The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The Byelection Stakes Couldn't Be Higher

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Monday night, June 24th, is byelection night in the Toronto riding of Toronto-St Paul's. Will the voters there determine the fate of Justin Trudeau. It's the big question, the only question, in the days leading up to the vote. Chantal and Bruce have their analysis in our last full edition Good Talk before the summer hiatus.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. This is our last Good Talk for this season. We're going on our summer hiatus now, back after Labor Day, but there will be a couple of special shows in the middle of the summer. So we won't be leaving you totally alone, but we are going to be gone from the regular Friday landscape for a little while. As always, there's lots to talk about.

I want to start with an excuse. I spent most of yesterday traveling from the rather remote region of the Highlands in northern Scotland back to Canada, and I encountered the normal kind of things you do on a trip like that. Lots of airport delays and cancellations and this, that, and the other. Big crowds in various airports. I don't know. I'm still amazed that you can do a trip like that all in one day. You can go from, you know, some obscure place and cross half the world roughly

and end up at home all on the same day. It's remarkable. But then I'm just such an old guy, you know, steeped in history and know how long it used to take them to go. So, come on, wake up. I can tell that you're enjoying this. Look, our friends in Dornick are really going to like being described as living in an obscure

place. That card is played already. Well, that's not Dornick. We live outside of Dornick. Do you remember your first Atlantic crossing when you could only go on a ship and yeah i did i was on a ship on my first atlantic that's right you were april 1954 let's go back there and talk

about you just missed the titanic by a few weeks i understand that that's right not that i didn't think about it even at uh whatever age I was then, five or six years old, thinking about what it must have been like. Okay, enough. Let's get started. I'm, you know, I don't know how many times the three of us, different times over the last 20, 30, 40 years, have talked about by-elections and we've always sort of concluded, oh, well, we made too much fuss about that. There have been some examples where by-elections, and we always sort of conclude, oh, you know, we made too much fuss about that. There have been some examples where by-elections truly signal a change in the way things are done in Canadian politics, but for the most part, they sort of come and go.

There's one on Monday, and it seems to be either you're saying that if things don't go the liberals' way, Justin Trudeau's finished. If they do go the liberals' way, it's a long-time held liberal seat, about 30 years. Then we sort of move on to the next day and, you know, nothing changes. Are we, well, talk about it. Tell me about the significance of this Monday vote. Toronto St. Paul says the riding in Toronto,

it has all kinds of different reasons to be interesting, the long-time held liberal riding. It's also a riding where there are a lot of Jewish voters, strong Jewish community, and so they'll be impacted by what's been going on since last October 7th and Canada's reaction to it. Overall, this riding, this by-election, how important is it? Chantal. For party morale, it's really important.

Obviously, if the Liberals do badly or if they lose, there will be MPs who are probably at this point wondering whether liberal MPs, whether they want to run again or not, who will come to possibly a decision to not reoffer rather than the alternative. This could include cabinet ministers. I understand from talking, and probably you have the same experience, to people who've been in government, that once you've been in government and in cabinet, you don't really want to become an opposition critic on the other side of the aisle. And that does lead you to consider whether you should run, get elected, and then leave after a year, which is kind of not great, or whether you should just say, I'm not running again.

So that's the first consequence. I understand totally that many liberals believe that if they lose on Monday in that kind of a riding, Justin Trudeau should reconsider his decision to lead the party in the next election. I don't believe there is a process to do that. You hear all kinds of rumors about the Ontario caucus in particular standing up and demanding Trudeau's resignation if that happens. What I found over the years covering the liberals is that most backbenchers who believe that the leader should go tend to be very brave and private, but not so brave out in the open. So I wait to see. There's no process to dispose of Mr. Trudeau.

One way or another, though, for one, if the liberals keep the riding, I don't think I'm going to draw great conclusions about their comeback chances. And the reason for that is that Toronto-St. Paul's is not the typical riding where elections are won or lost in this country. That typical riding is a suburban riding. It doesn't look at all like Toronto-St. Paul's, which is a midtown writing, very middle class, but public transit, it's not where the next election is going to be won or lost. But if the conservatives don't do a lot better, from what people have been hearing on the doorsteps, and this is secondhand, obviously, there has been a subtext of, we are tired of the liberals, we're really tired of Justin Trudeau, but we don't like, or we think your conservative leader is a jerk, or a bit of a jerk. And I think that one way or

another, that is something that Pierre Poiliev would have to take notice of. He would also get a sense from whatever happens in the by-election as to whether there is a real shot at rallying members of the Jewish community behind this party in places like where he was campaigning this week, Mount Royal in Montreal, which is Quebec's riding where the Jewish community is the most heavily represented. So he would see whether that happens. Finally, and all of that being said, I find Mr. Poilievre is on a Quebec tour, as you know, and I'm curious about the fact that he's not spending that last weekend banging on doors in Toronto-St. Paul's instead of going around Quebec in an RV with his family. That tells me, or that suggests to me two things.

One, Mr. Poiliev maybe doesn't really want to win a riding that could precipitate the departure of Justin Trudeau. And two, having lived in the writing for a number of years, maybe Mr. Poiliev is not necessarily the kind of leader who is a huge asset on door knocking in St. Paul's, that he's not the best fit for that type of a writing. Okay, lots of threads to pick up on on that. But first, let me hear where Bruce is. Well, of course, the bad news for me is I had a list of five or six items. And as Chantal went through them, I was like, okay, that one, that one, that one. She's ticked them all off. You know, last week he was complaining that it went to him first, right?

Just another Friday. But anyway, Chantal's obviously got a lot of good thoughts in there. that went to him first, right? Just another Friday, but anyway. Chantel's obviously got a lot of good thoughts in there. I think the things that stand out for me are there's almost no way for Pierre Polyev to lose on Monday in a qualitative sense. If he loses the riding, nobody's going to say, well, how did they lose that riding? The only way, realistically, I think that he could lose is if his party won by so much that

it did force Justin Trudeau to resign or did result in Mr. Trudeau's resignation, because I think it's absolutely clear that the Conservatives and Mr. Polly would rather run against Justin Trudeau than run against whoever would succeed him. And I do think that and you certainly pick this up in conservative circles, that there is an ambivalence. On the one hand, the DNA of party activists is you want to win these contests. You're built to do this. And every ounce of your fiber and energy goes into how can we make this a referendum on our hated opponents and stir up the vote enough. But on the other hand, that calculus of the rest of the political world talking about this really only in one way, which is that will the result be bad enough for the Liberals that Mr. Trudeau will have to go? That's got to be on their minds a little bit. Now, there are some in this town

who believe that the Conservatives are preparing to kind of throw the game, that they would rather lose on balance because they'd rather just try to stay on. I just don't really believe in that kind of, I just don't think parties are really capable of deciding to do that in this situation. But, you know, maybe I'll be proven wrong. Maybe there'll be some evidence that will emerge after the fact and then we'll all sort of go, well, I was Bruce so optimistic about the, you know, the basic DNA of political parties, if that, if optimism is the right word.

One of the things that I think is absolutely clear about this by-election, it's interesting as well, is that it's a bit of a referendum on the budget, and in particular, the capital gains measure. It's a, you know, it's turned out to be quite a topical subject following that budget. I think for two reasons. One is a substance of the measure, and whether or not it will or won't impact people. You know, the government insists that it won't impact very many people, but there are lots of voices in society now who say, well, you know, the government is really kind of described as quite minimalist, the impact. But when we kind of look at it a little bit more broadly and over the longer term, more people will be impacted. And then, of course, there's the public opinion, which is really people saying, I don't know if it impacts me right away, but I kind of don't know if I like the feeling of it or I like the way that it's being argued for by Ms. Freeland and others. And so it's quite an interesting conversation. I don't know that we'll be able to unpack the

results of the by-election and say how much the budget debate and the capital gains debate had an impact, but I think it will be there. too, will be the question about the Middle East and whether the government has done enough to show its support to the Jewish community in the face of rising polls. That, to me, seems like a big number and a big number in an incumbent held riding in a by-election is usually bad news for the incumbent. I don't want to overstate that because we're only a few days away. So we might as well see what people do on Monday. But last but last point for me is if the result is a close liberal win I think that Mr. Trudeau will claim it as a win he'll say a win is a win I don't know that his party will really feel the same way about it but that's between him and his party and I agree with Chantal that I don't see any evidence of people standing by to go to the microphones on Monday night if the Liberals lose on the Liberal side and say, well, it's time for a change. I just don't think that's going to happen.

But I also think it's not looking like a situation where if the Conservatives do well in it, that people will say this is is Pierre Poliev in the ascendancy. I think they will say in that scenario that it's a Liberal Party that's losing gas. And part of that is, you know, Chantal's point about Pierre Poliev is not, he stands to win an election, but he doesn't stand to win the hearts and minds of Canadians and the numbers that one might hope for if you were a Conservative supporter. I know there are a lot of other issues out there, but are we basically suggesting here that a vote for Polyev for the Conservatives on Monday is a vote to dump Trudeau?

Is that what it is? I think that's how we see things. I'm not sure that's how voters see things. Possibly, if I were a member of the Jewish community that had voted liberal in the past and voted conservative on Monday, I would be wanting maybe to send a message to the liberals to be more proactive in the face of anti-Semitism and in defense of Israel's position in the conflict, rather than me, present me with another leader. That 11,000 people that showed up at the advance polls, well, for one advance polls, these past few years have been much better attended than in the past. And we keep saying in general elections, lots of people showed up at the advance polls, so turnout will be higher, and that doesn't really pan out. In fact, it's people who have discovered that it's really easy these days. You don't need an excuse anymore.

You don't need to say, I'm getting operated on voting day to be allowed to vote in advance, so more people are taking advantage of it. We won't know until we see the results. One, if that's a sign of a higher turnout because the country is polarized between the liberals and the conservatives, or whether it is people coming out to dump Trudeau, or whether it is people coming out to say, let's stop all those possibilities could drive someone to want to vote in that particular by-election. The capital gains tax, I understand the point. And this is a writing where there would be, at least in some sections of the writing, the wealthier ones, some interest in the capital gains tax.

But I don't believe the conservatives did what they needed to do to make it a referendum on that issue. And I say that because one, Pierre Poiliev came very late to this Hill, for instance, he would have said that, but he didn't. I think the Liberals' problem with the capital gains tax, I've been thinking about that issue for a while, goes beyond those changes. I think a lot of Canadians who own modest cottages or have modest possibilities at capital gain, didn't realize that they were going to be necessarily taxed on it after 40 years of owning a cabin or whatever. And I think the unease with the measure has a lot to do, well, it has something to do with that realization.

Wait a minute. I mean, the family cottage that I bought for $10,000 in the 50s is now going to be taxed when I sell it, and I've maintained it all that time. But I do not see that the conservatives have wanted to make that an issue. Yeah, yeah. I think that's interesting, your point about the Conservatives not making it an issue, not campaigning on it. I think that's true. I think they've been careful to avoid the trap that the Liberals wanted to set for them, which is to say, you're for the rich

and we're going to make the rich pay. I think that their avoidance, the Conservatives' avoidance of that trap has sometimes made the Liberals a little bit more florid in their language, trying to kind of animate this rich versus everybody else dynamic. But I still think if you're going to try to start a class war, cause I don't think there was one. But if you're going to try to make one happen to serve your political purposes and you're going to do a, make the rich pay and say that they're kind of to blame for all the,

the ills that have, have developed, you can't use a message that's kind of the diet Coke of class war. You can't say it in soft words. You have to do it. If you're going to try and get that NDP vote, you've got to be oranger than orange. You've got to be far out there on that end of the spectrum in order to draw people's attention and make them go, aha, this is the liberal that I want. Now, I happen to think that that calculus, especially in St. Paul's, will be wrong because for everybody that you might find who

might say, I'm going to abandon my attachment to the NDP and think about putting an X for the liberal candidate, you're going to push at least one away who's a kind of a blue-red switch voter. So I think Polyev has done a careful job of not being too present in the conversation about the capital gains tax. When he talks about tax, he talks about the carbon tax and he talks about we'll have a quick task force to look at tax reform. But mostly he wants the conversation to be about Justin Trudeau and the liberals. He wants the by-election and the next federal election to be about Justin Trudeau. And to the point that if there was a general election now, you know, I'd be reasonably sure that the conservative strategy would be to chew up as little of the scenery as possible to keep the volume of their message down so that most of what happens is that people just think about whether they want Justin Trudeau and

the liberals again, because all of the evidence says that that is what, you know, that's the best ballot question really for Pierre Paul. Yeah. Now, two other quick points, if I can, Peter. One is that the convenient thing for voters about a by-election and this idea of sending a message is sending a message that affects one seat of the 338, I guess it is, in the House of Commons really doesn't have any material consequences on the policy direction of the country. It is a very convenient tool for voters to use if they want to send a message. And so that people are trying to figure out,

well, what is going to happen on Monday, are really asking themselves, are there a lot of voters out there who say, I want to send that message of reassurance to the liberals that I'm still with them, that I believe in what they're doing, that I don't like the way their critics are attacking them, that I want Justin Trudeau to stay, that I feel really great about the agenda. I don't like the way their critics are attacking them, that I want Justin Trudeau

to stay, that I feel really great about the agenda. I don't see evidence in the polling that that is a thing. I do think Leslie Church has run a pretty ambitious and effective campaign locally, but we'll see whether or not she's able to find those voters who have those feelings and get them out. But to Chantal's point about the turnout, I think that's right. I think that it's become so apparent that advanced polls are convenient, that more people are doing it. So we should reset our expectations about those advanced poll turnouts. But in a by-election, an advanced poll might just be a more convenient way to do the thing that you weren't going to do. So there's such low turnouts in by-elections. So for me, 11,000 still feels like a kind of a surprising number in a by-election and one that would be a sign, I think, of some concern if I was on the Liberal side of this.

I want to get back to some of the things you've raised, but I want to take a little departure here for a second, because you mentioned the apparent design by the Conservatives to stay off their promises or their platform and keep the issue being basically about Trudeau and what he's done, what he's doing. And I look at where I just came from, the UK, and Bruce, you were over there as well. Watching that election campaign, it's only got a couple of weeks left in it,

which has in some ways been the mirror image of this. You've got the Labour Party with a 20-point lead. Are they talking about their platform? No, they're not. They're attacking, attacking, attacking. And the Conservatives, Rishi Sunak, is in the continuing defence mode, trying to push off the flack that he's getting. But he's losing.

He's losing bad. And it was never more evident than yesterday. The telegraph did. And I'll put it in the buzz this weekend if you haven't seen it because it's a great chart, an animation of what a 20-point lead means, certainly in Britain. And it's basically, you know, a red and blue map, right? Which is mainly blue right now because of the conservative huge majority under Boris Johnson four years ago. And now, with the 20-point lead and what it would look like if that's what ends up on Election Day,

it's a complete reversal and more of the map. I mean, the Conservatives had over 300 seats in their majority. They're now forecast to have like as few as 50. I mean, it's an amazing look at what that can happen. And that's happening with no cure starmer he's the labor leader saying this is what i'm going to do i'm going to do this i'm going to do that you know you look like it's all about how the conservatives have damaged britain so it's an interesting you know i i don't know whether we're suggesting or whether political observers would suggest this is the way a campaign should be run

because you can end up two months from now saying oh my god what did i do that's not what i wanted i just wanted the other guys gone well i think that's i think the uk election is very interesting uh for a number of reasons i agree with you peter i think that the that it is a cautionary tale for incumbents who get long in the tooth and where people are showing a degree of dissatisfaction that you can't take a certain amount of base vote for granted and just assume that there are seats that are kind of locked in and you can't possibly lose that. And I bear the scars of that 1993 progressive conservative campaign. I know what happens when the numbers start to tumble. kind of locked in and you can't possibly lose that. And I bear the scars of that 1993 progressive

conservative campaign. I know what happens when the numbers start to tumble the way that they've been tumbling for the conservatives under Rishi Sunak. And he really just kind of inherited a political party that had an underlying and deep, deep problem of public kind of dismay and dissatisfaction. But the other thing that's happening to the Conservative vote in the UK and has happened in Canada is that the right is splitting in two. There is the Conservative right and now the Reform Party. Now, whether or not the Reform Party can get a lot of seats remains to be seen, but there have at least been one or two polls that show the Reform Party pulling ahead of the Conservative Party, Nigel Farage's party.

And for those listeners or viewers who haven't followed that election, this is a version of a political movement that's not unlike the Reform Party was in Canada in its early days. And I don't want to go farther than that, because I know that some Reform Party voters will take umbrage at that. But it is the idea of a fraction of the conservative movement that champions a certain set of values and ideas that is a little bit more radical on the right, pulling votes away from a more center-right type of party. I think that's quite interesting. And the other thing that I find fascinating is Keir Starmer's determination to say change is his message, but he wants people to know that he's not

just arguing for a change from the Conservatives, he's making the case that the Labour Party has changed from what it used to be associated with. And the thread that's happening there that I see in parallel in Canada is a lot of voters here are saying, I don't want parties to start every conversation with me with ideology. I want to start a conversation with solutions. If you can find a way to make groceries cost 20% less, I want to hear about it. I don't want to hear about whether or not your aspirations and values and your ideals have historically been in favor of the people who have the hardest time paying the groceries. I want to know what you can do about that problem or any other problem. So focus on pragmatism is what Keir Starmer is doing.

It's what I think Pierre Polyev has done somewhat to his success in Canada. And it kind of appeals to voters who say, just don't give me the ideology. Give me the hard backs and the best ideas. So, if the contrarian in me will just say there is a limit to the parallels, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Sunak, is more like John Turner or Kim Campbell, someone who's been untested in a campaign and who inherited an electorate that wants change than he is Justin Trudeau from this distance, it's quite obvious that it will be really hard for Mr. Trudeau to have as bad a campaign and to be as bad a campaigner as British vis-a-vis. So that does kind of change the equation. That's not to say that change will not be in the offing or that Justin Trudeau will do what we've seen no one do, that is overcome a 20 point gap. and will have had by the time we get around to voting, two years to tell pollsters that they want change

and to have heard the criticism of Justin Trudeau that Pierre Poiliev articulates. And I do believe that many voters will want more from Mr. Poiliev than just attack ads on Justin Trudeau, that they will want to see what he's got to offer in a policy sense of the word. Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper, all defeated in change elections and incumbent. But all of them, including Stephen Harper with his five items,

did present voters with some sense of what they wanted to bring to the table. And I don't believe that Mr. Poitier has done so yet. And I do believe that he needs to do so. I also think that he can bring stuff to the table without giving the liberals a lot of stuff to attack on. When people want change, they will accept resets in a way that most of us don't expect. Go back to 2015. Did you think that it would be a winning proposition to campaign on deficits? And yet, Justin Trudeau's promise to run deficits got rationalized as good news and a reason to vote for the Liberals.

So it would be, unless Mr. Poiliev makes really wrong strategic policy choices, it would be really hard for the Conservatives not to find something that they could sell to voters and that would end up making the Liberals sound like they're just tired and have lost their game. Well, he certainly kept that promise. The deficit one. Yes, I still see Stephen Harper doing the tiny, tiny, tiny deficit. And that was, you know, totally right.

Today, it could be a great ad for the Conservative Party against Justin Trudeau. Peter, I don't know if you want to take a break any minute now or I can make one more point before we do. Let me take the break because I think we can stretch this baby a little more in terms of a topic. Poor baby, that's right. I'd forgotten the five promises the harper and you know it was so effective in its simplicity right keep it short don't put out the policy book with you know 100 different things you're going to do focus it down as he did on on five

things and it obviously had an impact okay we're going to take a quick break we got more on this topic still to go. We'll be right back after this. Not quite. How about this piece of news? How about this one? And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Saturday,

the Friday episode of Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. I told you I'd be a little wonky today from all the jet lag. And wonky I am. 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, we got more on this still topic related to the by-election on Monday, and Bruce, there was a point you wanted to make. Yeah, I wanted to talk about the fact that we think about

this by-election as a piece in the story that's developing in the run up to the next election. And sometimes I think, well, we don't know what one of the most important impacts will be in the political context leading up to the next elections, because it's going to happen south of the border in November. And I remember when Chantal was talking about Stephen Harper, that nobody saw Stephen Harper running a $50 billion deficit, but also almost nobody objected to it when what he did was run a massive deficit because it was a financial crisis that happened on his watch. It wouldn't have anything to do with his policies, but it happened south of the border and it happened in other parts of the world. And it required a measure of policy clarity and firm decisions and political risk associated

with those decisions that Mr. Harper took on. And I think in retrospect, most people would say that the decisions that the government of Mr. Harper made were probably the right decisions in terms of that financial stability. But the point for me is sometimes things happen somewhere else that are so important, so traumatizing in terms of our body politic that they changed the political calculus that what people are looking for in leadership is a safe pair of hands or, you know, something that's going to work against the threat that they fear the most that wasn't that fear inspiring only weeks before. Now, I say that obviously because I think that the more traumatizing experience for most

Canadians would be a Trump re-election. You know, I see clips of him every day talking about the tariffs that he's going to put on everything. If he wins, it will be a very sobering experience for Canadians. There is no, we talk about the British election as though, you know, we're fascinated by it and it does have some relevance to our political dynamic, but it's a mouse compared to the elephant in terms of the impact that a US election can have on the Canadian economic and political reality. So I still don't know whether or not if it's Pierre Poliev and Justin Trudeau and Trump wins. I still don't know exactly how the public will feel about those choices. But I do know that the Trump election, if it happens, is going to be a major factor in the mindset, the psychology of Canadian voters heading into that next election. And so

I look at the by-election as a kind of a useful read on where things are now, but with some limitations in terms of how much it might matter after the U.S. election. Okay, well, I want to talk about some of those limitations now in terms of Monday night, not in relation to the U.S. election and the impact that might have. I think we both agree with you on that and have also suggested in different times over the last few months the impact that could have on the Canadian election. I want to talk about something that you both mentioned earlier on about Monday night. You know, there will be a point Monday night when the polls are closed and the counting is done

or there's enough counting done to show what the trend is going to be. And, you know, and winners will be declared. And losers will be declared. And earlier, I can't remember who said it. It was one of the two of you. That if the Liberals lose or if they do badly, the talk will begin about Trudeau's future. You know, I'm one of those who comes from the school of a win's a win.

And if the Liberals win, I think that topic is closed down for the time being, no matter how close it is. What do you mean by the time being? Like, is that weeks or hours or days or months? I think it's done. I don't, you know, there are other by-elections to come that may have some kind of impact on all this, but I think this one, the build-up on this has been so big,

the stakes, you know, heralded as so large, that if the Liberals end up winning, even in a squeaker, that the pressure may be off. He'll be able to say, hey, we won, we, you know, we've taken the message, and blah, blah, blah. He'll have a leaf fan in you as you say that. On to the barbecue, sir. I'll take a win.

Win is a win. Win's a win. I don't know. If I were a liberal MP running in a competitive riding, which St. Paul's, Toronto St. Paul's, has not been since 1993. I would look at the results, and if it's a very close win for the Liberals, I couldn't avoid doing the math in my own riding. What are you going to do about it, though?

Not run again. Not run again. Not run again. Move on would be my first thought. This is where I would decide that I'm going off this. I think he needs, I'm not saying the liberals need to win with the same margins as they did in the general elections of the past few elections. But I am saying that for your theory to hold, and this ends the debate over he stays or he goes, and everyone goes home and goes on the barbecue circuit, it would still need to be a more convincing win than winning by 600 votes, put it this way. Because the psychology, the liberals, many liberals in

caucus and outside caucus are now psyched to want Justin Trudeau to retire. Why? Not because they dislike him, but because it is the only thing they can imagine doing to kind of give themselves a shot in the next election. They may be wrong, but it's human nature to want to grasp it. If you're drowning and you see a plank on the water, and it doesn't look very sturdy, but that's your option, you're going to try to grab it, because maybe it's going to make a difference. You'll drown later is the worst that can happen. So I also think that the liberals have, strangely enough, under Mr. Trudeau, one last shot at resetting the agenda. I looked and no one paid a lot of attention to what's been happening

in the House of Commons and the Senate over the past few months. But a lot of government legislation actually got passed into law this week. All of the big ticket items that the government had on its plate, there are other legislations that are still pending, but the big ticket items, they're all done. So you can see it two ways. One, and many liberals would like that first one to be the case, would be, oh, these are the legacy items. Justin Trudeau can now win in St. Paul's or lose in St. Paul's, but still decide to walk in the sand and fade away on the horizon with a legacy in place. Or you can see it as a, there is now no reason not to try to craft a Trump speech that signals a reset and some creative thinking on the part of this government when it comes to policy. And I think those, I mean, depending on Mr. Trudeau's personal choices,

there is a scenario where he wins on Monday and says, well, I know I've done my legislative agenda. I'm leaving you in decent shape. That is also an option. And I will remind you that no one was more surprised the day Brian Mulroney quit than the press gallery, because by then, despite the defeat of the Charlottetown referendum, he had convinced all of us that he was staying. Really, he was waiting for Joe Clark to retire so that he would retire after Joe Clark and not leave the job open for Joe Clark to return as leader. But still, we had come to assume that he was staying by the morning that he finally said, I'm leaving. Yeah, I think Chantal made a number of really good points there. I'd just like to touch on a couple of them. One is that it is a reality that for a lot of liberal MPs, they'll be looking at

that result, and they'll be measuring what it means for their ridings. And the more that they are convinced that they can't win unless Justin Trudeau can close this gap or unless he goes and they try somebody else to see if that can close the gap, they have a hard choice to make because, you know, the market for defeated MPs all from one party in terms of jobs isn't fantastic. And if there's a whole bunch of them all doing the same thing at the same time, trying to find their place in the private sector and outside the political world after the next election, that may not be the scenario that they want to wait for. They may decide that it's better to get out now. It's better to find the right next thing while they have the benefit of not being kind of not competing for interesting jobs with other MPs who are

thinking the same thing because they've lost that election. So I think that is a real dynamic. But, you know, Chantal's point about, you know, it's possible that the prime minister has been doing what people surmise that he's been doing, which is that he wanted to have a chance to roll out that budget, to make the best case that he could, that he needed to stay on and do the things that he cared about for the country and that Pierre Pauliev would be anathema to the country's interests, and that he's been doing that, and that he may come to the conclusion and may already have come to the conclusion that despite his efforts, that he's just not kind of, he's rubbing the sticks together, but there's no spark. There's no fire that started. He's not creating that ignition that people are saying, you know what, come to think of it, we do need him to stay on, and the other guy really is terrible, he may come to the conclusion that that hasn't happened, and that therefore the right

choice for him to make for the country and for the party is for him to step aside. He shows no evidence of that. If it's an acting job, it's maybe the best acting that he's ever done. He seems ferocious in his insistence that he's he's going to stay but i remain unconvinced that that is that is settled and that i guess i don't completely buy the theory that even a close win creates a dynamic where that conversation stops yeah you're the same guy and well you know they want a majority but it's not a big majority. It's just a little majority. Majority is a majority. Win is a win.

At least that's the way I look at it. We're going to take a final break. No one's winning a majority on Monday. This isn't a seat. It's one with 51% of the vote, whichever way you look at it. Don't take the break. You're going to lose this one. Stay on.

I like being up against you too. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Bruce and Chantel are in the house. Okay. So let's keep going on this for a few more minutes yet before we wrap this up. But jet lag will make people do.

They turn them into masochists. Well, it's either that or submarines. I'd love to talk about submarines. Let's not go there. Okay. Please. All right. Let's not go there. Okay. Please. All right. Here's the scenario then.

Accepting for a moment the premise that you both put out there. Let's say that the Liberals win, just win on Monday night. And you're a backbench MP from Ontario who has concerns about all this, but also wants to run again and doesn't want to take that threat off the table. Wants to keep running. So what do you do? I mean, you both suggested earlier that there are rumors afoot, there's always rumors afoot in Ottawa or related to Ottawa,

about some kind of public display of unease about Trudeau's continuing leadership on the part of some Liberals, especially Central Canadian or at least Ontario Liberals. What do you do? What does the prime minister do? No, what does that MP do who has decided, I do want to run again, but gee, I'm really, you know, that wasn't a convincing win. I don't think that that MP does a lot for himself or his party by calling a news conference to call on Justin Trudeau to step down.

I have seen no evidence that that does anything except convince voters that the Liberal Party is the wrong choice in the election. Because, you know, once parties start feuding in public corporate leadership, they lose the confidence of many of the voters who may still be sticking around thinking that they can regroup and fight back. So if I were that MP and I really wanted to run, I guess I would ask myself, the first question would be, do I still want to run federally? Because there are plenty of rumors that Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, is thinking of calling a snap election, sometimes in late summer for the fall, to try to capitalize on the fact that the Liberals are unpopular federally, and that reflects on the Liberals in Ontario, but also that Pierre Poiliev, if he becomes prime minister, might make the conservative name harder to sell provincially. So the odds of being elected as a liberal provincially are probably still better than

being elected federally for many of those MPs. So I'd consider that. But otherwise, the only way to try to help yourself, I guess, is to attend as many barbecues as possible and try to make people feel bad about dumping you. That usually doesn't work, by the way. All right. Same MP, same situation, except the Liberals lose on Monday night. What do you do? Call Bonnie Crombie. She's the Liberal leader. Assuming you still want to run federally. But the party's just lost Toronto-St. Paul's. You still don't go to a mic to call for your leader to step down? You won't?

No, you don't. That would only happen if there was a whole bunch of them and they were all interested in doing it at the same time. And it's extremely unlikely, to put it mildly, that that will happen in my view. And I think it's, you know, it's always the case that people outside politics look at politics and say, well, why wouldn't that happen? That should happen. It seems kind of logical. But, you know, versions of that don't happen in the private sector either. Employees, you know,

at the senior level and a major corporation don't all react to, you know, stunningly bad business outcomes by saying, let's all go, you know, and call for the resignation of the top level. There's, there are, you know, normal dynamic, human dynamic reasons why that doesn't happen and certainly won't happen in the, in the, in the limelight in politics. politics but doesn't mean that those conversations won't pick up in intensity behind the scenes and that does this is a chemistry business on some level and if people feel as though they're heading into caucus meetings where people are kind of hostile to the idea of the status quo um you know that's's not in the public, but it does matter. And I think that

would be a thing that would likely happen, whether or not it's kind of part of a strategy or just kind of a way that people react to things. But setting that aside, if your question is like, okay, so let's say Justin Trudeau is staying and you're a liberal MP and you want to stay and run, what can you contribute to the conversation, either from the party to the public or within the party to itself, that would be helpful? It's inevitable that even if it would be the fourth reset, after the shuffle and a budget and the fall economic statement or what have you,

there would need to be another reset. You'd have to try again. And what that would look like, a throne speech, another shuffle of the cabinet, who knows, but probably both of those things. So you'd want to kind of push ideas into that mix and you'd want to particularly tell people at the center, tell people who are organizing that whatever the reset would be, this is what we hear at the doorsteps. This is what people don't like about how we sound and what kinds of things we prioritize. And this is what they'd like to hear from us that's different. So using as much of the skills and the information, the intelligence that you gather as being an MP to influence that

discussion so that reset, if it happens, is a better reset than it would be otherwise. Those are constructive things that you could do. All right. I've got less than two minutes left. Without using the words Justin Trudeau, Pierre Polyev, or by-election, tell me what you're looking for this summer. More ribs? See, I think that's what, and Chantel said this before too, that's what most Canadians are into, right?

The lake, the cottage, somebody else's cottage, a holiday, a drive with the kids, whatever, and ribs, and nothing else. Give us a break. Well, that is what summer is about, and that is the opportunity that all parties federally have to use this summer to kind of look at the landscape. They're going to be going back to Parliament for what is probably the last time before the election. All of them can need to adjust to that reality. I know they'll be campaigning, but I don't think the summer is a great time to be throwing policy ideas at people. You got the last word, Bruce.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that, you know, you'll really, if you're in politics, not just for your own political purposes, but because society really is suffering from it, is the cost of food and the cost of housing are real big problems for a lot of people. And you've got to be hoping for some signs that will help with that. You want that inflation number to come down so that interest rates will come down. You want to try to find a way to grind down those food prices. Because I think we can come up with 20 reasons why people might be cranky,

but really the most important reason why people are unhappy is that they don't have as much money to live their lives as they did a couple of years ago. And it's very hard for politicians to change that. But that's the thing that they might be most hoping for. Okay. We're going to leave it at that.

I think that's our first one-topic good talk. But it was fun and enjoyable. We'll get to the submarines some other time. Yes, we'll go to submarines as well. We'll get to the submarines some other time. Yes, we'll do the submarines. We promise. We'll brush up on submarines. Okay. Have a great summer, you two.

They will, Chantal and Bruce will join us about a month from now. July 26th will be our next Good Talk. We'll do a special there. Obviously, if something happens during the summer. No, no, no. Not with me on July 26th, because I will have no access to internet, that

particular thing. We'll figure it out. Okay. All right. Thank you both. Take care, you guys. Enjoy, yes. Bye. Bye-bye.