, on this front, I'm not sure it's going to flip the needle in their favor, but I don't think Pierre Poilievre is going to pick a big

fight with them on this issue. Because while you do see stories about people who are counting on selling a rental building, that was their retirement, and now they're going to be paying a lot more tax on the money they were counting on for their retirement. It's going to be really easy to find people who are going to be selling cottages and making a million-dollar profit

and complaining that they're paying more taxes on that million-dollar profit, and most Canadians are not at all in that ballgame and will feel very little sympathy. So Pierre Poilievre's positioning is he's fighting for the small guy. And fighting against this change does not necessarily go in that direction. It's been interesting to watch the critics that have emerged. Former Finance Minister Bill Morneau hates it, and has been going around saying how terrible it is. My good friend Andrew Coyne has gone from, I'm not sure that this is not a terrible idea, to

it's good policy. And that tells me that there is still a fighting chance for this announcement to actually work for the liberals. As for the liberals who are fleeing the party, those that want more restraint, clearly this budget was not tailored to them. It's almost the opposite. You think we're going to go back closer to the center? Well, no, we're not. But in this, and it could be a bad plan, I think the liberals are thinking, these are people who say we need a growth agenda, a serious plan on productivity. The assumption by the liberals is, fine, that's probably not what we're offering.

But let's see if Pierre Poilier manages to please them. And then we'll see who's doing what. Okay, a couple of things before I bring Bruce in on this. I did watch Andrew's flip on this. I don't think, and having known Andrew for, as we have had for 20 more years, I don't think I can ever recall him doing a flip-flop like that, certainly within the space of time he had to do it in.

He should seriously consider the Olympics. I can see him in the gymnastics role there. But it is interesting because it does show that when you give, on the day of the budget, you've got so much stuff happening, right? That you're basically looking at, you know, instant look, and we are always asked to, you know, it's like leaders debate, who won the leaders debate, says Mansbridge, five minutes after the leaders debate is over. And while you're writing a column about who's won the leaders debate, it is a sign of intelligence to take the time to question one's own choices or instincts. And if finding that they were not necessarily where you land two days later to tell people that rather than pretend that you're moving on.

Let's say this with all the affection that we have for Andrew, but the liberals were probably more frightened by Andrew's endorsement than anything else that happened to them this week. He did say it was bad politics. He believed there was good policy and bad politics. So there was something. And I agree with him that it could be bad politics, but no one is going to fight them on this in the House of Commons, I don't think. Well, early indications certainly appear that Polyev is not going to, because he was kind of, he wasn't silent, but he wasn't his aggressive self that he often shows on other issues.

Okay. By the way, I only asked that question on one debate. I learned my lesson on that. And the many that followed, I didn't ask who won five minutes after. We all said Paul Martin and everyone else said Stephen Harper. And five days later, the polls showed that the winner was Paul Martin. I think Alan Gregg will remind the world of this forever. Yep. Okay, Bruce has been very patient here.

First of all, before he starts talking, it was fake news. It was a lie. It was my incompetence that placed him in Ottawa. My heart is in Ottawa. Your heart's in Ottawa, but clearly we can see where you are if you're watching us on YouTube. Bruce is in Scotland. But plugged in.

So what do you make of this? Where's your head on this? Well, you know, I think it's too early to know really what the outcome is going to be. And I think it's, you know, it kind of plays against the desire of the political community to kind of come to a quick conclusion about this. But a few things that seem likely to me, one is that it will turn out to be seen as good strategy to talk about your budget measures, not just on the budget day, but in the days leading up. I think it worked for the Liberals to kind of rally themselves around a set of ideas that they thought they really wanted to land with people

and that people would find appealing. It did help them, obviously, because it took some of the focus away from other things that otherwise would have been in focus, such as the foreign interference inquiry. So they were on their front step. They had a strategy. They had a message. They were united.

And they picked some targets demographically. And they talked about those targets a lot, young people in particular. Now, whether or not people will have absorbed all of that, and whether absorbing it then turns into, boy, I like this stuff so much that it's going to change the way I think about the next election. I think those are kind of doubtful at this point. In part, I say that because if you're really concerned about housing, but you really don't know that you like Justin Trudeau anymore, you can hear enough about housing from the other guys. So I think it remains to be seen. And I also think that there was a lot of stuff. It wasn't just one or two major themes. There were a lot of things that the Liberals put out. And I'm not saying I'm not a policy expert enough to say whether they were good or bad. It seems to me there's a lot of good policy in there but can people really absorb that much stuff and

that it would cause a a shift in the trajectory of public opinion which is what the prime minister needed to have happen in this budget i guess we'll see i guess i have a little bit of a doubt about that i guess part of the early thumb yeah you. You wanted to say something else? Yeah, I wanted to talk about the difference between the substance of the budget and the perception of what the budget is, is a lesson that the Liberals learned early on with the small business tax measures years ago. They thought that they had measures that were reasonable, that if you explain them to people, that it would be popular public policy. Just as when they say 86% of Canadians support

a wealth tax. If you look at public opinion a certain way, in other words, if you look at it for ways to kind of reassure you that the thing you want to do is going to be supported, you could be missing the other side of the equation. What happens if people criticize it? What happens if they criticize it in a certain way? I know from my years in polling that if I also ask people if they wanted a tax system that rewarded entrepreneurship, probably get 86% saying that too. So the debate about the budget entrepreneurship measures, I think the liberals right now want it to be about the substance in the sense they're on their back foot a little bit saying it's not as bad as people are saying. It won't hurt as many people as are suggesting will be hurt. That's never a good thing.

Whether or not the Conservatives litigate it, I think is an interesting question. But in the community, I think there has been developing a bit of a perception that Trudeau is more of tax and spend, and he's willing to tax entrepreneurship in order to fund things that he wants to spend money on for his electoral prospects. If that becomes the settled opinion about this budget, it will have been a failure. I'm not saying it will, but I'm saying that's the debate that I'm watching right now in terms of how this is going to play out. Part of the early kind of thumbs down from analysts, I'm wondering how much of that was, you know, was prompted by things certain people said. I mean, Chantal mentioned Bill Morneau, the former finance minister. I think some people discount some of his stuff because they see it as personal

against Trudeau and the government that he left. But when David Dodge, who is a pretty acknowledged guy about the economy and finances, former governor of the Bank of Canada, wasn't he deputy minister of finance at one point too? He was deputy of finance, yeah. He was Paul Martin's during the years when Paul Martin was balancing the books. Right. So he comes out a couple of days before,

but based on all the things that have been leaked already or strategically placed in front of the people of Canada by the government, he comes out and said, this is the worst budget from what I've seen since Alan McEachins in 1981, November 81. That was bad. I mean, I'm old enough to remember that. I was sitting there watching it unveiled in the House of Commons and doing the commentary, and it was brutal. It was like a brutal budget. And they had to, you know, come up with a new budget about a couple of months later.

But how much of those early perceptions are guided by something like that? Why people figure, well, if David Dodge doesn't like it, it's probably pretty bad. Okay, well, let me, I like David Dodge. And I've had conversations with him over the years. But most people do not have a clue who David Dodge is and don't frankly care what he's got to say on this. I also believe that he overshot in the sense that to say this, to condemn a budget that no one has read yet, is overshooting the target. In a way, the budget could not be as bad as what he said the day before because he put the bar so far down for how bad it was going to be that to be told that Chrystia Freeland, yes, by raising taxes, had managed to keep the deficit where she had said it would land last fall was almost a contradiction from this dire prediction. I listened to the Dodge interview, and I too remember the McEachin budget. This budget, by the way, will not get rewritten in six months, or at least not by this government.

So I think wisdom would have suggested that before one castigates a budget, if one wants his critique to have some constructive use, is to wait for the budget before you trash it totally and tell people you can't imagine how bad this is going to be. And I'll just remind people who are listening, and maybe Mr. Dodge, that we've had two senior governments in this country over the past month, Quebec and Ontario, neither of them liberal, who have produced budgets that showed that their fall predictions on where the deficit in their provinces would land were way off the mark. And those recent budgets came with deficits way higher than anything that had been told to voters six months ago, with no real measures to actually bring them down. So on that score, I think Chrystia Freeland politically did really well to manage to find numbers that land her on the right side of her own forecast. Yeah, I agree with that. I think especially the David Dodge piece, both his opinions are well respected within the community of people who know him and know finance ministers and economic policy, but not with the broader public. I don't think they'll

make a difference. I also think she easily beat the expectations that he set for her budget. And I don't say that in faint praise. I think given what she was asked to do by the prime minister in this budget, she did a pretty good job. The question is, for me, will that political bet pay off? And I do think that when you guys started talking about this, you know, tax the ultra rich, if it is the lasting impression of this budget, that the liberals decided to tax the ultra rich, they probably will have a win on their hands with this budget, whether it manifests as a change in the political trajectory. That's a separate issue. I think what they need to be concerned about now is if it doesn't sound like it's just the ultra rich that are going to get

hurt by this. And Chantal alluded to this. That perception takes hold. And if you're always in the position of saying, no, no, no, it's only 66 percent of the amount over 250, then you're losing. Because what you're doing is trying to trying to convince people that the thing that they think you probably would do, which is tax them more, they're not doing as much of or as much of right now. And that's just a bad frame. So I don't know how that's going to go. But the David Dodge comments aside, I know this government doesn't necessarily care that much what the business community says about it. But it's not insignificant. The broader business community, when they're talking about whether it's the Venture Capital Association or the Chartered Accountants or the various other groups that speak about different aspects of the economy, if they all tend to criticize, then it won't really need

Pierre Polyev to isolate on that one particular measure in order to give people a sense of it's not necessarily the budget that they were hoping for. Without going in full defense mode in the weeds of it's only 250,000 and you pay 50% on the product, etc. I think we've seen this week that some economic education is in order. A lot of people don't know whether this applies to RRSP. It doesn't to TFSAs. It doesn't go down the list principal residences. Obviously, you would know if that had happened. But still, I think the government, and I see, you know, I've seen in French and English, the media doing an extra effort on this score. But I think the government is going to have to work on that because I know it's playing defense, but if you do not clear up these things, they will not get cleared up on their own. There won't come a wind that takes the clouds away

just because you think there should be. So I think they will need to do more education. That's another Hall of Fame metaphor. Can we just put that in the Chantel name metaphor list? It's getting kind of crowded in there, though. There won't be a wind that takes the clouds away. We'll have to sort of... Right. Those myths go un-mythed themselves. I like it. We'll have to categorize it by decades or something, because it is getting a little full. Oh, you're going to miss me when I am. You know, when I started writing in English, I could do this stuff in French with images.

And I didn't want to write in English because I didn't think I could. And I only decided to continue writing in English when I discovered that I could do these very weird things once in a while. And they still came to me in the other language. You know, the first time Chantal said to me, you're going to miss me when I'm gone, it was about 20 years ago. So I don't put a lot of faith in that phrase. Okay, we're going to take a break. I mean, if there's one thing that this week accomplished, at least for a couple of days for the Liberals, was there wasn't a lot of talk about the carbon tax, but that'll be back. You know it'll be back. But it also raised questions about Pierre Polyev, and we're going to try and deal with those when we come back.

And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, which is, of course, good talk. Sean Telly, Bears in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Scotland. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform.

Or as this is Friday, you're watching us on our YouTube channel. And if you are, good to have you with us. All right. One of the things that happens to every opposition leader there were there were reaches a point where the questions start to move away from what do you think of such and such a government move to okay so what would you do and that's increasingly becoming the question uh to pierre pauliev, who has managed on almost every case to be able to

duck it and say, I'll tell you when the time's right. Well, obviously we're getting closer to when the time may be right, but is he having has he got to reconsider this strategy of I mean, he says a bit, but he doesn't say a lot in terms

of what he'd do, whether he would keep all these different programs the Liberals are putting in through the budget and other measures. How's he going to pay for them? What will he do to the capital gains thing, the assumption being that this could be a wedge issue for the Liberals? Is he going to have to start explaining more in these uh infrequent scrums that he does um and the occasional interview he did one this week we should uh we should mention that um in quebec um bruce you start not anytime soon uh i think

that the reality is is if the three of us were advisors to him and he asked us that question. I shouldn't speak for you. You'll speak for yourselves. But I think we probably all would say no, there's no particular urgency for you to offer a complete, fully developed counterpoint to everything that the Liberals do. I think that I watched what he did on the day of the budget, the scrum. Again, I have to say, I think he is quite an effective speaker. He goes through his themes. He doesn't look at notes. He punctuates his themes with a certain amount of energy. I don't find myself agreeing with a lot of things that he says, and sometimes he substitutes non-facts for facts. And so I think there would be a reckoning on that kind of thing eventually.

But I think that the standards by which the system holds politicians, including maybe especially opposition politicians, to account isn't what it used to be. There isn't as much stress testing of them. There aren't as many people to do it. There aren't as many outlets that can invest in it. And he doesn't allow for that much exposure to him to allow it to happen. And he's sort of set those parameters even more narrowly than they had been set before, and they were already shrinking. So I think it's, you know, if the question you're asking is, would it be good for politics in Canada if he did? The answer is yes. If the question you're asking is, does he need to for his own political purposes? I think the answer is no, not yet anyway. Chantal?

By my count, and I may have missed some, Mr. Poiliev gave three post-budget interviews, one in English to CP24 and two in French to Radio-Canada Radio and Radio-Canada TV. I think of the three, the one that stands out is the one he did for TV with Patrice Roy because it was less talking points and a bit more of kicking the tires. And he, for once, allowed those tires to get kicked, which was interesting. And he was asked specifically, so what are you going to do about these three liberal initiatives, child care, pharma care, and dental care?

Are you going to keep them or get rid of them? I think on child care, his answer wasn't totally clear, but it sounded like I'm keeping this. He said he would tweak the program so that it would be easier to create spaces, more latitude for the provinces to decide how the money that they get creates places. But I thought his answer on pharmacare and dental care was actually an intelligent answer politically, in the sense that he said, why would I make a decision on programs that do not yet exist? Now, people will say dental care is already offered by the federal government to children. And that's been for a while. Well, he was doing this for a mostly Quebec audience. And in this province, kids under 12 were already covered by a dental care program before the federal

government stepped in. So the next step is supposed to kick off on May 1st. I'm assuming there has been a heavy buy-in from seniors for the program. I'm assuming that if the program does get off the ground and is working, Mr. Plv is not going to go there because he would actually lose significant votes if he went there. And he didn't say he would go there. He just said, I'm not going to, you know, say that I'm going to keep Justin Trudeau's promises. They're not even fulfilled.

As for pharmacare, let's agree that at this point, the pharmacare initiative is basically a press release. It doesn't exist, in fact. It's supposed to be meant to provide contraceptives and diabetes medication for free across the board. But that's what it's supposed to do. If I were the leader of the opposition, I wouldn't say this is what I'm going to do about something that at this point only exists on paper. to voters and not allow the liberals to craft this platform piece by piece by imposing pieces of his agenda on him a year or maybe a year and a half before the election. If I asked you both, what do you know about how the conservatives would govern if they were the government of the day now

or following an election, would you say, I kind of half know what they would do, better than half, less than half? You know, given what he said, and he does appear to be saying a little more, as you cite in the most recent interview, than he said in the past, he's under no obligation to have to say anything until a campaign

when I think there's more of an obligation to have to say something. But how would you answer that question? Do you know more or less than half of the way you think they would govern? The reason why I will answer we don't know is because the Conservatives or the Liberals do not know what the world will be like after the next election. They do not know who will be in the White House. And this will have profound consequences on the agenda of any government in Canada and on the energy that they have to put into their implementing their own agenda. There is no way to know whether we will be in a larger war with Russia than we are now.

Do you want to go down the list? And the one thing I've learned about governments is they come in new with an agenda, but it only takes a matter of weeks before events start to dictate what they need to do. And those two events are too big. And I'll have a third, which was part of the interview that Mr. Poiliev gave. We don't know what the numbers will be on interest rates, for instance, a year and a half from now. We don't know what the numbers will be on higher tax revenues. Chrystia Freeland already benefited from a better economy than

was forecast last fall. That explains in part how she managed to keep the deficit where she expected it to be. And some of the forecasts in the budget that the forecast is based on are actually not on the optimistic side of the private sector forecast. So the federal government of tomorrow, over a year from now, or two years from now, will govern based on realities that we cannot predict. Well, if that's the case, why say anything about what you would do? Just say, hey, trust me, you're going to have to buy a pig and a poke here. But that is what you buy every time, right? Did you really get to vote for the last time in the first-past-the the post system in 2015? Or did you just buy someone telling you that this was going to happen? Yes, you got marijuana. I would not call that the

central policy. Did you see health care improve over those eight years? They're always buying a pig in a poke. Is that the expression or did I just flip it? No, no, it's a pig in a poke. Is that the expression or did I just flip it? No, no, it's a pig in a poke. That's right. You know, we can let the cynicism thing roll on a little bit. There's room for it. You won't have a carbon tax or a rebate to worry about. That's great, right? But here's my answer to your question, Peter. I don't think that, I don't know how to answer the question, how much do we know? But I think that there were, I think Chantel's absolutely right, that conditions closer to the time of the election

will have a material impact on what you would, if you were in Pierre Pauliev's shoes, promise to the Canadian public. And by that, I mean, who are you running against? Are you running against Justin Trudeau and his record? Or are you running against somebody else and what they're promising to do in the future? That's a big variable that we don't know the answer to yet. But we also don't know what the economy is going to be like, what the geopolitical situation is going to be like. We don't know if he's going to stand to benefit significantly in terms of the fiscal side of things, because interest rates have started to come down.

And to Chantal's points, they're more pessimistic estimates in the budget would turn out to be really quite helpful tailwind indicators for him if, in fact, rates do start to tumble. Because we know, I think, enough about the direction that he would go in. We know he wants to be able to describe and act on the idea of a much lower fiscal imbalance. I think it's absolutely clear that he would govern that way. We know that he wants less regulation by government. He wants to shrink the size of government and the involvement of government. All of the specific areas, I don't think they're clear yet, and they probably won't be clear until much later in the game,

but it's a reasonable bet that he would devote a great deal of energy to that. And for some people, that would be welcome, and for other people, that would be terrifying. We can pretty well be sure at this point that he will not have much of a plan on climate change, that his instincts are going to be to do some smoke and mirrors about that, but not to attack it with anywhere near the level of attention that the current government has. Some people will decide that that's a price worth paying to get change. Other people will say,

no, it's a red line. I can't elect a government that doesn't care about that. Beyond that, I don't think we know how he's going to deal with the provinces very well. I don't think that we have real assurance that he won't constantly be toying with some of the more divisive fringe elements of the far right. He hasn't been doing as much of that lately. But if people are worried about the level of division and tension in the country, I don't think that we can be sure yet that he wouldn't be somebody who would make it worse. And for me, that will ultimately probably be one of the ballot questions that he has to pass in the next election. Let me give you an example of how unpredictable life can be in a year or two. We have in this province, the Parti Québécois ahead in the polls. Over the past week, the province has been consumed with Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon,

that's the name of the PQ leader, totally committing to holding a referendum on secession if his party comes to office. That may stop the party from coming to office, but it may not. And you and I know how a government's agenda on Parliament Hill gets transformed by showdowns over this issue. Did anyone expect Stephen Harper, when he became prime minister, to go along with the Quebec nation resolution, knowing where the Reform Party was coming from and everything that had been said about the Quebec nation issue? And yes, that happened. I'm not predicting that Mr. Poilievre will become a green prime minister in the way that Brian Mulroney did. But when Brian Mulroney came to government in 1984, no one imagined that he would start a free trade initiative.

And certainly no one foresaw that he would become the person who remains the greenest prime minister we've had on the environment. So events shape governments. I agree with all of the things that Bruce talked about and the directions that Pierre Poiliev wants to take. But Stephen Harper once had to make a speech to his own members to explain why he was running a significant deficit in the face of the global financial crisis. Certainly Stephen Harper in his worst nightmares before he became prime minister did not imagine himself delivering that speech. Nor did his finance minister, you know, Jim Flaherty. I can remember interviewing him not long before the financial crisis hit

and asking him whether he could ever see a time where his government would go into deficit. And he said, absolutely not. There's not a chance it'll never happen. Six months later, it was like $50 billion or something. Now, mind you, they turned it around fairly quickly on the deficit front. Okay, just before we take it. Well, Peter, there's one other area that I think that it's sort of clear how he would govern, and from my standpoint, unsettling,

is how we play with the rest of the world, what his geopolitical stance would be. There hasn't really been any evidence that he wants to engage with other players around the world on collective issues, or even as has historically or more recent history anyway, been the case with conservative leaders on trade issues. I just don't sense that he likes the idea of being seen as somebody who cares about those things.

And that's a worrying default setting for me anyway, because I think the world is a more complicated, dangerous place. And the risks of us being isolated and losing opportunity from an economic standpoint are more significant, especially if we imagine that Donald Trump might get elected again. Those issues, too, are ones that can change overnight. I remember when Harper was running for prime minister and people started looking at, well, you know, he has no international experience. He's never been anywhere. We've never had a prime minister that I can think of

who might decide I'm not going to go to the United Nations and make a speech but this guy could be that guy don't you think well you never know I mean when you become prime minister it changes a lot of things about the perception of you and about you I mean I as I was saying I I can't remember exactly, but I think it was Harper had only ever been to like Mexico on a holiday or something. And the U.S., I think. And the U.S. But he had no real big international experience. People worried about what the impact that might have.

And then when he became prime minister, suddenly he was all over the world. I'm not really talking about experience, though. I think I'm really talking about does he believe it's politically advantageous or it's in his political DNA or both to say we don't really want to engage that much with the rest of the world. I don't know the answer to that, but it's not fair, yes. I guess all I'm saying is once you've stood in front of that green and black granite at the UN and spoken once, you go, this is all right. I kind of like this. And we can make our case for the country and the world and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I hear your point, and I take it. You know, just before we move on from that question, or no, before we take our break, did anything this week change your impressions or your thoughts about where this lands Justin Trudeau in this continuing discussion about stay or go? Will he do either? Anything happen there? I mean, because Lawrence Martin said.

Yeah, I want to get to that after the break. You need it now. But I think that the prime minister is now throwing everything into the mix of trying to move the needle in the polls. He's going to if it doesn't. I'm guessing there are liberals who believe he should reassess. I'm not sure that he thinks so, but that last window is coming up on him now to decide if he stays or goes.

How quickly? Months? Before July 1st, I think, me, if the prime minister is still the prime minister and the liberal leader after July 1st, I am having serious calendar issues with the notion that the liberals would spend the better part of a pre-election year picking a leader who would then have weeks at best to prepare for a campaign.

Right. Any difference on that, Bruce? No, I think that's right. It's weeks. That's how long this window lasts, maybe to the end of June, maybe even the middle of June. Okay. Taking our last break. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back.

We're into our final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantelle and Bruce are with us. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. Okay. I guess it was about a month ago we kind of floated this issue about somebody who may be sitting in the wings, good friend of the prime minister's, prepared to maybe sit as an interim leader if the prime minister decided to move on,

with hopes and desires to maybe one day be prime minister, elected as prime minister, and that's Dominic LeBlanc, the New Brunswick Liberal with a kind of a historic, legendary name within the Liberal Party. His father, Roméo LeBlanc, was a Governor General, was a Cabinet Minister. Laurie Martin wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail just in the last couple of days, which actually, you know, was kind of similar along the lines, a little more detail and depth in what may be going on behind the scenes.

It prompted Dominic LeBlanc to answer questions of reporters, I guess yesterday, saying, no, it's not happening. I'm here. I'm serving in the cabinet of Justin Trudeau. That's all I'm thinking about. What do we make of that, Chantal? I think we make of that that there are a number of people, including Dominique Leblanc,

who are thinking about the plan B scenario that we alluded to before the break, i.e. having shown everything he has at the polls and having seen no rebound, Justin Trudeau changes his mind and says, I'm going to let someone else lead the party. I think most of the people we are talking about here, Mark Carney, Dominique Leblanc, go down the usual list. Do not assume that the prime minister will leave. But our thinking, if he does, the Liberal Party is not going to give itself a year to choose. It's going to give itself a matter of months.

It should have, in reason, a new leader in place for the end of September at the latest when the House comes back. So if you do nothing because you should do nothing, you will be totally disadvantaged should this happen. Jean Charest could tell you that he expected Brian Mulroney to stay. He believed that. And he didn't organize at all before Brian Mulroney quit. And that may have cost him the leadership. I'm not saying Kim Campbell spent a lot of time organizing, but her name kept surfacing more than Jean Charest's name.

And Campbell got the early endorsements from a bunch of Quebec ministers who later regretted having done that. But she got out of the gate really quickly, and it took him a while to find his bearings. And in the end, he lost the leadership on that. No one wants to be the liberal Jean Chagall if Justin Trudeau quits. So those conversations have been happening. Now, I have seen no evidence that any of the names I've mentioned, starting with Dominique Leblanc, are going out of their way to stab the prime minister in the back. And I found no evidence that this column of this week was driven by some sense that it would put pressure on the Prime Minister to leave. I think the last person who would be pushing Justin Trudeau out the door would be Dominique Leblanc in any event. I suspect that if Mr. Trudeau decided to leave, he would feel better about leaving the party to Dominique Leblanc than to any of the others. Having said that, I know Dominique Leblanc won't be happy that I said that because it may be the kiss of death of a leadership candidate to be the heir apparent of Justin Trudeau. I'll just add one little in brackets.

I do not sense that Chrystia Freeland is organizing. I see others that I've named organizing, but I don't get the impression that Chrystia Freeland is actually organizing. Her name is always on the list, but at some point, it would be interesting to see evidence that she is actually more than just a name on a list that everybody keeps producing. I also do not at this point sense that Justin Trudeau is about to change his mind on leading the party in the next election. On Freeland, I think you're right. I mean, her name was much more firmly on the list a couple of years ago. Not so much now.

And whether that simply indicates that she's just not interested. Excuse me. She is interested in other things at this point. Bruce? Yeah, I think Dominic LeBlanc wanted to make sure that if in the coming weeks there is a quick snap decision to have a leadership followed by a relatively short process that people who are thinking about who they might support are aware that they should think about him too. He put his name in contention through this piece. I don't think he was disappointed that it existed. I think that, you know, what he said about it, I heard a little bit differently from what you described. I heard him

say it's moot because we have a leader and I'm happily expecting to run under that leader, which isn't the same as I would not do it. Or I'm horrified that anybody would make up this ridiculous story about me having dinner and talking about this. That never happened. And of course, we know Lawrence Martinrence martin would not have written that that piece had that dinner not happened and been pretty much as he described it even though lawrence wasn't there obviously or at least i surmise he wasn't no he wasn't there no no no there are you know it was no fake news he was in the kitchen He was in the kitchen. He was in the kitchen cooking. He was here at the door.

Bringing the food to the table and just, how's it going, everybody? No. So back in the Mama Teresa's days in Ottawa, that might have been a little bit true. And there also wasn't this kind of horrified, punitive reaction from the center. And so I think there is, I think Chantal is right. And I don't think the prime minister has decided that at the point at which

his current reflection on the budget and whether it will narrow the gap is over, that it's likely that he will go. But I don't think he'll come to that conclusion until it comes to that point in time where people are looking at him saying, okay, you know, it didn't look like it closed the gap. What are you going to do if that's the case? Now, I could be wrong. We're going to put some survey work in field and I'll know more in a little bit of time. But it does still feel to me that the rest of the people in the cabinet and the caucus are looking at it differently. They're looking at it from the standpoint of

not really believing that he can win an election, not believing that he would necessarily be the best choice to lead the party, which might be different from what six months ago or eight months ago or 12 months ago was the mood. And so when that point comes, June, beginning of July, he may feel like it's only up to him to make that decision. But in my experience, it doesn't usually feel that way in the moment. It feels like then a whole lot of other people have opinions and those opinions are starting to be spoken and they're starting to translate into unpleasant stories every day or two and a sense of tension uh and and that that's not a situation that that he would want um so we'll see how it goes but i didn't think there was anything particularly egregious in what dominant leblanc did i think it's natural for a party at this point in its life cycle in government to have a succession plan

and to allow people some room to think about what they would want to do with the party if they took a run at the leadership. Yeah, I was not suggesting there was anything egregious. No, I know. What I wonder sometimes is whether the fix is in. The fix in the sense that, listen, if there's even a bit of Justin Trudeau who's thinking, it's time for me to move on, he would probably want to ensure that it sort of landed in the lap of somebody he thought stood a chance.

And here's where I ask Chantal a question about Dominic Leblanc, because you have often said to us, quite rightly, that it's easy to say Justin Trudeau should go, but who's going to hold Quebec if he goes? Can Dominic Leblanc from New Brunswick have an impact in Quebec? Here's how I'm going to put it. If I were Pierre Poilievre and I was told Justin Trudeau was going to go and you're going to lose your biggest target

and you're going to have either a choice of Mark Carney or Dominique Leblanc as a foe. I would want Mark Carney if I were Péa Poilievre. Why? Because Mark Carney is an untested politician. Not necessarily, maybe would become, but not necessarily a retail politician. Has very many bright ideas, but zero profile in Quebec, beyond the Montreal Chamber of Commerce and even there. It would be a really hard sell. When you look at Dominique Leblanc, you start with Atlantic Canada, a region where the Liberals need to get their votes back,

and the native son syndrome would kick in big time at the notion that the leader of the Liberal Party is actually from the region. There have not been many from the region who've been in an election fighting for the role of prime minister. Dominique Leblanc happens to have a really friendly relationship and a productive one with almost all the big players in Quebec,

including Premier François Legault and his team. They like him. They would be happy for him to become the Liberal leader, and they would be happy to keep their peace and not tell Quebecers how to vote, because there's a lot of uncertainty in Mr. Legault's office as to our relationship with the Pierre Poiliev Conservatives, especially since Mr. Poiliev has been poaching members from Mr. Legault's team as candidates in Quebec. Move over to Ontario, and I can tell you one other premier who would be delighted to see the Liberal Party led by Dominique Leblanc. And that's someone called Doug Ford. Have you seen many pictures of Mr. Ford side by side with Pierre Poilievre over the past some years? Smoking cigars. So it matters because if Mr. Ford is going to keep many of his

people at home in the next campaign saying, do not go out on that campaign trail for the conservatives. It would be easier for him to say that if he's got someone that he likes as liberal leader that is not called Justin Trudeau. So, yeah, a viable candidate. 30 seconds, Bruce, to wrap it up for us. You know, I think Dominic LeBlanc would be an interesting candidate in the race. I think it's too early to know what kind of direction the party would go in. I think it would be an interesting race to see him alongside Melanie Jolie and François-Philippe Champagne and Mark Carney. I agree with you about Freeland and whether or not it's as likely as it seemed that she would run,

but I think Sean Fraser could get in the race and make it interesting too. A lot of good names, and I hope for the Liberal Party's sake they do have a chance to run for leadership. All right. Good conversation. Touched a lot of bases, as we often do. Look forward to our conversations next week. The Buzz, my newsletter comes out tomorrow morning. You can subscribe at thenationalnewswatch.com.

No charge, just leave your email there. Thanks for watching and listening today. And thanks to Bruce and Chantel. Talk to you again on Monday. Take care, guys. Bye.