The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The China Story That's "Eating The Government"

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

The pressure keeps mounting for some sort of real inquiry into how China tried to influence Canadian elections, and what if anything the Trudeau government did about it.  Susan Delacourt sits in for a vacationing Chantal Hebert today alongside Bruce Anderson.  It's a lively discussion dealing with some pretty serious questions.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And welcome to your Friday. Yes, this is Good Talk. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Chantelle Hebert is away this week. We've mentioned it a couple of times. She's hiking across Iceland of all places and I bet she's having a good time. Iceland hasn't seen anything till they've seen Chantelle Hébert crossing their turf. Susan Delacorte is with us today filling in for Chantelle for years of great work on the Ottawa Beat, which continues today. Bruce Anderson is also with us from Ottawa.

Now, usually this time of year is, you know, it's kind of March break time. People kind of disappear. MPs head off into their constituencies to work constituency areas. And, you know, you've got to give them a little more credit than we normally give them. We say, oh, great, they have, you know, lots of holidays. They're, you know, they're taking time off from Ottawa. Well, taking time off usually means going to your constituency office.

And that ain't time off for a lot of them because they get to hear what their constituents feel about their work, about the government's work, about the way Parliament's going, and that can be tough at times. It can make the battleground in Ottawa seem pretty easy. But in Ottawa itself during these kind of breaks, it's usually pretty slow. It is not slow this week, and it is unlikely to be slow for some time. The big story, of course, is China and whether or not China was interfering in our elections, and if so, who knew, and if so, what are we going to do about it?

Just look at the headlines, and I pulled these off this morning, off the wire. CSIS is worried about China interfering in our elections, even if the government isn't worried. Federal election watchdog launches review into foreign interference complaints. 2021 Conservative campaign director says inquiry isn't the best way to probe election meddling. And then there's this one. Did foreigners interfere in Canada's elections? Don't expect politicians to sort it out. That written by the Toronto Star's national columnist, Susan Delacorte, who is with us today.

So, Susan, why don't you start us off? Have you ever seen anything quite like this on on supposedly a break week on and dealing with such a you know a big and important topic well i'd like to say you know this i've often called this government the the government of unprecedented things but there's there's also a kind of a familiar feeling around this one as well it's february and this government always gets into trouble in february i don't know what it is it started with india trip in 2018 2019 famously was the snc uh lavalin lavalin um bus and the reason i'm pausing is because this one feels a lot like that one in that it comes from a story from the Globe and Mail. The government first comes out and says, there's nothing to this, nothing to see here, drive on.

And then it escalates and escalates and ends up with committee members asking for the head of somebody in the prime minister's office it was jerry butts in 2019 it's katie telford right now so there's a rhythm this one has a familiar rhythm i don't know that it's headed toward the same kind of crisis that snc labilem was for the government but it it does have that feeling about it to me. Well, they all started in February. You're quite right. And now it's dragging into March, and we have the stakes seemingly pretty high. I mean, there's a lot of talk about how deep this could go in terms of who's going to pay the price for it. Bruce, I know you had a few things to say about this on Wednesday, but what about today, the last 48 hours?

Anything changed in your head on this? Yeah. Is it March that's supposed to be the cruelest month, or is it February? But it feels like it could be March on this for the government. Yeah, look, I think that there are two big problems here. They have some overlap. One is the question of interference in our democracy. And I think that the more that we learn, including in the last 48 hours, the more aware we are that the problem is significant and it happens outside the writ period.

It happens in ways that the people who've been tasked with observing it probably can't fully observe it. It requires more people, more resources, more technology, more consistent public reporting. And I think the conclusion that any reasonable person must come to at this point is that the government didn't set us up well enough to properly understand and be able to deal with these threats. The second problem is really, so that's a, what are we going to do from here? And what do we maybe need to know about what happened in the past? Although I think most people think that the absolute outcome of the election probably wasn't affected. I still think that's a supposition.

I still think that at the end of the day, it's probably true, but nobody can prove that it's true because you can't prove exactly how people voted. And because obviously on the surface of it, if it's true that the Chinese wanted a minority liberal government and the country elected a minority liberal government, that fact pattern alone is inconvenient for the Trudeau government. The second issue is, did the government just mismanage that, this whole issue? You know, in a kind of a shambolic kind of, we don't have time to look at this or care about this or think about this enough, or are there other elements to

the storyline involving the Trudeaus and the Chinese that bear some scrutiny? I don't happen to think that that is true, but I did read that piece that I think it was Tristan Hopper put in the National Post the other day, which chronicled the relationship between the Trudeaus and the Chinese over a number of years and included the foundation, the Trudeau Foundation donation. And in the last and there was enough in there that if you're an opposition politician, this doesn't feel like one of those things where the circus comes to town and then it leaves. It feels like the circus is going to keep coming back to town. And there will be questions about this. And there reasonably should be questions about this, especially my last point,

the Trudeau foundation apparently announced two days ago or yesterday that they were going to give back a donation that they had accepted. That kind of strikes me as a kind of a weird management choice, issue management choice. Did they not know where the money came from originally? Did they feel it was okay before, but now they feel that it wasn't okay to accept that money? It has the feeling of scrambling, I guess, is probably the most charitable way to look at it. And scrambling for government, especially in light of what Susan said, bad Februaries, doesn't usually work out well. You know, we should clarify.

We're not talking about a $1,500 donation here or 50 bucks here or 50 bucks there. We're talking about two hundred thousand dollars and when a foundation gives that kind of money back you know either they know something that was not good about this donation or they're worried that something like that could come out um what surprises me a bit about this story is it didn't come out of nowhere. The whole issue of China, Canada, politics, spying, influencing, interfering has been around at different levels for years, literally years. I mean, it was Dick Fadden, the former CSIS director, who first kind of hinted at this, and that's like 13, 14 years ago.

With you. With me and with Brian Stewart and that's like 13 14 years ago with me and with brian stewart that's correct but you know that was a that was at a different level than the kind of stuff we're seeing now but it's the it's the natural progression which brings up this this other story that has circulated in the last you know 24 48 hours, prompted by the current CSIS director, suggesting, not outright saying, but certainly suggesting, that the leaks were in fact coming from inside CSIS directly, from officers of CSIS who were concerned, may have been concerned about the fact the PMO wasn't,

the Prime Minister's office, wasn't taking this seriously. Now, I've never seen anything like that either, of the progression of things we haven't seen on a story before. For the director of CSIS to suggest something like that is quite remarkable. Susan? Well, again, me too. I do want to say, I'll jump into this and then I want to jump back to the foundation. Right. The,

you know what, what I felt when I heard that the CSIS director saying that was the convoy, again, bad Februaries, that a big problem during the convoy was the, you know, that some of the authorities were sympathetic to the anti-Trudeau sentiment. And I wonder, you you know every police force every one is the same i wonder if that's what's going on in there too right that that uh that this is a little bit of a i wouldn't call it convoy level dissent but certainly um a grumbling that you hear

about this government a lot you hear about all kinds of governments. Can I just go back to the foundation just to be, I am a former mentor. And, and so you're still a mentor. Yeah. But actually it was, it was Chantel who I think, I think I followed Chantel there, but they, I did not have any. It was from 2014.

It was when Morris Rosenberg was there. That was 2015 to 17, I believe. This is the Trudeau Foundation. Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, not the Justin Trudeau Foundation. There was no connection. I just don't want to sound offensive, but this was brought up from time to time. The number of people there that are former mentors, there were Supreme Court judges. I think every former Supreme Court judge has been made a mentor of the foundation. It's a great place to meet young scholars and help them.

And your job is to help young scholars. It isn't to help Justin Trudeau get elected, but in full disclosure, Chantal and I have been mentors with that foundation. Okay. That's good to know. But Bruce, I know that when we talked on Wednesday, you were concerned about this issue, about the leaking and where it came from and not only the decision on the part of those who leaked, but also the decision on the part of those who leaked, but also the decision on the part of those journalists who accepted the leaks. We had our differences on that. But hearing the CSIS director yesterday say what he said.

I want to be clear. I didn't actually have a problem with the journalists accepting the leaks. I was wondering if some news organization at some point was going to develop a story that says our spy service is leaking and make that a separate story to some degree. The, you know, I think, and you guys, far be it for me to kind of offer an opinion about how journalism works, but it feels to me like.

No, you'd never do that. You'd never do that. I find if I have that kind of an opinion, if I set it up that way, then it goes over a little bit better. So stand by. But you know, if I'm a journalist and I get these leaks, it's obviously, I want to be able to use it. I want to develop a story and there's a legitimate story there. There's no question about it.

And you don't want to look at that gift horse and say, why don't I write a separate story that says the gift horse did a bad and illegal thing, if in fact it was illegal to leak that information. Notwithstanding that, maybe some other journalist would say there's some law breaking going on in one of our enforcement agencies. And I'm not saying that because I think that it's a it's a better idea to have a chill. I don't think that I actually think that the liberal government has now put itself in a position where the only way that they can ever get out of this, this circus keeping on coming back and troubling them is that disinfectant of sunlight, whether it's a good idea or not to have a public inquiry, it doesn't really matter anymore, they're going to have to have more openness and transparency in one form or another. Otherwise,

this is just going to hang over their head because of this overlap of, you know, even this committee saying, the committee who authored the report saying, we didn't really have the tools. We didn't have the wide enough mandate. We didn't have enough resources. We weren't able to tell people what the problems were

unless they reached a point where we could conclude that the election was broken. They were saying our machinery, our mandate isn't good enough. And then you have this overlap with these assertions that Trudeau was told about this, that Trudeau was told about interference and that there wasn't much of a response. And so I think it is going to be legitimate, especially with the questions about the Trudeau Foundation. It's going to be legitimate and appropriate for journalists and politicians to pursue this story. And the government isn't going to be able to, in my estimation,

just wait for the news cycle to turn. Having said that, I don't know what I feel about the legitimacy of the story being propelled on a consistent basis by our spy services or by our intelligence services. I think that sets a precedent that is kind of enjoyable for fans of the story, but might not be a good thing for us in the long term. So I think it's worthy of some discussion is really all I'm saying. What do you think about that, Susan? Oh, a lot. I noticed he didn't do it as elegantly as Bruce did yesterday,

but I thought David Morrison, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, was kind of trying to give a little journalism lesson too. And all of us twigged to the intelligence is not truth. It sounds Orwellian. But I think what he was trying to say was that journalism, as it's been practiced in this, and no offense to my longtime colleagues in the press gallery, Bob Fyfe and Steve Chase, and the folks from Global, is that what basically he was saying was,

what you call journalism, we call a rumor, right? And this stuff passes by my desk every day, and you guys got hold of it. The mere fact of you guys getting hold of it is news. I don't think he disputed that. But I think he said that with trying to be as elegant as possible is that you guys used a very low standard to report something as truth. And to be fair, I've listened to Bob Fyfe being interviewed about this and he is nuanced about it.

I don't think he has been treating this as this actually happened um that you know that china inter um china actually did what it was bragging about you know and i think i heard you guys talking on a podcast too that's a pretty big thing to pull off as a minority government if China, you know, got that. So I thought yesterday what I seized upon and, and it got really tense. I don't know if you guys were watching it. And that's, that's what made me think too, this has got to get, I'm in favor of an inquiry, but I'm not sure it should be public.

What I'm in favor of. And I wrote I'm not sure it should be public. What I'm in favor of, and I wrote about and I see others have also, I think we've all had the same idea. Pierre Polyev is a privy councillor. Jagmeet Singh is not, but he's in a deal with, a governing deal with the prime minister. think first thing the opposition leaders have to do is get together and that Justin Trudeau whether it's virtually or literally has to lay out what he knows to them swear them to secrecy and say look it's in all our interests that the next election not be seen as illegitimate and I've thought that Polyev has been interesting on this too he was asked outright twice, it was yesterday or the day before, do you accept the results of the last election? Yes, I do. Because he knows down this path is danger. You know, if you start saying that elections are illegitimate and you have your eye on becoming the next prime

minister, you don't want that coming back to you. So I agree with Bruce. This thing has got too far now out there. It needs some kind of inquiry. But I think it should start with a demonstration of the Canadian public that this is more than theatre and that all the leaders of political parties are interested. And then I also agree with Polyev, a sentence you won't hear very often, in that whoever heads this inquiry should not be chosen by the prime minister. I don't know how you do that legally, but it's got to be an agreement among all the opposition leaders of who heads it up. You know, it's going to take that kind of a nonpartisan, if you wish, approach to it in terms of having all the leaders together in a room

agreeing to a path forward, or nobody's going to buy it. If you have an inquiry that's not public and it's just being appointed by the PMO with no other consultation, nobody's going to believe it. Are you busy for the next couple of years? You know, it should be should be listen this shouldn't take a couple years right this should take a few months i mean rulo proved that he took an ugly thing and you know he turned it around six months or or less than that so these things can be done

and you know and and this may take it but it has to be believable or it's pointless. Exactly. I think there's one thing that we need to add into the mix here that, that forms part of, I think the political calculation and may affect the idea of, can you, can you have a short in time process to look at this thing that we're talking about now and then shut it down because you say, well, we've done our work and we found out what we needed to find. I'm kind of not in that space, I think, because among the conversations that the committee of experts or senior deputy ministers was having was that foreign interference is one thing, but malign interference in our election systems and in our democracies is a

domestic thing too. And the security of our democracies against the use of techniques that undermine our systems and the systems that we can trust has been an issue that's been kicking around and a little bit noisier with each election over the last 10 years or so. Now one could make the case. I'm not going to make a big case out of it, but one could make the case that there is one party that does tend to see a

little bit more of that kind of wind in its sails and might not be as interested in seeing that be a part of the focus, but it should be part of the focus. Obviously, if we look at in the context of the convoy, January 6th in the United States is telling us anything is that the way in which organizations and individuals can use the internet to corrupt and undermine confidence, trust, and stability in our political system, it's a real threat. It's a growing threat. A six-month commission of inquiry is probably necessary and helpful, but it isn't the end state. The end state is that we're now in a situation where trust and verify probably needs to be replaced by verify and trust.

In other words, you're going to need to continue to verify what's going on with techniques that we're not going to love because they're going to look a little bit like nanny state techniques. But the alternative is pretty clearly let the chips fall where they may. And we can already see how that might turn out, whether it's Russian or Chinese or malign domestic interference. Bad stuff is going to happen. And the question is, do we have the stomach as a democracy to solve for that? And do we have the will across partisan lines to come together and say, it's a common threat, and we've got to grow up about it and deal with it as a common nonpartisan threat? I don't know the answer to that question, but I think that's the question for me. Okay. I want to keep going on this, but I'll take a quick break.

Back before you know it, right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on The Bridge. Susan Delacorte filling in for Chantelle Hebert. She's in Ottawa. So is Bruce Henderson. I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Stratford, Ontario today.

You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or you're on your favorite podcast platform, or if you're really lucky, you're watching us on our YouTube channel and see how this exciting program goes to air. All right. Who's got the most at stake here?

Usually when you have these kind of, you know, is the word scandal appropriate here? I don't know, but we tend to throw that word around whenever something gets hot in Ottawa. So I'll throw it around here now. Usually when the scandal hits Ottawa, there's a minister who's like the focus of it or an opposition leader or what have you. This one seems to be very firmly in the prime minister's zone. It's in his pocket. He's got to deal with it one way or the other.

And the issue becomes, especially right now, whether he's dealing with it in any effective way at all, because it's not going away. And as both of you suggest, it's likely to be around for some time yet. This isn't one of these three or four day wonders. But how serious is it for Justin Trudeau right now? What could the consequences be? Do you want to venture into that turf, Susan? I don't mind going there. I think it's really serious for him.

He, in other circumstances, should be having a pretty good time right now. The Rouleau commission was pretty good. That was, I thought his tone post-Rouleau has been pretty good that was uh um i thought his tone post rouleau has been pretty good too you know the um i've even enjoyed the yelling at the protester at the ukrainian event and all of that it looked like there was fire in him uh he's uh and he's signing these health deals which are quite significant across the country. Know that in any other circumstances, this would be not a bad time for Mr. Trudeau, who is saying that he's around for the next election. I think it's going to be making a lot of liberals around him say, look, enough. This government, I think, stands accused, rightly or wrongly, I'm going to reserve judgment

on that, but it stands accused of being tired and burned out a bit. And you and I, we've all seen governments hit the seven-year mark. I remember when Kretian's government hit the seven year mark and it, there was a definite change in tone because all the senior people leave, go off to other things and, and you're left with sort of, I don't want to say B team, but, but they, if any government has earned the right to be burned out, this one certainly has, you know, it's just Trump.

Just, you know, do the list of bad februaries a pandemic um it's been a war in europe it's been non-stop and i think it's going to be making people around trudeau say if they weren't already saying it. Look, this guy is tired and this team is tired and we are exhausted from scandals. We are exhausted with scandals such as they are. And the communications tasks or the communication such that they do hasn't been up to it. It's been inadequate.

And it's simply because they've become so used to scandals and so used to these unprecedented events that they almost have a template for it now. And I think that's the worrying thing for this government is that it's fitting into a larger narrative that was already out there about this prime minister, rightly or wrongly if they have a template for it it might have worked in the first year it doesn't seem to

be working in the seventh eighth year uh bruce yeah by a lot of accounts the prime minister has a lot of energy right now um and i and so i kind of accept that uh as a fact because I've heard it from enough people who've kind of been in a room with him and talking with him. But what that kind of reinforces for me is that alone isn't enough. That right now what he's got, and I think Susan's point about if any government earned the right to be exhausted, it's this one. But, you know, that doesn't really matter to the public on some level. They're exhausted, too. They've had the same worries, but without some of the same comforts. And the public hardly ever says, you know, I've had a bad day, but I imagine the prime minister's had a worse day. So I've never seen or heard anybody

in a focus group say anything that sounded remotely like that. That's just not how the world works. But I think the question for the prime minister is he now has a kind of a governance or a management challenge, the dimension of which was never this great, in part because what Susan said, that people have left certain aspects of the skill set of a government have kind of atrophied. A lot of the people who are in political jobs sound on some days more like administrators than people who are in political jobs. The way that they represent the work of the government

sounds like they're representing the work of the public service, which I suppose is laudable in one respect, but it isn't going to win you re-election. You need to have that kind of sharp edge and tone to what you're doing, not so that everything feels like a partisan fight, but so that it gets through this kind of sense of all the clutter in our lives, all the communications messages coming at us. How are you going to pay any attention to this if the messages always sound kind of boring and administrative and lackluster and half-hearted? And there's quite a lot of that. And I think that is a management challenge

that requires kind of a shock therapy at the center and from the center. And I don't know if this prime minister is built to do that kind of thing. I hope he is, because I think there's a lot to be commended in the agenda that the government has had. A lot on their plate that they're going

to do, which I think merits good public scrutiny and probably would win decent public approval. But I see it as a management challenge at this stage. And I think that the question of whether or not what people inside the government around the caucus and that sort of thing, what they think is the same as what they will say. And this is always the eternal question, right? Is, is, does a level of discomfort and sense of dismay at how we're handling things in quotation marks, does it rise to that point where people just kind of grumble and in corners and

in small groups, or do they start saying things publicly that create even more pressure for that kind of change? There's a lot of loyalty for Justin Trudeau, but there's a lot of people who I think are probably feeling like, we didn't see this thing coming and we don't love the way that it's being handled. The prime minister basically put the government on its back foot far more than needed to be the case by saying, be worried about interference, but nothing happened. And if something did happen,

I can't tell you anything about it and we can't have a public inquiry. He's going to have to walk that back. And walking back is not a great feeling for a government, especially at this point in the political cycle is there any indication susan that there are those in the caucus or the cabinet are saying you know what we we've got to change our position on this prime minister it's not working i mean most of these people owe their seats to justin trudeau right they wouldn't be in parliament they wouldn't be in a cabinet if it wasn't for him running in 2015. Yeah, I still think, sorry, I still think there's an acute awareness that

had it not been for Justin Trudeau, there might not be a liberal party, you know, that he's celebrating his 10th year as leader in a couple of months. So people remember how dark those days were for the Liberal Party and whether the party would exist without him, I think. But I think, yeah, you do catch hints of it, you know, around town is that I don't think there's any pressure for him to leave. I don't think he's facing like a Martin Kretin sort of fight. I don't think there's any pressure for him to leave. I don't think he's facing like a Martin Kretin sort of fight. I don't think there's a Paul Martin type faction out there waiting. As much as people want to invent that.

But I do think that there's a sense of this guy, you know, and he's also very private. That's the thing that I remember a couple of years ago, he gave me an interview in which he said he was an introvert, which didn't surprise me at all, but was laughed at all over the place. But he is an introvert. He doesn't have a clique. He doesn't have old boys.

He doesn't have cronies. He's a very private guy who is quite distant with his caucus. He's had to learn a bit of that, but that's not helping him now either. Just to follow a couple of things Bruce said, because I love that

Bruce's analysis of this. I'm going to tell you guys something, because once I figured it out, I can't unfigure it out now. I figured out a challenge. I figured out what it is that bugs me about the way they communicate. And it's because the opposition talks in verbs. I've said this before. What are you doing about this? It's all action. And the government responds with adjectives. We are this. And they they they are faced with with what are you going to do about something?

And they describe themselves and it drives people crazy. So in this case, what do you what did you do on election interference? And they we are a free and fair country. But they they constantly describe themselves rather than actually answer a question with a verb. And I think we need some verbs from this government. I've started to refer to it as libsplaining. It's got this quality of we're going to tell you how the world is. Oh, yes. And the implicit idea is that we know how the world is and you don't.

And it's a you can see the trap that it creates for itself and, and different players just keep on using it and extending the use of it. Yeah. Again, no offense to it's, it's among the some of the female cabinet ministers say it's important to know a lot. And it's important to know a lot. And it's,

it has a grating feeling to me is you guys need me to tell you what's important or, and Peter, you remember this, um, communications one-on-one, you can tell, um, people who try to tell you things aren't stories. And that's not a story. No, my editor decides that, not you. And there's a lot of that is, you know, we're going to tell you how the world works. Well, you know where they're all getting that stuff from. These are the professional consultants and communications advisors.

I don't know if Bruce is going to resist this. But that's, you you know they sit there for hours with these people saying okay when you get this question answered this way or you start off your answer this way uh you know you're you're trying to get it back onto our agenda not the questioner's agenda or the opposition's agenda so some of that is is a result of the system we've created. And, you know, to end up with libsplaining or consplaining. Is there any room in this part of the discussion, though, for a little bit of a survey of are there techniques that journalists use that are deliberately intended to be provocative or annoying

or to create more friction rather than more elucidation? I don't know. intended to be provocative or annoying or absolutely that's how you get the best friction rather than more elucidation i don't know i mean it just seems to me like there are broken parts of that and so it's not it's not nefarious inherently for politicians to go how do i protect myself from losing my cool when people ask questions in ways that are yeah listen absolutely that's what they do. And, like, Susan is an example of one of the best ones ever, was the one to Mulrooney, right, after Meech Lake, the roll of dice. I mean, I don't know what your question was there,

but it prompted an answer that was, you know, headline-making and, you know, kind of lives forever. The question was, it was, you've been accused of doing nothing and uh he got defensive and that always works isn't it i'm glad we had this little diversion into journalism um okay uh so the bottom line though on Trudeau at this moment is he's under severe criticism, but he's not in jeopardy of losing his job from either inside or outside. Is that what we're saying? I think Susan's absolutely right about this, that the people in his caucus and cabinet want him to succeed. They believe

that he has the talent. They believe that he knows the files. They like the agenda. They're always going to be parts of a government that disagree with other parts of the government. So there is a little bit of that on some issues, but probably less than I've seen at different times in the past and certainly manageable. I think the question of active management by a prime minister of his government has never really been a thing he's had to contend with as a challenge as much as he does now. And that's not because people will say you have to leave if he doesn't. But it is because people are anxious about the political preparedness of the government to deal with an election if there needs to be one or will be one.

And also just because people at this part of the cycle, they have an expectation of what leadership looks and sounds like. And it's agile and it's in the moment and it's strong management of difficult issues that come up. And they're not seeing that right now. And so it's unsettling to people. And they're looking for, is a strategy going to become apparent to deal with this China situation is the first question. But it's part of a larger sense that Susan alluded

to of have we lost our edge a little bit. Okay, we're going to switch focus and switch subject, but a last word on this one, Susan. Yeah, for my sins, I've watched this guy very closely, and I interviewed him in Windsor in January, I guess it was. And I asked him, why don't we see the Justin Trudeau who was at the Rouleau Commission more? You know, what happens? And he said he did the, you know, in some ways the media, the way they ask me questions. He said I'm not, basically he wasn't throwing to the media. But I have been watching him since that interview and since Rouleau. And I think he is trying to be more forthcoming.

I think he's actually trying, he answered me with this phrase, we would like to do politics in full sentences. And I think he's been trying. I think had this not happened, we might be seeing a different kind of, as I said, he's supposed to be having a good couple of weeks now with Rouleau and these health deals. But this story has taken the story that ate the government, as usual. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, our final segment for today, which will be about Pierre Pellievre. And welcome back.

Susan Delacorte, Bruce Anderson with us for Good Talk. A reminder, Chantel is away this week. She's hiking across Iceland. Or she's at least hiking part of Iceland. Iceland's a much bigger country than we tend to think of it when we fly over it or look at it on a map.

Alright, here's our final segment. We spend most of today talking about the Liberals and Justin Trudeau. I want to say something about, or ask something about Pierre Pell polly because i've noticed this trend at least i think it's a trend maybe i'm overstating it you'll tell me if i am um that whenever he is kind of faced with his own scandal once again in in air quotes he seems to say, I knew nothing about this. Nobody told me about it.

It's wrong. We can't do this. And I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Now, that may be true, but there does seem to be a pattern. Just another example this week on this issue of the German parliamentarian, you know, Nazi. She's been described a number of different ways. Alternative German party visiting Canada, being, you know, welcomed for dinner by three conservative MPs.

She says that she's also talked to Polyev. Polyev says, I've never talked to her. I didn't know anything about this. It's wrong. She's terrible, And they should never have had this meeting. And the three MPs have apologized, although it's a little hard to get at least two of the three to say anything about what happened there. But the same thing happened with that, you know, social media story about how his Twitter or his Instagram was kind of being manipulated by a far-right organization as well. And he said, I didn't know nothing about this.

I didn't know it was happening. It's his own account. He didn't know it was happening. It must have been somebody in his office. We never did find out how it happened, why it happened. But he is rarely on the spot to answer questions in the first place, but when he has been, that seems to have happened on more than one occasion. So is there something there, or am I blowing up little things? Bruce, why don't you start on this?

Well, you know, the idea that he denies things that are obviously fact, I think there is something there. I don't know if he's the first politician to do that and if that is at heart the biggest problem I see, I think the problem that he's got himself into, and we saw other versions of it, Jason Kennedy experienced something similar in Alberta, which is that if you, in pursuit of a job, allow yourself to be supported and to some degree, softly or otherwise nurture support from people who have views that you are not prepared to ultimately stand beside, then that bill comes due at some point. There will come a

time when the people who thought you were with them see that you're not willing to stand with them. And often they don't just sort of politely go, oh, that's too bad that it worked out that way. They have something to say about it. And right now, if I'm him, I kind of feel like one of the things that might happen here is that when you're an opposition politician and you're running for a leader,

you feel such a great sense of liberation to say or do anything to try to get to that job. And then you move into Stornoway and you have the trappings of the office of the leader of opposition and you have the presumption correctly that a lot of people are looking at you and saying, your role is an institutionally important role. And how are you going to deal with that? And so the test that probably enters your mind is different from the test that was there before, which is how am I going to conduct myself in a way that allows people who would never want to think that I talked to Christine Anderson. That's the German politician.

Pardon? That was the name of the German politician, right? Yeah, that's the name of the German politician. I want to convince these voters who haven't really thought very much about me that I'm not part of that part of the conservative movement. I won't say the conservative party, the conservative movement in North America or other places like Germany that holds these rather extremist views. And I probably didn't need to use the word rather. So how does he do that? Well, one of the things that was really interesting for me was how quickly he put out a blunt statement about his MPs and that picture with that German member of parliament.

It was quick. The language was absolutely clear. And then what happened is that two of his MPs, I think, have refused to disavow their participation in it. In any other circumstance, that would be called a caucus revolt. Maybe not a large revolt, but a pretty clear signal that he doesn't have that ability to say to them, guys, I don't know what we did before. I'm going to pretend that none of that ever happened. But now our new rule is we don't dine with people who have these views. And if we're seen in their vicinity, we have to say we don't know how they got here or how we got here

or what we had to eat together. And if we talk together, we didn't talk about anything interesting. It's a challenge of his own making. And in my view, if he wants to lead a conservative party that doesn't just win because the liberals became exhausted and unpopular, then he can't half allow that. He can't half ride that horse. He's going to need to be clear. Jason Kenney showed

what happens when you try to cultivate support from people whose views you do not accept, whose views you do not share, and whose views ultimately you're going to disavow at some point in the future. So I think he's faced with a real challenge, but we could all see it coming. And I don't think we know how he's going to deal with it just yet. Susan? Well, this is going to sound weird given how long Pierre Polyev has been in parliament, but it's a rookie mistake. He's making rookie mistakes as a leader in his dealings with the media. And I include those horrendous rants against CBCc i'm allowed to say that i don't work for cbc i i just find it appalling to see somebody yelling trump like against uh reporters in a scrum why is it a

rookie mistake because being in the harper government was not good training for dealing with the media that um you saw this with Jason Kenney as well, who was one of the more media-friendly ministers, that they developed a style there where they could be belligerent or non-responsive to the media or take certain liberties with the truth, and they didn't suffer much punishment for it.

So, which is interesting because my colleague tonda and i have observed this as well that is not the way harper got into we all remember stephen harper as an opposition politician who gave fascinating scrums who was a panelist on tv shows i talked to him every day when I was writing my first book. He was enormously accessible as an opposition politician. He developed his media hatred once he became prime minister. But Pierre Polyev, who has never had to deal with the media, as far as I know, is making rookie mistakes. And as Tonda and I have discussed too, this is exactly the time where he should be out there trying a bunch of things as Stephen Harper did so that to prepare

you for the job of prime minister. He's not doing it. So he's, he looks like somebody who just rolled up to Parliament Hill. And he's been here a long time. You know, the only point I disagree with you on, I don't think, I think Stephen Harper was very deliberate in those opposition days. You're right, he was totally accessible. I never had a problem ever getting him. But I don't think he ever had any love for the media. He was, even though he was part of it at times as you said because

you know he was on kind of the original ad issue panel steven harper who would have who would have thanked it right can i tell a quick story about that just does it it'll have to be quick it will be really quick i phoned him when i heard that he was thinking of coming back after he'd been out and he said what do you bet that i do and i said you're not going to you're not going to come back to politics and he said why not and i said because you don't like people and he's he had the best answer he said oh i like people i just don't like the people you like right but i think you made the point about introvert before i feel like when we're talking about Pierre Poliev and Stephen Harper, we're talking about people who are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

Right. And I think that's an interesting way to think about these two people. Harper would not have wanted to talk to anybody about any of the work that he was doing left to his own devices. He would just do his work. Poliev seems to be most happy when he's waving his arms and making a fuss. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. I've only got a minute or so left. So here's a short question for you. Both the media and the politicians in general suffer from the same affliction, which is a lessening of trust on the part of the public in either one of those professions. Does anything happen in the last week as we've circulated around this story that would say to people, you know, I trust,

I trust that profession more than I did a week ago. I don't see anybody leaping to an answer here. No, no. You know, I think that, well, I just actually measured trust in a lot of different institutions. And every single institution I measured, whether it's churches or unions or environmental groups, everybody sort of got the same problem, which is that people say, well, I don't trust anything automatically. It depends what the point of view is or the argument or the fact situation. So I'm worried about journalism from the standpoint of the continued

erosion of the resources in it. And there was some layoffs yesterday. I saw it global, which really kind of dispiriting, especially for people who had been doing some really important journalism. And so I worry about that, but I don't think that's a trust question so much. I think it's more of a capacity question going forward. You got a one word answer there, Susan, because that's all we got time for. Pretty impressed with the public servants who came before the committee the last couple of days. I thought they, once again, the National Security Advisor,

they had a thesis. They're very serious people, and I'm glad that they're in the jobs they are. All right, we'll leave it at that. Susan, it's been great to have you with us. We look forward to having you again at some point, the next time Chantel goes hiking around the world somewhere that was great and Bruce as always thank you that's it for this day's good talk we'll be back again on Monday with the latest edition of the bridge thanks for listening I'm Peter Mansbridge bye for now have a great weekend Thank you.