The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - The Fatigue Dilemma

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

Just when we thought we had turned a corner on Covid, a new variant pops up and has a lot of people worried.  Bruce and Chantal try to put Covid fatigue, and Climate fatigue in context.  That and a lot more on another great Good Talk.

Are you ready for Good Talk? Ah, the sound of Good Talk on a wonderful Friday morning. Snow, fresh snow on the ground here in Stratford, Ontario, where I am. Bruce is in Ottawa, Chantel is in Montreal. Okay, well in spite of that inspiring and encouraging opening and sounding so good I'm actually kind of grumpy today maybe maybe fatigued is the is a better word than grumpy but you know when I I started off this week I got my booster on tuesday and i was feeling really good feeling good about where we kind of are on the whole covid story knowing that there you know there have been a few spikes here

and there but uh looking forward to this being the last winter of it all and by early spring it's going to be all over so that's how i was feeling and there were no serious on on my booster so we moved into the middle of the week and then suddenly the picture out there does not look good i mean yesterday news starts to filter out of south africa and southern africa a number of countries of a new variant they call the b11529 and they really worried about it that it could be worse than delta and it may make vaccines kind of irrelevant at least the current crop of vaccines so i mean these are all the initial worries about something like this but it's being taken seriously you know countries are shutting down their travel britain's not

allowing any more from south Africa or Southern Africa, I think there are nine countries altogether, into the United Kingdom. And, you know, there are 500 or 600 people a day come from Southern Africa into the UK. So they've shut that down. The Americans are shutting it down. A number of different countries are i'm sure the decision is going to be made in in ottawa today to do something similar i don't know whether we have any direct flights i don't think we have any one of the last time i went to south africa to go

through new york um anyway that has got me worried and depressed. We pick up the weather report and we look at the, you know, incoming again in BC. None of this is good. So am I being overly… Happy Friday. Happy Friday, everybody. I think you… Maybe you're underestimating the side effects of that booster.

Yeah, maybe. Well, I got one too. And I got to say, I kind of feel similar to Peter about this, right? And here's why. I mean, I'd be very keen to hear a more encouraging note from you, Chantal. But what occurs to me is that we have kind of exhausted our stores of political will and we might need to find them again. And I don't know how that's going to work. I feel like there's a real risk that both the financial resources and the sense of togetherness

in the fight. God help us. I hope this just turns out to be a two-day thing and everybody says, don't worry about it. But I think that I had a similar reaction to you, Peter, which is it kind of triggers all of these thoughts about how bad the last two years was and how anxiety-causing it was and how much impact it had on our politics and our public policy and social fabric. And so I'm really hoping that in two or three days,

we hear enough encouraging things to believe that this isn't going to become another version of the same thing. I hope that the policymakers take the advice that's really about making fast decisions, even if they're the wrong decisions, but from the standpoint of reducing the risk rather than kind of waiting to make decisions until you know a little bit more. Not everybody's going to agree with that. And I hope that if we do have to deal with this, if it is a bigger thing, then we hope that there's some sense of unity that we can find around it too. All right, Chantal.

So guys, lie down on that couch and I'll prescribe something. This is what we came for. This is what we came for. This is what we came for this morning. It's impossible to deny that the elements of a perfect storm are in place. A new variant about which we know very little so far. And there will be more variants in the Christmas season.

You combine the two and certainly governments have caused to worry. That being said, we are in much better shape than a year ago at this time. I was reminded watching the House of Commons this week that this was the time when the Conservatives decided to go to the barricades to tell us how the rest of the world was about to get vaccinated and we were going to be left behind. And here we are. And it did paint a very gloomy picture.

Again, the holiday season coming, which is normally a season when people catch all kinds of bugs. Vaccines can be tweaked, but it is a reminder that we're not through the pandemic. And again, and it's tempting because we live in a relatively wealthy country. It's tempting to think that we're through with it because we're not doing too badly and to forget the message that we won't be doing okay until all of the world is doing not too badly, because that's how variants come about.

So somehow I get all the gloom thing. I turn off the radio too when I hear we're going to tell you about the new variants. Tell me when it's serious or not, but I don't want to hear speculation about it. But I think it's also timely to be reminded of all those issues. Bruce talks about political will. Well, the political will to look out for others or not us has also gone down dramatically. And this is a reminder that before we find the political will or the will to go through another winter like the previous two we need to find the will to make sure that others are also okay and we have not been doing that over the past six months you know the south africa story um it's funny because well it's not funny but uh it's ironic

because i was just talking about it on yesterday's podcast and it was kind of spanning the globe this was before this news came out looking at what the vaccination rates were in different parts of the world. And, of course, Africa is in a terrible state and most countries down around 1% or 2% vaccination rates. South Africa is one of the highest rates, and it was only around 30%. So, you know, that doesn help in in stopping a spread of something uh if if there's something new out there in terms of a variant um bruce i you know you have your you're pretty close to the ground with the a lot of the people who are working on covid uh

anti-covid strategy in ottawa on the vaccination program and everything because you're involved in some of that stuff yourself. But have you heard anything in the last 12, 24 hours about how seriously Canada is taking this? But I'd be absolutely shocked if there aren't emergency preparedness discussions or meetings starting today, maybe started yesterday. I think that's the right thing for people in government to do. I think if there's any silver lining here, it's that we actually went through some learning, including some things that worked and worked because we did them quickly enough, and some things that probably didn't work because we didn't do them quickly enough or we didn't do them well enough or the level of coordination wasn't strong enough i i think the you know i take chantal's point that we have to

look at this not so much as a how do we shelter ourselves in place from the virus as it moves around the world that's a hard political sell sometimes it's not because people don't have a sense of of charity or concern for others it's that this has been the most fear inspiring thing that i've ever measured in all my years in polling because it's a combination of health fear, fear of the kind of the unknown transmission and economic fear. And also, you know, I think it showed us that our ability to rally together, you know, I kind of give us a B minus on it, but it wasn't an A. And it hasn't been consistently good.

And we're kind of in the zone now where, you know, we, I really hope that as meetings or discussions go, and again, cross my fingers that by Tuesday, we hear enough evidence that we say, okay, this just kind of lit up our board, but we don't need to worry about it that much. But if that's not the case, then if I'm the prime minister, I really want to bring in Aaron O'Toole and Jagmeet Singh and Yves-Francois Blanchet, and I want to have a common front approach to this. I don't want it to be politicized. Nobody afford the the sense that politics is letting us down is getting in the way of making the right choices will that happen probably not uh should it happen 100 it

should uh but i want to be an optimist and uh i don't want chantal to be the only optimist on the podcast this morning. I'm not supposed to be the optimist, but that's, but my nature does tend in that direction when faced with things I can't control. Bruce talks about our capacity to rally and, and yes, that's important, but I think, and I'm going to link this to the second part of your, you're in a gloomy mood this morning, which was climate change, the environment, what's happening in BC, what's been happening in Atlantic Canada. It's okay to rally. But I think over the next decade, what's going to be really tested and the link between those two issues is our capacity to adapt. COVID-19 is not going to be disappearing, whether this latest twist in the plot is ominous or not. And Canadians, by and large, have really worked hard and been doing fairly well at adapting.

And they will need to keep on doing that. And the same will be true of what has been happening in BC or what has been happening in Atlantic Canada and which will come to us in central Canada in some shape or form at some point. Having a strategy to mitigate climate change is important, but it is not an instant recipe for the things that are already programmed to happen. We will have to do both, find a way to move away from high emissions and produce less of them, but at the same time, we are going to have to adapt to a changing climate because that will be happening. This is

not what we've seen in BC since last summer. That's not a one-off. And there will be more of those. So I think rallying, important. Adaptation, more important. And I have to say two things. On rallying, I watched the debate in part and the vote in the House of Commons this week over a return to a hybrid parliament. And while I don't have very strong views one way or another, it seems to me that the way of sanity is to allow for hybrid debates because of all of the things that we've been saying and the notion that we would put MPs either at risk to their own health by having them travel for hours on planes and trains, etc., but also to forbid them from participating in the political debate because they can't get to Parliament Hill or they should stay away and need. We remind ourselves that the first parliamentarian died as a result of COVID-19 just a few days ago. So that's one.

But where I found more encouragement on the rallying side is that the debate over what has been happening in BC is very much revolved around adaptation. And I think on that score, our parties are on the same page. They will find variations because that's how you raise money and you kind of hide those differences. But I think they will be looking in the same direction together on the issue of adaptation because they don't have a choice. There won't be a good way to adapt and a bad way to adapt. But what that means is that those who will deny that there's a need to adapt have now basically lost whatever audience they could hope to find inside that parliament. Yeah, I think that's right. But I guess if I'm a little bit lost whatever audience they could hope to find inside that parliament.

Yeah, I think that's right. But I guess if I'm a little bit, I don't know, it's not cynical, but I kind of look at it and say all three of the major parties want to win seats in BC and it's impossible in the aftermath of what's been going on in BC not to embrace an adaptation and we have to take climate policy seriously so even within the conservative caucus if there was some uh friction around that they may as well give up on bc if they're not gonna if they're not going to embrace a a common sense of urgency to that and so that can't it can never be a good thing what's been happening, but it certainly is clarifying, I think, for the politics of against climate denial and against let's get to it later

and kick the can down the road and all of that. So I think that's really good. And I'm glad you raised the point about the hybrid debate, because I feel like even if this new variant doesn't turn out to be a thing the thing that will make at least me and probably a lot of other people kind of go a little bit crazy watching this parliament is if everything the trivial to the massively important becomes politicized and as far as i'm concerned hybrid debate should be a trivial choice. It shouldn't be that hard. I'm not saying it's not. I agree with you about the choice, Chantel.

But to decide that, you know, if you're the conservatives, that this is an effort by Justin Trudeau to create a special elite work option for MPs, when we all know that there are lots of people who are working from home and hybrid workplaces are not a political choice, they're a choice that organizations make. So I'm really hopeful that on things like softwood lumber, where there was some politicization that felt to me a bit excessive, and on hybrid parliament, that all sides kind of hold their powder a little bit more. I know that's a tall order because they're not built to do that. But I do think the country is ready for just get the heads down and do the work. All right. Just a couple of points on hybrid parliament and the conservatives.

Let's note that one of the reasons the conservatives and the Bloc oppose that return is because, and I have watched it because I did watch question period over the spring, is the fact that the government was keeping its ministers in offices on Zoom and not making sure that there was some contingent of bodies in the House of Commons. And I have to say, having watched it, and in particular Minister Sajan, who was under siege over what was going on at National Defence, it's a lot easier to mount off lines on a screen than when you're standing in the House of Commons answering questions from people across from you. So if the government has returned to hybrid for reasons of keeping its ministers and itself out of the line of fire, I totally understand that the Conservatives and the Bloc would see that as just a maneuver to diminish the House of Commons. And I think the onus is on the Liberals to show that there was some good faith in that proposal.

Because otherwise, and that's why I don't have strong views one way or the other. Me, I'd prefer if I were an MP to have the option of a hybrid. But if I were in opposition and I watched empty seats across from me every day at question period, I'd say, what the hell is this about? And don't forget that order extends until the end of June. So that's basically until now, until Parliament wraps up in the summer. Right. And especially if you're an opposition member and you see the empty seat of the minister you want to question and you know that that minister, he or she, is actually a block away

sitting in their office watching it all on television. Anyway, I want to take a quick pause here, but before I do, I want to leave one nice thought about these last couple of days on the COVID front, on the vaccination front, and that was the remarkable scenes that we've started to see unfold in different parts of the country of uh young kids getting their shots of five to eleven year olds and you know full credit to a number of the provinces and cities that have organized you know clinics in you know in in convention centers and and and and hockey arenas and so forth

because they're doing a heck of a job. It's not easy to bring a five-year-old in to get a needle. But these places have been set up with, you know, lots of kid-friendly things going on, clowns and, you know, different art shows and this, that, and the other thing to keep the kids occupied as they await their moment and in the few seconds after they get their needle. So, I mean, that's been a positive move this week, a very positive move as the vaccinations

start to roll into that 5 to 11-year-old set. It's going to change lots of things, including our vaccination rates for the over 5 in the country, you know, which was already at like 80 or 81 percent it's uh one assumes that's going to go up um fairly quickly over the next few weeks um anyway uh enough on that i want to talk more politics uh but to do that i first have to take this quick break. All right, back with Good Talk. Sean Teleberry is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa.

I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. You're listening on Channel 167, Canada Talks on Sirius XM Canada or on your favorite podcast platform. And wherever you're listening, we're glad you're with us. Bruce, you mentioned, I don't know, 10 minutes ago, this scenario you'd love to see happen. You linked it directly to the current situation, but I think many of us would like to see happen you'd linked it directly to the the current situation but i think many of us would like to see this happen if at all possible on any number of different contentious issues you

outlined this scenario where you saw the prime minister sitting in his office with the opposition leader with the ndp leader with the leader of the bloc quebecois um trying to come up with kind of a common front that they could all agree on to show a certain degree of unity now you know listen let's face it that's only happened a couple of times in the history of our country but it's usually but when it has happened it's happened around some kind of crisis situation or some major issue that they all agreed, the leaders of whatever day it was, that there needed to be the show of a common front. Now, in terms of these four individuals, can either of you ever see that happening,

given the different agendas they each have and the different situations each of them are in not just one or two of them each of them are in can you ever see that happening are these four people capable of that kind of a a meeting and chantal why don't you start i'm wary of um possibly because I discovered when I covered the constitutional file that for Francophones, a good debate involves a lot of opposition coming from all sides. That's a good day. And I noticed that for many of my English speaking colleague, a good day at the negotiating table was when everyone was getting along. I come from the other side of this, which is that if you hit those pieces of rocks together, you get sparks of intelligence.

Otherwise, they're just rocks and nothing happens. We have come together, and I'm not going to those personalities yet, but I understand your question. Different people did come together, including Aaron O'Toole, who at the time was a critic on the file, on NAFTA and the renegotiation. So there is a capacity in this country to come together, including the federal leadership on issues that matter. And we would not have renegotiated NAFTA in the way that ended up cutting Canada's losses in a major way without that coming together. You can give credit to Chrystia Freeland for having lead on the file, but it would not have worked if the premiers who were not of the same persuasion, if big labor unions and the parties in the House of Commons had not looked together in the same

direction. I would argue that while there are differences in Canada's approach on China, and the Conservatives have been pushing really hard for a tougher policy on China. There was not a party in the House of Commons that was advocating a solution that was put forward by many people on the outside with influence, which was to just cave. So on issues like that where you needed some show of unity, it did happen. Now, to those particular personalities, I'm not sure how far you want them to come together on issues before it becomes more of a liability than an asset. I do believe the opposition parties did their job and improved some of the pandemic-related measures. And I do believe that on China, the conservatives were more right than wrong,

and the liberals were more wrong than right. So I'm very wary of the notion that we should think everything is great when everyone is getting along. It's just not where I come from. Bruce? Well, that's not, you know, like I appreciate the characterization of my point that way, but that's not exactly what I'm suggesting. I do think that friction and tension is important and competition is important.

And so really what I'm kind of arguing for, I guess, is that this is a very unique moment in the history of our country. And the level of politics needs to match the level of urgency and collective will and the decisions that we make this many hundreds of billions of dollars into additional debts will have a material long-term effect, I think, both on our politics and potentially also on our economy. So I guess, Peter, I'm always careful not to sound like our mutual friend, Andrew Coyne, who wishes that politics would not be an elephant, but be a pineapple. It is going to stay more or less like it is, or it's going to pause being that for a little while, and then it's going to go back to what it is. That's in the nature of the beast. And that's,

as Chantal has sort of argued, I think quite well, that that's not a bad thing. I think that what I observed in the period of time when I was working on the vaccination program that I got involved in, and it is that there was a remarkable level of conversation and collaboration between the business community and government and social groups, all trying to kind of get to a conclusion around a single part of this that was better for the country, rather than kind of look at it from the standpoint of, well, if we do that and not this, is that better for me? And it's not as good for them. And I definitely feel that right now, the conversation had been starting to splinter on the economic issues

because the government said, well, we're in kind of easing our way out of the pandemic and into recovery mode. And so kind of 15% easing out of pandemic, 85% growth mode. And we may find ourselves in a situation where we need to have a conversation about extending income supports and extending support for business. And I would just rather see that be a conversation that didn't have business saying, we don't want those programs extended for workers. We only want them extended for business owners and conservatives saying, well, we can't afford those things. And New Democrats saying we can afford whatever we want.

That's going to happen probably. So I'll conclude my thought bubble by saying what I'm wishing for is probably like elephants turning to pineapples. But I'm fatigued with this. And I kind of feel a lot of other people are. And so if you ask me, is there a scenario where Aaron O'Toole would say, I should do that? Absolutely, there is. He's probably going to lose his leadership unless he finds some way to convince his party that tacking towards the national mood is the right thing to do for the Conservative Party of Canada. Right now, he's trying to straddle that argument.

And I don't think straddling it is going to work for him. And this may be an opportunity for him to say, you know what, I may as well put all my chips on being a what he called the other day, a professional, thoughtful, political leader. That would be the advice I would give him, not just because I think it's right for the country, but because I think it's the right political choice for him. The problem for Mr. O'Toole, and that would be a problem for any conservative leader, is that the fundraising of the party is based on stoking anger and describing Justin Trudeau and the government and every move that the government makes is terrible and something that you should not wish on yourself or your children. I was watching all week and I reminded myself how much I had not missed those. The disconnect between the performance that Bruce talks about,

Aaron O'Toole in front of his caucus making the argument that Bruce refers to, and the press releases that the Conservative Party churns out. And that's not even fundraising. It's press releases. But where partisanship kind of blinds you to any serious argument that would make you want to say, unless you're a diehard anti-Trudeau conservative, makes you want to say, would I want these peopleing every single move of the government in such diminishing terms, they would then diminish anyone who does not think like them once in power in the same demeaning way. And I think that's tied to their addiction to being appealed to on that very basis. So I don't know how you get to a different place if you're Errol Nothool. I agree with Bruce that it would probably help his party standing in the polls immensely. And I see that some in this caucus, many are making that effort to come across as professional and pushing for ideas.

But they kind of undermine themselves once they put those thoughts on paper with a view of scoring partisan points. Yeah, I agree. But I kind of feel like we've been having the conversation, a lot of us, I think, about the addiction of the Conservative Party to the people who give money because they're angry. And we've been talking about that addiction for several years now. And so the question is, is the right choice for Erin O'Toole to kind of live with that addiction and kind of kick the can down the road or to say, you know, my only hope is not to be the angriest guy who will satisfy

the people who give the most money when they're the most angry. But to say we need to, we need to break that addiction a little bit, we need to kind of do something that feels more like a dramatic shift away from that. Again, I'm not, I'm not Pollyanna-ish. I don't think this will probably happen. But I do think that if I was in that office and anybody asked my advice, it would not be, hey, you should just support the liberals. It would be, you should rehabilitate your party's position so that people who are concerned about this emerging issue, if it turns out to be a big issue, understand that what you're not trying to do is score political points every day,

but instead to make sure that Canadians say, when we're done with Justin Trudeau, these people represent a viable, thoughtful, serious-minded alternative government. And so in every crisis, I suppose there is opportunity. And that's the opportunity I see if I'm him. Go to the argument of coming together because we are at a time of unprecedented crisis. I think in our lifetimes before this pandemic, the biggest existential crisis that Canada faced was the Quebec referendum in 1995. Now having written a book that basically asked all of the players, the main players,

how they would have acted the day after had there been a yes vote, I can safely report that there was zero hope of a common approach. On the contrary, the Reform Party wanted Jean Chrétien gone. Some of Jean Chrétien's English-speaking ministers wanted to replace him with someone from outside Quebec, replace him and the Minister of Finance, go down the list. The people on the Sovereign Test Camp did not agree on the meaning of their vote. Go down the list. So if we could not come together in kind of a common way at that

particular juncture, I don't hold out a lot of hope, although it's less complicated to come together on the pandemic and the recovery than it was to come together on the unity issue. But I don't hold out a lot of hope because my thought coming out of that book was that there's not a lot of forward thinking in political circles, including at the highest levels. And to just go back to that period, I remember the Reform Party and Stephen Harper pushing for something that eventually became the Liberal Clarity Act. I also remember what the liberals were saying about that when the Reform Party was doing it. It was barbarians at the gate who wanted to tear the country apart.

And that's where I became very wary of the notion that we would not want very contrarian ideas to be brought to the fore in a time of crisis, because the defense mechanism of governments sometimes needs to be rushed until it caves to reality and to the needs of the day. You two are always fascinating to listen to in these last few minutes have been really quite something and i think we've all learned a lot i you know i i fear that for many canadians the way they look at the politics of today is that when when these parties get together on some major issue and they try to determine which path they're going to take, the path is usually chosen by trying to determine

who's going to win on this, you know, who's going to lose on this. And that kind of guides their decision. Now, yeah, I get it. That's, you know, I'm not being naive either. You know, that's politics. And that can spark some great stuff. I love your phrase earlier, Chantel, of, you know that's politics and that can spark some great stuff i love your phrase earlier chantelle of you know sparks of intelligence often come with the you know the rocks hitting each

other um but as i also said that you know this is one of those there haven't been many moments in the history of our country um and this may be one of them uh where people would be like quite inspired and feel pretty confident about the future if they saw their political leaders seeming to give a nod to each other on a common strategy um but it always seems to come back and i'm not i'm not just circling aaron o'toole on this each of them have their own agendas and each of them tend to look at these things in terms of uh who's going to win who's going to lose or at least we seem to look at it that way uh which doesn't do any good to uh to anything to your point, not to circle there, yes, if it's that serious,

then why is the prime minister not crafting what one could call a war cabinet and inviting people from the other opposition parties to actually sit in the decision-making loop? Imagine the liberals doing that? I can't. But that is, and by the way, that was something that almost happened at the time of the referendum. Frank McKenna says he was the premier of New Brunswick then, and he says Jean Chrétien called him up

a few days before and said, if the yes wins, would you join a unity cabinet that presumably would have also included Jean Chagall, who was the conservative leader back then, et cetera, et cetera. But no one thinks outside that box on Parliament Hill, starting with the liberals. That is not how they see what they, and many would call it, the game. I think that's, you know, look, I think that is absolutely the way that things have been. And I think the question in my mind is, is this a moment big enough? And we don't really know, we're just dealing with about 24 hours worth of coverage of something that might turn out to be

nothing. But if it turns out to be another emerging health and economic crisis then i can i really believe that it is that time where politicians should just look at what their responsibilities are and say what's the really what's the best way for us to discharge that what is the way to avoid that dismal scenario of that stupid debate about vaccines and when they were arriving and how long it was going to be and why was Mexico first and all of that stuff, which I'm not trying to be critical of the conservatives in that. I'm just saying that's what politics as usual looks like if politicians don't decide to do something other than politics as usual. And if ever there was a time when voters are fatigued enough with the partisanship and don't have any real strong affinity other than the people who donate, but that's a small proportion of the population as a whole. And if you think particularly about younger voters, and every party should be, they want a common front on climate change. They want a common front on afford change. They want a common front on affordability and the cost of living and the cost of housing. They're going to want something

that feels like not politics around COVID, especially if they're in those kinds of jobs where their work life, their incomes can be kind of turned upside down so i think the conditions are are unique and uh and maybe they won't be unique on monday hopefully they won't okay we're going to take another break um i've got a number of things i want to try and um you know clear up or not clear up but talk about uh in our final 10-minute block here, that are a result of the throne speech earlier this week. But that was a great discussion. We'll package that one.

We'll sell that one separately. That'll be out there. Okay, are we getting royalties on it? Absolutely. It should be a hat. Of course, whatever you want, you tell me. Because the three of us can get together on that. Okay, we can take a break. We'll be a hat. Of course. Whatever you want, you tell me. Because the three of us can get together on that. Okay, we can take a break. We'll be right back in just a moment.

Okay, back for our final segment on this week's Good Talk. Sean Tells in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Stratford, Ontario. Okay. There was a number of people have pointed out the way a certain region of the world was categorized in the speech from the throne the other day. And I'm wondering whether we should be reading anything into this more than just a change of wording. We always used to refer to, or at least in the last 20, 30 years,

we used to refer to a certain part of the world as the Asia-Pacific. Apparently in the throne speech, Asia-Pacific was changed to Indo-Pacific. So what should we take? Should we be reading anything deep into that? This is a bit beyond my pay grade, to tell you the truth. I just wonder whether it fits into the whole China thing. Well, for sure, we are going to get a reset policy on China. Whether that fits in it, I have to say, I'm not sure.

But then I'm not one who, and possibly because I learned my lesson, all those at-issue panels where Andrew and I tried to find something profoundly, structurally promising in Trump speeches, I was reminded this week that all these words we expended on those words never panned out and we never talked about it again because nothing happened. So I did not notice the change and I'm not too sure I can say anything particularly instructive about it. Well, I do think it does mean something uh probably a couple of things i think there has been some intimation by the government that they are looking at the opportunity to build a trade

agreement with countries in that region that don't include china um and so i think that's the kind of thing where there's not ever going to be a lot of conversation about it until there's something that's worth talking about. But I do think that the government, I don't know if I'm where Chantal is on did the government have China wrong and the opposition have it right. I kind of look at the outcome and say, I don't know if the Liberals had taken the approach that the Conservatives were suggesting that the two Michaels would be back in Canada. I don't know that. So I'm more hesitant to sort of come down on one side or the other of that. I do think the sense of helplessness in the face of a Chinese political ambition and aggression, even, is quite palpable with people who pay attention to politics and geopolitics.

And I say it that way because a lot of people don't. But I can tell you that we do see in our surveys increasing numbers of people saying, well, you know, maybe a few years ago we thought a trade agreement with China was a good idea. And now we're not so sure. They're not full on anti-China. That one case that kind of kept on being in the news for a long period of time didn't transfix people to the point where they said, now I know what we should do with China. It made them anxious about the role that China was prepared to play in the world to exert its strength, basically. And the conversations that the Americans are having around Taiwan right now,

I think, are another part of that. So I do think that there's a signal about changing geopolitics in the region and that Canada is going to have a relationship of whatever sort with China, but that's not necessarily the same as the relationship it will have with other Indo-Pacific nations. It's funny, thinking back almost 20 years now, when Prime Minister Kraytchen started all those trade missions to China, right? Every year, he'd go there and drag along with him all kinds of Canadian business leaders, and cut all kinds of, you know, billion-dollar deals between China and Canada.

And he'd ride around on a bicycle through the streets of Beijing. Or he'd go racing up the Great Wall of China, which I tell you is no easy feat. I don't know how he did that. It's tough enough just to walk up certain elements of it. But to see that change, that was pretty popular at the time, fairly popular. But if you're, what you're saying that approach, was that courting China and developing economic ties would bring China to the kind of democratic values as we were selling and doing business, and at the same time, we were exporting democratic values,

which turned out to be little more than a convenient spin to sell business opportunities. There is absolutely no evidence than this revolving door of countries that went, like Jean Chrétien in the case of Canada, courting the Chinese regime and soft-peddling the human rights abuses of all kinds did anything but to encourage the regime to actually double down on some of those abuses. So, you know, Pierre Trudeau set Canada on a course different from that of the United States towards China a long time ago, and that has injured as a major idea within the Liberal Party and up to a point within Canadian public opinion. But I don't think that thinking is appropriate to the times,

because of developments in China that do not at all validate the approach of Jean Chrétien and others, but also because the Canada-U.S. relationship probably cannot sustain a very different approach these days to China and Taiwan from that of the Biden administration. Well, it's also, I think, true that China, unlike 20 years ago, is talking about militarization of the discussion far more regularly. And I've got to believe that sane heads in the United States are very focused on that. Because there's some real questions about what would a conflict look like and how would it work and who would be with america and what would be the um the spread of it and um i only say that because i'm looking at some stories even you know recently the chinese foreign ministry spokesmen say this could whatever the step is this could severely damage regional peace and intensify the arms race we're used to

not hearing language like that um you know unless we go back to the cold war with the so former soviet union and a little bit with russia after that but this is quite different and i think that the conversation may be um becoming more a question of well what, can we really have a trade agreement and an economic relationship? Well, there's a lot of saber rattling about militarization of the region by China. What happened to Hong Kong kind of leaves a mark that should not be forgotten. I mean, the deal on Hong Kong was not what has been happening over the past two years. And that means Taiwan is clearly in the sights of China, and not just for economic or diplomatic reasons.

Bruce is right, for military reasons. I don't know how it plays out if there is an attempt on China to take control of Taiwan, but I suspect we're talking military and not economic issues here. On Tuesday of this week, The Bridge did a special on the situation between Russia and Ukraine and the way the rest of the world, including Canada, was looking at that. It's well worth listening to if you want to go back and download it. It's been downloaded a lot by a lot of people around the world and had some reaction to it.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is between that situation and the situation that Bruce and Chantel just outlined in terms of the China-Taiwan situation in particular, these are hot spots at this moment. And a miscalculation on the part of anybody, not just the principals, could literally set the world on fire. So we've got to watch these stories very carefully. And the Canadian government may be a small player but an important player nevertheless in having things to say about both situations. I've got two minutes left. The throne speech was a throne speech and we've made our references to it already but if there's

one thing in that speech that you think is important that we should be monitoring for the days ahead or the months ahead, what would that be? And sorry to cramp you on time, but only 30 or 40 seconds each on this. Chantelle. How many decades has it been, Peter, since the word inflation crept up in a throne speech. And there has been more talk about inflation over the past week on both sides of the House of Commons than at any time over the six weeks of the last campaign. So I'm going to keep my eye on the fiscal update that could come before the end of the year, but mostly the spring budget to see if that signals a kind of a shift in the fiscal course of the government. Bruce, I think all of the questions about economic policy are a little bit suspended until we see what the effect of this is. The thing that I'm really interested in is the point that Chantal made at the beginning, which is that I think we had the last election that we'll ever have about whether we should do more to combat climate change.

And going forward, it'll be about what to do and how fast to do it. You know, that's been the question for 20 years, right? At least 20 years. Why is this moment? There's been a lot of political skirmishing about it. And all I'm saying is I think that's over. And that's why you think this moment is different? I think you can't compete for the votes of urban young people, let alone the broader society in politics in Canada, with the kind of policies that Andrew Scheer had or even Aaron O'Toole's, which were better than Andrew Scheer's, let alone Jason Kenney's or Stephen Harper's. And so the last

missing piece for me, because I don't really think too much about the People's Party in this context, is the idea that conservatives will be working on actual alternative policies, which may in some cases be better than the ideas that the liberals have, partly because the economic circumstances and the investment markets are driving businesses towards those solutions increasingly. All right. We're going to wrap it up for this day. It's been a great talk. As a good talk should be.

That's what this has been. And as always, appreciate both your time, Chantel in Montreal and Bruce in Ottawa. Just a quick closing thought in terms of a lot of you have written this week asking for signed book plates. This next week is the last week I can do that for you for my new book, Off the Record. Send along to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Okay. Another week. Another moment of exciting, good talk

to have with the two of you. It's been great. We'll talk to you again in a week's time. And the bridge will be back of course on monday have a great weekend have a safe weekend and let's hope the uh concerns that are being expressed around the world on this issue of the south africa variant are ones that we can deal with and handle we're probably going to know thanks chantal and peter by the way at your restaurant that you've invested in, they're out of books.

People have been asking for the books. So if you want to send more books, I'm sure that those will sell. I'll get on that right away. Does he get a penny for every plug he supports for your book? Absolutely. He's just a big traffic builder at the restaurant, you know, to know that you can get this scarce and much in demand book. All right. Got to go.

That music signals the end of in demand book. All right. Got to go. That music signals the end of another good talk. Take care.