The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The First Round: Trudeau vs Poilievre

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

After much pre-event discussion, the opening round of the Justin versus Pierre match took place and Chantal and Bruce have their scorecards ready.  All this at the same time there's chatter about a new civility around Parliament.  Any chance of that?  All that and a lot more this week.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Toronto, Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal, Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. Going to start with Fiona. We've got lots to talk about today, but I want to make a mark right off the bat. You know, obviously this is a Friday. It hasn't really started yet, but it is a powerhouse weather system that is moving up the Atlantic coast, and it's going to hit the Maritimes and eventually Newfoundland over the next few hours. Well, the next 24 to 48 hours, let's put it that way.

And there is every indication that this is incredibly powerful. Right now, it's at over 200 kilometers an hour. This system is moving and it's going to be well over 150 to 200 as it hits the Atlantic coast, powers across Nova Scotia, heads toward, you know, touches a bit of PEI, heads toward Newfoundland. Bruce, what can we say about this? I mean, preparation's obviously underway there, but there must be more than just preparations taking place on the Atlantic coast.

Well, I think the first thing I would say is that people are probably used to a story about a hurricane that touched down in the United States and then the remnants of which ended up creating unusual storm conditions in Atlantic Canada. But this, by all accounts, is different. This is an unusual path for a hurricane. It looks as though it's not going to cause huge impacts on the United States, but the biggest impact might well be felt directly in Nova Scotia and in parts of Atlantic Canada. And I'm not an expert in meteorology by any means, but it does, from the look of it, seem like it could be a storm of truly epic proportions in terms of the impact on people there. So, to your point, Peter, I think that the federal government and the provincial governments and

local officials, I'm sure, will be mobilizing both in the near term to help remind people of what it is or inform people of what it is they can do to remain safe, but also obviously to put in place emergency preparedness and response activities for something that might be a lot more significant, and hopefully it won't, a lot more significant than anything that we've seen in a very long while. All right. a lot more significant than anything that we've seen in a in a very long while all right well with that we will uh we will move on but we want to acknowledge what's happening there these things can change at the last minute the track can change the you know the direction

of these storms can change but as of this moment the friday morning, it is heading directly towards the eastern half of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton especially, and PEI, and then onward toward Newfoundland and parts of northern Quebec. So this is, you know, the more it travels over land, the less powerful it becomes. So keep that in mind. Chantal, you want to just mention something? And the Magdalen Islands. And the Magdalen Islands. Which is already playing a part in the conversation and the election campaign for obvious reasons.

Right. Okay. All good things to keep in mind. All right. I want to move on to this story of the much heralded much ballyhooed first time the fighters come out of their corners pierre poliev on one side justin trudeau on the other it took place yesterday in ottawa question period everybody's been lined up for a good seat inside or just outside the ring to watch all this well it happened

yesterday and guess what it was the new fight was just like the old fight it was you know almost predictable and uh you know was it the normal overhype by uh among others the media and among others us and i'll i'll i'll'll fall on my sword on that one. It wasn't quite what everybody made out to be. So in terms of what did happen, what's the takeaway? Chantal? Obvious takeaway. Well, for one, the first question period after any break

is always hyped up until 10 minutes in that question period when everyone comes back to their senses and says, oh, it's like coming back to school. We're going to have homework, and it's going to go on for a long time. But on the political side and the strategy side, both Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre are playing the long game here. Their differences are going to be settled in an election campaign that will not be coming for months and maybe years. So, burning the house down on the first day for both sides

is kind of an approach that would probably turn off more people than it would make them interested in where this story is going to go. The liberals have also managed to take away a number of bones that the conservatives would have been happier to chew on, including on the economic front. The presentation of a package, GST rebates, et cetera, on the first day back did serve the purpose of providing the government with an answer, something to put in the window that was new to the predictable calls for more measures to address the cost of living issue. So that's one.

And those measures that were announced, by and large, did not create a lot of controversy. The Conservatives may actually buy into part of that package, the GST rebates. So that's one. The other bone that is, and we're going to talk about it later, that is being taken out of the Conservatives' mouth is the sanitary measures at the border, the restrictions, et cetera. So irritants are being taken out of play. That doesn't mean that the tone will remain as polite, because it was, for debate, relatively polite yesterday. But the Conservatives at this point do not have a big bone to bite on.

That could come, but not this week. Bruce? Well, I think it's been actually very interesting to watch this. I think the first question that comes to mind for me is, what was Pierre Poliev hoping to achieve by the way in which he approached question period? Pardon me. Because I do think he's, on the whole, pretty deliberate about this kind of thing,

pretty deliberate about how he was going to approach his first couple of days in the House of Commons as leader of the opposition. And I think it was, to me, evident that he was trying to look more the part that people expect of a leader of the official opposition. And as we know, he hasn't really tried to do that before. So it was obviously a calculation on his part. He's also let it be known. And I think everybody inside the bubble in Ottawa has heard that he's spoken with Brian Mulroney and he's spoken with Jean Charest.

And in that job that he has, Mr. Poliev has, you don't let those stories get out without a purpose. And the purpose would have been, I want people to know that even though I'm not making a big song and dance publicly of trying to reach out to more progressive conservatives, I want progressive conservatives to know that this is still their party and that I've got some sort of quiet under-the-radar-screen affection for their conservative support. I don't know how much of it is sincere, but I don't know that insincerity of that sort is the worst, most heinous sin that we've ever seen in politics. It happens a lot. So I think that Polyev is off to maybe not a predictable start, given how he arrived in this job, but one that is more consistent with the path that you would take if you were trying to build a bigger tent, more successful Conservative Party. And that takes me to Justin Trudeau. I think a better

Paul Yev, and by better, I mean, somebody who is who's stylistically better prepared to fight for votes on the centre than Mr. Paul Yev appeared to be in the run up to this week. If Pierre Paul Yev gets better at that, Justin Trudeau will probably get better at representing himself and his government. I think that these two people will feed off each other's effectiveness and improve their game. I'm sure that the liberal backbench is hoping that the dynamic that it creates is one where liberals kind of move off the defensive. To me, they're on defense on virtually every issue right now. It feels as though a government that doesn't really have a sense of what it's trying to accomplish from a communication standpoint.

And that is something that needs to be changed if they're going to compete successfully against pure polyeth. So a better polyeth means a better Trudeau. And the last point I wanted to make is I want to pick up on what Chantal said, that the Liberals have been removing or reshaping the targets that the Conservatives probably thought that they would make a meal out of. And in particular, I noticed the one about dental care, the dental care initiative that the liberals took. You know, I saw the potential that Pierre Pelliet was really going to go after it, and then he didn't seem like he wanted to. And I remember seeing criticism or lines used in social media saying, well, how could somebody who's never not had publicly funded dental care

coverage be against dental care coverage for less affluent families? And I thought, yeah, that's the kind of trenchant risk scenario that Paul Yev will want to avoid. And I think the conservatives sound like they want to support some of what the liberals are proposing for those kinds of reasons. Okay. A few points. I think there is more pressure on Justin Trudeau to perform, but I also think there's a lot more pressure on Christia Freeland to perform as a finance minister, because Justin Trudeau is not seen as an economic prime minister.

His branding is somewhere else. And that means that he needs a Paul Martin next to him. And that has to be Chrystia Freeland. And the government's performance in that conversation will be judged, I believe, as much on her capacity to occupy that space as on Justin Trudeau's responses when he has question period exchanges with Pierre Poiliev. Dental care, I think that the conservatives are keeping their powder dry. Why? Because it remains to be seen and practiced how this will work and whether the federal government, which has been challenged in executing a number of missions over the years and recently,

will be able to execute this in a way that makes sense. And until we see the fine print on how it works and it is put in practice, it's very hard to judge. But I don't think there is any rush for the conservatives to go after the concept of a public program that Bruce described quite ably, when they can go after the execution of it and tag the federal government if there are failures with incompetence. There is much more of a payoff on incompetence than there is on the, we don't want to give dental care to people who actually have been going without. A final point, if there are parties in trouble this week, notwithstanding a positive poll in the case of the NDP, I think it's both the NDP and the Bloc Québécois because this shaping of the political debate as a duel between

the liberals and the conservatives leaves them trying to find a place in that scenario. And that's not as easily done as it is said. Yes, you can raise your hand every day and say, we, the NDP, are responsible for this and that. But in the end, when the focus becomes really tightly on to the two main parties, that invites people who vote for the Bloc or the NDP to say, this is a battle where I've got to pick my camp between the two main contenders. And that's dangerous for both the NDP and the Bloc.

All right. I like your first point. I like how Justin Trudeau needs a Paul Martin and Christopher Freeland needs to fulfill that role or Justin Trudeau is going to start thinking about changes because there's no question the economy is the big issue on so many different fronts. And you need a figurehead running that part of things who's very visible.

In some ways, I think it's the same on the other side of the floor too i think um the pierre polliev needs a pierre polliev he doesn't want to be the old attack dog that he used to be he needs somebody else to fulfill that role and uh you know if they're if they're going to have that happening in the house of comm, he should distance himself from it as the leader. And, you know, I think Bruce was making the point that he did show some indications this week that he's taking that role differently than the old role he used to have on a number of different fronts, and that will work for him in the end. But he still needs that kind of attack feature on his side. I want to make another point, but Bruce, I see you waving your finger at me.

Not in a scolding way. That's a good point. That's a good point. That's a good point. But also, I wanted to add two quick things. One is that Mr. Polyev is taking the approach in terms of appointing his shadow cabinet, his critics roster. It seems a little bit unusual to me, which is that he's not deciding who's going to have what role of show what they're made of, I guess, in the House of Commons, take his time a little bit before settling on those roles. And I think that's an interesting approach. It's probably not a bad approach in terms of two things. It gives him a sense of,

and gives them all a sense of, he's got power and he's going to use it judiciously. If he were only going to use it to reward his friends, he could have done that already. It does feel like he's going to be looking for who does he think has the the issues that he wants to prosecute on as leader in the House of Commons, and then pick the people that he wants to be standing beside him. And there'll be, you know, there's a fair bit of talent in that caucus to choose from. And we'll see how that plays out. The other thing is back to the amount of energy. I remember not that many years ago, as part of the training that I was trying to do to stay relatively fit, I took up boxing. And I remember, as I did, feeling amazed at how tiring it is to box for a minute. And, you know, I used to watch boxing years ago

and think about these 15 rounds of three minutes each and how tired boxers get when they throw all of their energy at each other in the first 30 seconds. And watching Polyev and Trudeau gave me that a little bit of that feeling of they can't expend all of their energy at each other at that level all the time. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work for the audience, won't work for them. So I think we're in for a long fight. who are going to be pretty good at what they're doing, not just yelling their case, but working with the energy of the other to create a better and better version of their case. I think it might turn out actually to be pretty good

in terms of the standard of debate and discussion in the House. Okay, the other thing... He said, hopefully. Yeah, the other thing I wanted to mention was this question of tone because it's been interesting this week. A couple things have happened. There has been indication in some reporting that at the kind of backbench level,

there's a feeling, I guess, after a summer of being at home and in your constituency and hearing from your constituents that, you know, enough with the bickering and the slagging of each other. Can't you guys find a way to actually, you know, cooperate, reach across the aisle, talk to each other, come up with a common plan? Now, that happens at the same time I see that our friend John Iveson did an interview with the former Conservative cabinet minister under Stephen Harper, John Baird,

who also was a part of the Polyev leadership campaign team. And Baird says that, hey, you're forgetting that Polyev knows how to reach across the aisle. He's shown this in his past, and he points back to some distant moment where, Paul, you have reached across the aisle to the NDP. Remember Pat Martin, who was a pretty aggressive guy himself, and they worked together on some of the parliamentary reform stuff. But he was trying to make the same point that, you know, don't assume that this guy can't do that,

that he very well may be able to do that now both those things come on the same week that i that i happened to do an event at the university of toronto at the monk school the other day uh with the swedish ambassador ambassador aline who was a really interesting guy he's a you know former swedish um mp he was the speaker of the swedish parliament and in sweden the speaker is a big deal it's sort of kind of you know it goes the pecking the order goes king speaker prime minister in that route so he was right up there and he said look one of the you know sweden's parliament has often uh been a bit chaotic in the census coalition at different times there were eight different parties with

seats there and he said when things get really difficult on issues that we're just yelling at each other off there's kind of a whistle blown there's a timeout and they retreat together to rooms where they try to hammer out something away from the public eye initially and then come back with a plan to debate and discuss. And I thought, wow, that's interesting. I don't know whether that ever happens here. I'm sure it's happened at times, but it's not something we seem to see in modern-day Canadian politics. Is there any indication that something is going on in terms of, you know, it's time we figured out a better way to discuss these kind of issues and that we look like we actually can talk to each other in a constructive way?

Chantal first. I don't think our election system opens the door for that kind of a relationship inside the House of Commons. The first past the post system is very different from a more proportional system where you know that one day you may be sitting around the cabinet table with the leader of the opposite of one of your rivals or rival parties. There have been times when those conversations have taken place, in particular at the leader's level. Stephen Harper uncharacteristically called in the other leaders when the Parti Québécois came back to power in Quebec, because he worried about the resumption of the unity debate, and he knew he was vulnerable on the front of unity. I think there were a lot of backroom conversations between parties early on in the pandemic, both at the provincial and the federal level. And I believe that if things, and I'm not hoping to see that I'm right, but if things go really badly with the storm in Atlantic Canada, I'm assuming that all parties will want to keep open channels as to how to deal with what is happening.

But otherwise, our system, and on free trade, which would be the most recent example of a long-lasting conversation. What the Liberals did when the FTA was renegotiated and NAFTA was reach out across the island. Aaron O'Toole went to the U.S. to talk Canada's case. The premiers, who are not friends of Justin Trudeau, did exactly the same thing. Members of big labor participated in coming to some deal that would not harm Canada in any great way. So, yes, when circumstances call for it, these things do happen. But on a routine basis, I believe our system is based on parties being adversarial. I also believe that it makes the government better to have strong adversarial rivals across the aisle rather than people who go to back rooms

and say, let's just settle every major disagreement on policy that we have without trashing it out in the House of Commons. At some point, you do need to have the argument and bring it to an election rather than to a backroom to resolve it. The case of free trade in this country is a case in point. It didn't start off with every party wanting to join in to save NAFTA. The opposite happened, and look where we are today. Bruce? Well, I'm listening to Chantal,

and I, you know, as often happens when we have these conversations, I didn't exactly start with the same point of view, and I didn't exactly end up agreeing with everything she said, but she did make some persuasive arguments. But for the sake of what's the alternative view, I would say that...

You're such a pushover. He took up boxing. I was amazed that he took up boxing. He spends much of his life against the ropes. Trying to move into the middle of the ring. You know, I think that the adversarial thing is, it's like many things in life, you know, too much of them are not healthy, maybe the day before more grave the global and the geopolitical issues of the day are, the less serious our politics had become. And so I feel as though there is some reckoning on that point now. And hopefully that we are heading into a

period where for a variety of reasons, including the gravity of the issues that the world is looking at, whether it's climate change or the role of Russia or any one of a number of other concerns, that maybe our's affecting the level of frustration experienced by politicians with the tone of the debate is that it isn't just that the climate inside the House of Commons is bad. It's that the climate that people experience as politicians in the world at large is bad. The social media commentary is horrible for them. The nature of the political evolution that we're watching in the United States is horrifying to watch. The degree to which partisans will take ridiculous positions simply because red is better than blue or blue is better than red is a big flashing warning signal for the almost relentlessly pragmatic Canadian DNA. We can look at that and say, we're pretty sure that won't work here and it won't be productive here and we shouldn't end up like that. So the US dynamic,

the social media dynamic, we're also talking more and more every year about mental health. And I don't think that it's possible to be talking more about those things and the importance of being kind towards other people without that also having some influence on the way that people go in and approach their jobs in the political context. Because at the end of the day, they're humans first who experience the world outside politics, not only the world of the day, they're humans first, who experienced the world outside politics, not only the world inside politics. Elected people are not some completely different species that kind of thrive on insulting each other. Most of them, in my experience, are regular people whose experience of politics is almost shockingly bad on that level, to the

point where they don't quite know what to do. And some of them just join in and become part of that. And some of them end up thinking this wasn't really for them. And it's disappointing. So Mark Meadown is eternally hopeful. I shudder to think how many of these kind of bad things had to happen or had to be visited upon society before we might be starting to get to a different place in terms of the civility in politics we're going to take a quick break i want to pick up on a related topic on this when we come back but first this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on the Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Chantelle's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto today. I mentioned this Baird discussion with our friend Iveson the other day and there was a point that Baird made that kind of relates to this whole issue of where is the media today in terms of its structure and its influence and whether or not the people even care anymore what the media says and I'm talking about traditional media here. He made the point that through the leadership campaign and let's face it it's just a leadership campaign where only the conservatives are voting but others are watching um that polyev never gave any television interviews to ctv cbc or global that he ended up winning 10 provinces and three

territories the only interview that i saw him do was online, and that was with Jordan Peterson, University of Toronto professor, controversial. What does that say? It's not just about the Conservatives. It is a guy running for leader of the opposition in Canada, potentially a future prime minister. And he doesn't give one interview to the traditional media, television media.

What does that say about, does that say more about him or more about us in the current climate? You mean you too? Pardon me? I am definitely not a journalist. I'm not in the media. Yes, right. You're correct.

It does mean him because Pierre Poiliev actually gave interviews to legacy media in French over the course of his campaign. Right. And the notion in French that someone, someone I just watched the Quebec leaders debate an argument that has so little currency in Quebec that I have not heard a single leader provincially use it to say, I'm not going there because this place is hostile to me. There are always interviewers or shows who don't want to go on for those reasons. But take Sunday night in Quebec.

Tout le monde en parle is beginning its season. Tout le monde en parle is the most watched talk show in Quebec, possibly in Canada. And on Sunday night, on the same set, we will have all five leaders. They have all agreed to come on that set. It's not one of those venues where you are not taking a risk, but they will all be there, and everybody thinks that's normal.

I think part of the reason why there is this major difference is that the media consensus on the biggest issues of the day in Quebec for decades did not exist. There were plenty of platforms where columnists and others wrote pro-sovereigntist columns and plenty of other platforms where the attack was more federalist. For decades, every time you wrote—and I covered the Quebec debate in French for a long, long time— you were always accused by one side or the other to be with the other side. You're a separatist. You're a federalist. And one, journalists in this province are immune to that.

And two, they are used to giving both sides, because the audience has been so divided, both sides of the issue, some oxygen. You don't necessarily always see that in English. That was particularly true over the constitutional debate. We were all around for the debate over Meech and the Charlottetown Accord. Just about every single mainstream media outside Quebec editorially told its readers to vote yes to the Charlatan Accord. And a majority of Canadians outside I don't believe it's true, but that there is a media slant towards consensus that does not give equal place to voices that maybe are saying things today that don't sound like they belong in the consensus,

but that tomorrow will become legislation. Think of the Clarity Act and the Reform Party championing that and balanced budgets and the reception that those ideas got in the media initially. Crazy, radical. Only in Alberta would they put up for it. In the Star, a very well-known columnist, I will not name that person, said the only Western Canadians wrote, the only Western Canadian that Ontarians would ever vote for would be Roy Romano, the new Democrat premier in Saskatchewan. When you read stuff like that, you think, okay, how can you feel that the media is not more of a player than an observer. If it doesn't have space, and by the way, the same media establishment then praised Jean Chrétien for having balanced those books,

not so radical after all, and for bringing in the Clarity Act, saved the country. So this is basically the history that gets us to today. You can't help but notice that if you're like me, you end up having a foot on each side. Bruce? I remember, it feels like it's a trip down memory lane for me this morning, but in 1979, 80, the years, a couple of years that I worked on Parliament Hill,

and I remember what it was like for politicians who would imagine 1980, the years, a couple of years that I worked on Parliament Hill. And I remember what it was like for politicians who would imagine that they might do a long form interview with a columnist or a journalist. And in most cases, there was a real openness to it, perhaps even a desire to it. How can we reach out and arrange an interview that might lead to a column or a story? And the difference that I'm making is between what a columnist would write and what a reporter would write. And the star was always kind of the prize in English Canada, and there were more than one prize scenario in the French language or Quebec media. But the general operating thesis was having a long-form interview with a good journalist is a really good outing for a politician because the impact on public opinion will be significant over time because the journalists would generally try

to find a balance between exposing the warts of the politician or explaining their ideas. Fast forward to today, even the more reasonable and rational political managers, let me put it that way, or strategists look at the media and say, first of all, not a monolith. And I really do agree with Chantal about the a piece of journalism done in one of the 157 papers that Post Media owns. It won't matter very much if there's something written in the Globe and Mail. It might not matter very much if there's a piece of TV about us. But if there is, it'll be very short and it'll end and but the larger question is is usually the back to the expose the words or explain the ideas and i think that once we have

the such a large proportion of journalists also playing the role of personality and pundit and the kind of the social media clamoring for the hot take and the acerbic, the politicians tend to look at it and go, what, you know, a lot of these journalistic platforms are following indicators. They're not shaping public opinion. And more of the interviews will be an attempt to expose our words rather than explain our ideas. So why should we do it?

And I don't think that's necessarily the right answer, but I think that is where we're at in many instances today. And I'm glad that Chantal mentioned Toulon-Mont-Napal because with a lot of people that I talk with in politics these days, I say people really are craving, the audiences are really craving longer form interview situations. They're tired of a diet of 15-word tweets or very, very, very short synopses of extremely complicated issues.

They don't feel like they get to understand the people behind the decisions that are being made very well using those formats. I'm not sure that long form print is really the thing that's going to change that, but longer-form journalism is definitely the thing that people are looking for to fill the gap right now. And I hope there's more of it, and I think Quebec does do it better than the rest of the country. Yeah, you know, I think that's a good synopsis of where we are between the the two answers i mean i i was specific in the examples i gave it was the i should have been clear but it was the english language media and i get it in terms of the the quebec media and

quebec journalists and the the clear difference both on the part of those organizations and the public, in terms of what they want. I guess what I was getting at on the English side was when you take those three television networks, CTV, CBC, Global, and none of them had a sit-down interview with the person running for, you know, leader of the opposition, potential future prime minister, and yet he wins overwhelmingly.

I find that interesting, and I worry about what that means for the future, not just with the Conservative Party, but other parties looking at that and saying, hey, you know, we don't need them. We don't need them. Well, I think that's there. Look, I think that's there. I'm not saying this to flatter the two of you, but politicians who are thinking about, would I want to sit down for a long-form interview?

It sometimes would come down to, well, if I could do it with a Chantal Hébert or a Peter Mansbridge, I think I would end up feeling like I'm going to get treated in a balanced way. All of the interviews that you did with leader candidates during elections, Peter, all fit that mode where people would say, not I have to do it, but I have to do it, and I kind of want to do it because I think it'll be a fair treatment. I think that Chantal certainly has that reputation as well. I'm not saying you're the only two, but I'm saying that the standard format now is a little bit more, yeah, there's some risk of my story not really getting out if I don't do more of these, but the risks of sitting down with somebody who's going to

look to expose the worst parts of me and the worst ideas that I have, that's not that great. If you're Pierre-Paul Lievre, you knew that you could win the leadership without exposing yourself to that kind of further risk. And I think he eventually will do more long form because I think that's the path that he seems like he's on. But he'll want to wait a little while. So all the questions aren't about the cryptocurrency and the hookahs and all of that. But I also think that it's part of the branding of this wing of the Conservative Party, that they are standing up to the mainstream media, quote, unquote. And part of the way the leadership campaign was run was sending those signals. Here I am standing against this big, bad media, and they're all bad. I think he's going to have to change his tone.

I'm not saying give interviews for a reason that has very little to do with journalism, frankly. And I'm not big on the debate. Why don't they treat us better, et cetera? I believe the press gallery on Parliament Hill loses the battle when it starts with they're not being good to us or they're not doing this because the self-importance of the collective press gallery is very high on their minds and very low in the public's mind. Nobody really cares about how the press gallery

is treated by a party leader, frankly. But I'm talking about safety reasons, dangerous things happening because you're triggering some minds who are prompt to do crazy things and making journalists targets is not a good idea. There are crazy people out there who get excited. And when you start having a war and singling out journalists, you are inviting those people. You may say, I didn't mean to do that, and this person is unbalanced, but you are triggering them, and that is a dangerous game to play. All right, we're going to take our final break. When we come back, a number of the various COVID restrictions being dropped as of end of the month.

What does that really mean? And was there a split inside cabinet over whether to do that? Back in a moment. and we're back welcome back final segment of good talk for uh this week chantelle's in montreal bruce is in ottawa i am in toronto all right um as expected signal I don't know whether as expected is the right thing to say, but a lot of people were assuming that for September 30th, a lot of the COVID restrictions would be dropped. And it appears that, in fact, that's what's happening.

The question here is, there have been some rumblings that there was a disagreement inside cabinet. That's not a bad thing. It's good that cabinets debate things. But was there a split on this issue about whether to pull back on the restrictions? What do we know? Chantal? We know that there are some ministers who believed early on or back in June that those restrictions should be lifted at around the same time

as many of Canada's allies in Europe and elsewhere lifted them in time for the tourist season, and that there were a number of members of the Liberal caucus. One of them came out in public, Joël Langevin, who felt, especially in the case of Arrive Can, that while it may not have been the root cause of what was happening in airports, it would have been politically wise for the government to get itself out of the way by bending on Arrive Can earlier rather than later. What led us to this week's, well, apparently the announcement this Monday's decision was interesting for a different reason.

The story leaked that this was coming on Saturday in the Star, and no one wanted to walk it back. So it became everybody's story by midweek. All this time, Justin Trudeau was out of the country. And then suddenly, as he was about to return, the message started to be, well, nothing's decided until the prime minister has said yes or no on this, and he hasn't yet had a chance. That's a lot of leaking for something that the prime minister still has to veto or approve one way or the other. And one of the things we can surmise is that Justin Trudeau was always on the side of more rather than less restrictions and being very careful about lifting them. So there was a point this week where it felt like people in the government, and I'm not saying a minister necessarily, were kind of painting the prime minister in a corner.

By the time he landed on Thursday, there is no way that Justin Trudeau could have suddenly said, I'm keeping those restrictions until the end of the year without looking like he'd overruled this cabinet. It had been leaked that the committee of ministers who had recommended that was unanimous. The news had never been denied. So I'm not sure what the actual dynamics were. It was confirmed yesterday that the prime minister had approved the changes and that the cabinet now was going to meet and talk about whether we keep masks on train and planes. That's a lot of ministers to decide something like that, as if they were leaving something for the prime minister to say something on.

So it was a curious, the decision was predictable, but the way that it came out this week was awkward. Bruce? Awkward is such a polite word. I'm trying. It's shambolic. It's just been a mess. She's reaching across the aisle.

Oh, man. No, it's been a mess. And it's been a really useful mess, I think, for the government as almost a wake up call and get your act together on stuff like this. This was badly done from several standpoints. feel that the public wants to be relieved of some of these restrictions and the politicians whose job it is to make sure that we make policy based not entirely on that kind of thing but rather the science of keeping people safe and so on that's a good tension it's a healthy tension it should exist um and and it should err on the side probably of the, you know, let's try not to make hasty decisions to drop these mandates if it turns out that we might end up needing them again. This is the second kind of political question, which is that if you are the prime minister, it sounds easy to say with a wave of my hand or a Donald Trump version, if I just think about it,

the mandates will disappear. It sounds easy, but if you do imagine that there could be a situation, if you're prime minister, you're going to ask your officials, could I end up having to reverse this decision at some point in the future? You need to hear serious answers about that because that would not go over well, it would end up being embarrassing and damaging, and it might be more difficult to get people to go along with those mandates. We already know that the take up of these boosters is nowhere near what the take up of the original vaccines were. And part of that is just the politics has kind of ebbed in this direction. So that dynamic made sense. Cabinet secrecy is super important around something like that

because the idea of a political team rests on everybody sort of recognizing that there are real risks for everybody if they sort of leak these things. Now, on the leaking thing, there will be a taking of sweater numbers. One of the things that I sort of observed in the years that I spent in and around politics is it's almost never a mystery where the leak came from. Usually, you look at the journalists who had it, and you understand where their relationships and their trap lines are, and you start to form an opinion about where the problems lie. And there isn't usually a public ritual dealing dealing with that but behind the scenes there is and there should be and uh and there should be because the consequences for government if people in cabinet um or around cabinet start feeling like it's up to them to um to leak these stories

and box the prime minister in which is really really what happened. Well, the prime minister has a lot of power and doesn't like being boxed in. And I would be really surprised if there aren't consequences of one sort or another for this. All right. I've only got a couple of minutes left. Chantal, why don't you say that? Let me then offer an anecdote.

And I'm not breaking my word to anyone on this. It is true that prime ministers, when there's a leak, tend to say, find out who's responsible for this, find a guilty person. But sometimes they're only doing this to cover themselves. I went to one of Stephen Harper's garden parties shortly after the 2007 Quebec election when Jean Charest won a minority government thanks to getting money from a federal budget that he turned into tax cuts. And I had a chat with Stephen Harper. It wasn't an off-the-record event. And he told me, well, you know, no matter what happens now, my cupboard is bare. There's no more money to

save Jean Charest. I felt bad because I had heard this at his home in this garden. So instead of writing Prime Minister Harper says, I wrote a source close to the prime minister. The next day, a minister called me and said, am I glad I didn't go to this garden party? And I said, why? He says, because Stephen wants to know who told you that. And I told my why? He says, because Stephen wants to know who told you that. And I told my friend, the minister, I have news for you because I'm not bound by a source relationship here.

It was your boss who said that. That's a great story. Just to put some context into the witch hunt that may be about to get underway because of these latest leaks. Sometimes the leaks are in your own office. Oh, yeah. No, the call can be from inside the house. That's absolutely true. And I wasn't suggesting that it was a cabinet level leak necessarily.

I don't have that level. But a leak sometimes is a spill. I agree with that completely. I just don't think that was the case probably here. I love that. I love that story. And I can just imagine Chantal at a garden party with the former prime minister.

Sipping wine. It's a great image. Asking the photographer not to take pictures because I don't put pictures of myself with prime ministers on my wall. All right. We'll leave it at that. Thank you too great conversation as always lots of good talk in those last 52 minutes and 30 seconds uh for bruce in ottawa for chantelle in montreal i'm peter mansbridge in

toronto uh the bridge will be back next week with a full array of different programming that leads to a week from today, which is the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Keep that in mind. We'll talk about that on Monday. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again next week.