The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - "The Permanently Unhappy But Not Moving Out" Bill

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Bruce takes liberties and renames the Alberta Sovereignty Act in a lively discussion about the latest apparent blunder by Alberta's new government.  But first Bruce and Chantal discuss new data about Canadian's feelings towards the convoy Inquiry -- did any minds change?Plus, Oath to the King -- yes or no?

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, welcome to Friday, welcome to the first Friday in December. Man, you can almost feel those approaching holidays and the holiday break for programs like Good Talk, but not before we have a few more things to say in the next couple of weeks. Chantelle Hébert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. Okay, we're going to start with something new. For the first time since the end of the kind of testimony phase

of the inquiry into the convoy. We have some data in terms of how Canadians reacted to that testimony, and I guess to Prime Minister Trudeau, who was the last witness on the stand. That was all last week, but now we have some data getting some reactions, and the interesting part will be, did it really flip anybody? Did it change anybody's minds about what they had witnessed and how they felt about this whole thing? The polling data is being done. The research is being done by Abacus.

And we just happen to have the chair of Abacus with us. And that, of course, is Bruce. So give us the headlines. Are there headlines in this new data? Well, when people ask that question often they're wondering well what something what what what dramatic new thing has happened in public opinion but sometimes uh no news is is news anyway and the idea as i look at the numbers is first of all if those if there were a lot of people who thought the commission was going to be the trigger for unraveling of public support for the government and put them in a much worse situation electorally, that evidence isn't in our data.

Essentially, we're seeing the same kind of voting intention numbers as we did a month ago. I think, on the other hand, if liberal partisans were looking for some evidence that the Prime Minister's testimony or the overall weight of the evidence presented during the commission was going to lead to some catalytic rise in support and enthusiasm for the government, that's not there as well. I think that there is a little bit of evidence that those who followed the hearing most closely came away with a slightly better impression of the prime minister. I wouldn't want to overstate it. The differences are significant, but not overwhelming. But I think the really important takeaway for me is the reminder that people don't really think about what happened months ago as part of how they think about what they would do in an upcoming election. They're focused on their everyday lives.

They're not that focused on politics. And when it comes to the next election, they're going to look at what's on offer. What are the changes? What are the people on offer as leaders? And what are the ideas on offer in terms of the platforms of the party? What kinds of things are they championing? And right now, the liberal numbers are not where they need to be to win another election. They're a little bit behind where they would have been in the last two elections, basically. And the problem area for them regionally is BC right now. They're not running where they need to be in the province of British Columbia

in order to reassemble the same kind of coalition of support that got them first past the post overall in 2021. So the basic headline then, no damage, but no bump up either. That's right. That's right. I think the idea that this whole hearing was going to be a huge price to pay as part of using the Emergencies Act didn't turn out to be the case. The government did not take any water on because of what people in Canada heard through this hearing. Whether they came away feeling happier that the Emergencies Act was invoked, I don't think that's true, but I don't think that it was ever plausible that that would be true.

Okay. Chantal, as Bruce said earlier, you know, no news is still news. It's good news for Pierre Poilievre. Right. Who could have been damaged by the exercise could have been demonstrated to have been totally responsible by not denouncing the occupation and the convoy and being associated with

the anti-vax movement and some of its less slavery elements and walks away from this exercise intact with good numbers and competitive numbers in places where he needs them to be and a small lead on the liberals so if I were the conservatives I'd look at this and say, well, that was good. At the same time, I believe that Justin Trudeau's performance in particular, probably, Bruce says those who followed most closely tended to have a favourable impression of the Prime Minister and the government's decision. That includes the Liberal caucus. And I do believe that Justin Trudeau's performance last week was a shot up for the morale of the caucus and the party at a time when it was sorely

needed, where there was a sense that maybe Justin Trudeau wasn't in it anymore to win, and that they weren't too sure how the party would fare under the leadership of a distracted leader. He was anything but distracted. And I note that Bruce's numbers show that the Liberals are most challenged among the larger provinces in BC. And there is an irony in that because it is the only province of the larger provinces in BC. And there is an irony in that because it is the only province of the major provinces, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, BC,

where Justin Trudeau is actually not in a bad or an adversarial relationship with the premier. The recent conflict over the notwithstanding clause with Doug Ford, what usually happens between Francois Legault and Justin Trudeau on a variety of topics. We'll talk about Alberta later. And that seems to suggest that just because you're friends with a popular government in BC, and I think the NDP is still fairly popular, a new premier, the prime minister is there today for kind of a meet and greet meeting. It kind of means that the opposition to the provincial government

coalesces against you federally. This kind of we don't put our eggs in the same basket federally and provincially in BC may be playing against the liberals. It's also interesting that Vancouver and BC is where Pierre Poilier went to say he would put an end or reverse the policies on safe injection sites for drug users. This is one province that pioneered the concept, but it's also a concept that has created its share of opposition for all kinds of reasons related to the perception that it has not

resolved the opioid crisis, which is a perception that is not borne out by facts, but still is an impression that you can easily have if you're walking in some neighborhoods of the larger urban areas of BC. Do you want to add to that, Bruce? Yeah, I did. I wanted to pick up a point that Chantal raised about the conservatives and what they could take away from how this hearing process went. I think I agree with Chantal that this turned out to be all right for Pierre Pauliev if the alternative scenario was that people were going to be hearing him continue to say the kinds of things that he had been saying during the February convoy and trying to relitigate his position in favor of the protesters

and against the government and against vaccination mandates. But he didn't do that. And so the learning that they will take from it is partly that if you just try to hide out a little bit, journalism isn't always going to find you and demand that you answer these questions which are awkward. Probably that's a thing that the liberals will observe, too, that if they're going to try to make the ballot question be a little bit more about Pierre Poliev in the next election, they're going to have to do some very active effort to make that be the case,

because it would have been reasonable to have more of a conversation, I think, surrounding the hearings about the role that conservative politicians played in stoking some of the animus back last February, but there wasn't really any of that. But I think more tellingly, because I think it's part of how I see Pierre Polyev conducting his leadership politically, He's being pretty strategic, I think, overall to avoid being visible on the things that would be unhelpful for him to be visible about. I think that the sensible thinking conservatives who are trying to make sure that they're very competitive as they head into the next election are watching signs like the midterms in the U.S. and saying

too angry is unhelpful. And that the way to win an election in Canada, especially, is to present a conservative party that is the vehicle for change for the largest number of people. And that includes people who don't want to flip the table over, who don't want to hear a lot of talk about being angry about the use of vaccinations or the, you know, championing cryptocurrency or firing the governor of the Bank of Canada. Those are not the kind of rallying cries that grow conservative support in those swing ridings, especially in urban and suburban Canada, where they need to

grow support a little bit to feel really secure about the chances of a victory. So I think there's a lesson learned for them in the virtues of not campaigning like Pierre Poliev did for the leadership or like Danielle Smith did in her race for the leadership and observing that a conservative brand will do better probably if it looks more like the alternative to the liberals rather than the alternative to the People's Party of Canada. Well, Pierre Polyeviev must have been listening to both you and Chantal in his head somewhere over the last week, because at least from what I watched this week of his performance

in the House of Commons in question period, was that he stayed out of the convoy lane, and he was solely in the lane, once again, of what I saw, solely in the lane of you know inflation interest rates um bank of canada all those things um that were not the convoy but may well be what's on the minds of the uh of the average canadian so you know we'll see how it plays out and the first i you know i know chantelle you're working on a piece on this for a later column. So I didn't want to infringe on that.

But there is a by-election coming up on December 12th. And I'm just like, you know, we tend at times when we cover by-elections to sort of overstate their importance or their relevance or their impact. But this one, you know, let's face it, it is the first kind of test of his leadership. It's a liberal held riding, at least at the moment. It's in that key kind of 905 area around Toronto. It's in Mississauga or one of the Mississauga ridings. How important is it? Like what happens in that riding?

Well, it's more important than if this were a by-election taking place in a non-winnable writing for the Conservatives. This is a winnable writing. They held it. It's called Mississauga Lakeshore under a different name. They won that same writing in 2011, the year that Stephen Harper won as majority government, which seems to suggest that this is a riding that the conservatives win when they're doing well nationally, one of those bellwether ridings. They are also competitive, and they were competitive, over the three times that they lost. The liberals won big, over 40%,

but the conservatives were always close to 40% in the high 30s. So this is not a writing that they have no shot at. It's more important, the outcome of this by-election will not really change the makeup of the House of Commons in any way, shape or form, but it will send a signal to the Conservatives, if they win, that they have a winner, someone who can take seats away from the Liberals in places where they need to take them. And this is a place where they need to take them. I would suggest that

it's interesting for another reason, and it is going to be testing the Pierre Poiliev's contention that the voters he needs to reach, he will not need to reach by going through the mainstream media. If you look, and I have looked this morning at the, which we know, you know, the conservative candidates' Twitter site,

which is always a good place to find out how much help a local candidate is getting, even if you don't see a lot of publicity. And you can see that a lot of caucus members have been campaigning with the conservative candidate. You can also see that Pierre Poilier has been spending quite a bit of time with the candidates, it's a very diverse writing so going to a variety of large-scale um ethnic galas of all kinds religious events they want this writing but he also wants to win it on his own terms and on december 12th we'll see if that pays off by the way turnout in by-elections, and Bruce knows this as much as I do, is usually low. And there's a bit of a strange thing happening in Mississauga Lakeshore. The Rhinoceros Party, in case you forgot it

existed, has decided to make a statement about electoral reform by making this the longest ballot in Canadian history. And so they have fielded and confirmed more than 30 candidates. That means that people who are going to go vote on December 12, or right now as the advance polls are opening, are in for a shock. It's going to run like the list of kids in your son's grade nine. And you have to find the mainstream candidates in there because in 30 some names on a ballot, you need to search long and hard. The Liberals, I should add, also want the writing, and they are running the former finance minister of Ontario, Charles Souza. So I think despite the lack of high profile events, both parties really want to play for keeps on this one

do you want to add anything on violations bruce yeah i think that this is a classic kind of situation where um you know it might be more normal to expect that uh an opposition party would pick up a seat where uh where the scenario has been as close in this writing as Chantal described. Why? Because voters sometimes just like to send a little bit of a message to the incumbent government, not necessarily one where they're saying we really want to change the government, but saying we don't really feel like we want to go out and cast a vote for the status quo. And so that tends to create a situation where there's a

little bit more water flowing towards the opposition parties and the principal opposition party in a by-election in a scenario like this. So then that takes you to the place where the real question, because Chantel's right, it doesn't really change the way that Parliament will operate in Ottawa is how does it affect the chemistry and the confidence level of the parties and the leaders? And I think I agree with Chantel's earlier point that the Liberals took something really positive away from Mr. Trudeau's performance or appearance at the Commission hearing. And obviously, if the Liberals were to win this riding, that would also make them feel like,

okay, this is better than perhaps we had expected, even though, as Chantal said, they have a high-profile candidate. If the Conservatives win, they will feel kind of reassured, but not necessarily surprised, I suppose, is how I would look at it. But the other thing that occurs to me, and I was sort of watching a little bit of,

I was looking at Mr. Polyev's Twitter feed, and I noticed that he's doing interviews with people like the True North kind of media channel. And Justin Trudeau doesn't have an analog to that. And part of the challenge, I think, for the Liberals is that there is no series of specific outlets that are really good at targeting the kind of voter that Justin Trudeau needs in order to assemble the coalition of voters that he does. On the other hand, for Pierre Polyev, there are media outlets that are pretty good at reaching the kind of voters that he wants to have turn out and cast a ballot for his party.

That's the thing that I think progressive parties and maybe centrist parties will need to figure out how to invent something like that, not because mainstream journalism isn't doing a good job, but because those platforms don't reach as many people as frequently as they used to. And what replaces them is a question of not just kind of public interest from a media standpoint, but political operation for parties that try to secure those votes. The thing that I heard the most kind of reaction to coming out of Mr. Trudeau's appearance was a comment that I made to some people about a lot of people are used to seeing Trudeau in a scrum or in a press conference, both of which tend to be bad scenarios for him in terms of him being able to communicate effectively or a town hall where it's

a little bit performative and not all that appealing sometimes. In the context of his hearing appearance, it was long form, it was thoughtful, it was expository, it was explanatory, it was the things that people don't get from him in those other scenarios. Is there a way that he can replicate that more generally? I don't know, but that's probably what I'd be looking for if I worked for him and was responsible for those kinds of things. Okay. A couple of points here.

I don't want to be capo's voice but if he if he were sitting here he would say why would justin trudeau need true north when he's got the star and the cbc about friendly uh outlets that are well attended by progressive voters in any event first point and i'm not going to qualify that contention because i tend to believe personally that there are as many conservative voters that poitier could and should uh be winning over by going on mainstream media outlets i'm not big on the notion that you go to friendly media but i also think that what you describe as a format that allows the prime minister to look intelligent rather than glib, as the commission did, is called long interviews

as leaders did with Peter back in the day. And as you well know, the prime minister's office has a permanent list of requests for those long interviews with media that are more than happy in French and English to give him the time to look and explain his ideas in a format that does not come across like a 30-second clip in an adversarial setting. So it is basically up to the PMO to decide that they want to give him more of that kind of exposure. It is not that he lacks the opportunities. It's that they have decided that they don't need to do it.

It's interesting to watch what some of the conservative politicians, both federally and provincially, have been doing in terms of this, you know, who's interviewing them and what form of interview it is. Because if I recall correctly, the only major interview that Poliev gave during the campaign was with Professor Peterson. In English. In French, he's been doing the more regular mainstream interviews. All right. And the same for Danielle Smith.

She just did one with him in the last week or two. Now, you know, the danger with doing interviews with him is it often comes off as the Peterson philosophy to the world, more than the person being interviewed. But nevertheless, that is a route they're taking. And it seems to be working for them. I mean, we'll see how that plays out over time. But you're right. I don't see the long-form interviews in the way they used to be,

going back to Bruce Phillips and Peter Deborah and all those through the 80s and the 90s. And, you know, and I was lucky enough to have some of those myself where all parties did them. And, you know, it was an opportunity for Canadians to see people or see their politicians in a certain way. Now, my last point on by-elections before we move on is Churchill used to say, by-elections are like fire on ice. And when you think about that term, it actually does describe most by-elections. We get a lot of heat around the result, and we assume certain things that don't necessarily play out.

But sometimes they do. I remember when Deborah Gray won for the Reform Party in Alberta. Gilles Decep for the Bloc Québécois. Gilles Decep. When those happened, people said, well, you know, it's kind of a one-off, it's just a by-election, doesn't necessarily mean anything, and then boom, we know what happened as a result in both those cases. You know, there are more examples the opposite way, but things can happen as a result of by-elections. Okay, we're going to stop, take a quick pause, and then we'll come back, and the topic will be Alberta and sovereignty right after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk on the Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, and on your favorite podcast platform. And because it's Friday, it's also on our YouTube channel. So let's talk Alberta. You know, when Doug Ford did the Not Withstanding Clause dance a couple of weeks ago, many of us thought, man, there's never been a blunder as big as that by a provincial government.

And he had to backtrack within a few days. Well, it's taken Danielle Smith 24 hours, not necessarily to backtrack, but to say, hey, listen, my Sovereignty Act, I'm willing to listen to amendments. The opposition can come forward with whatever it would like to do to amend this legislation. Now, that always happens for any piece of legislation. There's the opportunity. But she's gone to that point already after looking more than a little bit flustered in her

news conference on the day that she dropped the sovereignty act um it seems to have been i mean it's hard it's you know i've i've searched looking for where's the defense of what the Alberta government has done. And by Alberta columnists, Western Canadian columnists, national columnists, and constitutional experts, it's pretty hard to find anybody saying, hey, yeah, this is the right thing to do. Was this like blunder number one on the part of a, you know, a new provincial government? Well, it can't be blunder number one, considering that Danielle Smith, since she won the conservative leadership, has been going from blunder to blunder to blunder. The most discriminated against people on the planet in her lifetime are people who didn't want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. That's quite a definition of persecution.

And she's accumulated them. This is, I feel for the professional civil service of the province of Alberta, which exists and is a sturdy civil service, that someone somewhere will one day be known as the author on the orders of that government, of that piece of legislation. But I would argue that over the past couple of days since it was brought in, the two best case scenarios for Daniel Smith's government have come and gone. The first best case scenario is the obvious one, and it would have been Justin Trudeau jumping on the barricade with a bazooka to shoot

down that piece of legislation, paving the way in the process for an election campaign in Alberta where Daniel Smith runs against Justin Trudeau. Sadly, the prime minister is going to be missing in action by his statements until the election is over next spring. And so he's not going to come to the rescue of this government. The second best case scenario that has gone out the window is the notion that the NDP and Rachel Notley will in any way, shape, or form. How the conservatives across the aisle dig themselves out of the rather big constitutional mess that they have dug themselves in.

Because the NDP position in Alberta basically is, this is your mess and we will take no part in it. Just withdraw the bill, go home and come back some other day to run the province and deal with priorities so absent those the improvements what daniel smith is left with is having to live with their own legislation which some of our ministers did not bother reading before they voted for and are now saying, well, that's not exactly what it says. Well, yes, it is. And since there was a conservative majority in Alberta, this bill will likely become law. This is even worse for Danielle Smith, because then she's

going to have to show something for how it works. And everyone is impatiently waiting to see how exactly this is going to work and how it could in any way, shape, or form make Alberta better, help its economy, or actually make it an attractive place to invest. Bruce, you're up. You know, I remember that around the time of the heightened talk about Quebec separation over the years and the Sovereignty Association, there was a fondness for using a marriage metaphor to describe what Quebec was looking for in terms of the relationship with the rest of Canada. And I don't remember exactly who said it in what way, but it felt to me as I was reading the revised name of the bill

that it was essentially saying permanently unhappy but not moving out bill. And if we think about what that really does for the conduct of public policy, it's an attempt to entrench a level of friction in a relationship where most people don't really think that friction is productive. I think this is the problem with these kind of firebrand candidates, whether they're from the left or the right, is that they see the firebrandiness being the thing that got them to where they are, and they don't know how to give it up. They don't know that it isn't the thing that will take them to, because I agree that Alberta does have one. And I've had a chance to interact with it at different points over the years that I've been kind of doing the work that I do. And I can't help but be a little bit dismayed that with weeks to prepare this piece of legislation,

not only was there this giant political miscalculation and this shambolic political organization, by which I mean that the premier didn't really seem to know what bill she was representing and her cabinet didn't. And she had all these people who had sort of said, this is the work of the devil and you must not choose her as leader. And then they stood beside her, even though they didn't really know what they were defending. The political management of it was brutally bad. But the professionalism associated with a piece of legislation like that shouldn't really be ignored here. And I'm not looking for who's the individual, but I do think that there would have been several senior individuals who would have had to look at this piece of legislation. And I'd be shocked and

dismayed if they didn't say, Premier, this is not correct legislation. Not only is it unconstitutional and it will be challenged and we will lose. But it's not correct legislation. There's so many flaws in it that that's what you have a professional public service for, in many instances, is to take a political idea and to turn it into a workable piece of legislation that isn't going to be essentially DOA when it's tabled, which is what I think has happened to this. And so the professionalism broke down. The political calculation has been pretty near disastrous from the beginning. I agree with Chantal that this is far from the first major blunder. This is a kind of a blundering, almost Liz Trust-like kind of start

to the term of office of Danielle Smith. And she's going to find that the supporters of her party are going to be uncomfortable with the way this is going. But more importantly, those voters, especially in Calgary and Edmonton, who are thinking, well, you know, maybe we won't need the NDP after all. This has been a good week for Rachel Notley. It's been a good week for the idea of, you know, maybe it is time to change again because the UCP doesn't look like it has a focus on the right issues and the competency that you're looking for in the office of the premier. Just before we move on, Chantal, your next point on this, I just want to say something about the public service issue, because I think many of us tend to forget this. Many of us, you know, sort of in the audience and journalists as well, tend to forget that there is a, you know, a significant size public service behind all elected governments and their job is to you know to try to

put forward legislation um that fits with what the government uh had promised the people and to do that in the most professional way and to raise the red flags when the when those are necessary i can remember sitting with michael pitfield the former clerk of the Privy Council in the Pierre Trudeau years, in his off year, which was 1980, when Joe Clark had won the election in 1979. And Pitfield was at Harvard, teaching at Harvard. And I went down there to talk with him because he'd never really given interviews before. And I wanted to talk to him about the public service and work in the public service. And I said, well, like, how far does that, you know, that support go in terms of preparing a government? I mean, at what point, if you are, you know, against the idea that you've been asked to put forward, can you go? Do you go?

And he said, look, you always have the option. You make the arguments against something and then if you still can't win and you feel firmly and personally uh challenged by it and against it you quit that's your option and you know you can quit quietly or you can quit publicly and you know and make that case um now we don't see that happen very often, or at least we don't see it happen in the public light. I'm sure people have left the public service in both federally and provincially over time because they didn't feel like what they were doing was correct, what the government was doing was correct. You know, I have a bit of a conflict on this because my father was in in the senior

public service both in ottawa and then was one of those recruited by peter laughey to alberta uh in the 1970s where he was in the uh in the health care area as chief deputy minister of health and you know he used to talk about the what he saw with laud who was a premier who had the file on whatever that file was knew it completely you know did the interview with him for the job and and then every time he had brought anything forward he had to sit in front of the premier and defend it why what he was putting forward. It seems to me what we witnessed this week, and we've witnessed elsewhere, so I don't want to just single her out,

but what we witnessed with Danielle Smith was somebody who was clearly one of those in that government who didn't fully understand what was in her own legislation. I mean, she couldn't defend it and eventually backtracked on it within the first initial opening news conference. I don't know, says something about her, says something about her leadership, says something about, you know, the public service that had prepared it and briefed her.

Nevertheless, I think it's a good point. But how much briefing did this cabinet take when I think it's a good point but how much briefing did this cabinet take when I think it's what a dozen pages this bill and you've got senior ministers saying they haven't had time to read it in any serious government and I'm talking provincial

governments here but also federal a bill that is so central is something that you get briefed on and that you master. You can't go around saying, I didn't read the bill. I would be like François Legault's minister saying he didn't read Bill 21 or Bill 96, but that's what we're doing, kind of thing. No civil servant, as far as we know, resigned over the past week, but someone did resign, and that is Jason Kenney. Within minutes of this bill being brought forward, he resigned his seat

in the Alberta legislature. Now, I don't think that Jason Kenney resigned to go in a monastery to take a vow of silence for the next six months. He seems like he still has a lot to say, and he has never had a second of time for, shares Rachel Nutley, the NDP's position on this bill, which is that it's an abomination that should never have seen the light of day in the legislature. So I'm curious to see what he will be saying. But if I look back, because we are closer to the end of the year now, and I look back to what has been happening to the conservative movement in this country, the fact that Jason Kenney and the province that is ground zero of the conservative movement at this point, and that has provided it over the past decades with a lot

of its intellectual energy, Peter Lougheed is one, but Preston Manning, a lot of the ideas, Stephen Harper, the Clarity Act, balanced budgets, those ideas were born in Alberta back rooms of conservative parties. So this is a province that has provided Canada with serious ideas. But if Jason Kenney is not comfortable enough to sit or be with a party that he recreated and brought to government, who will be, was my question. And where is the conservative movement in this country going? Where are the serious conservatives these days? And at what point do they stop biting their tongues collectively? Bruce?

Yeah, I just wanted to pick up a couple of points, Peter. I do think that Jason Kenney has some scores to settle. I think he's entitled to feel as though the things that Daniel Smith said about him and the kind of the slings and arrows that he had to endure some of them he had kind of earned but some of them were a little bit over the top i think in terms of the uh the way in which people went at him fair or not he will think of himself as a smarter more capable person than daniel smith no question about it and i i think it would be hard to argue against that um but i i agree with chantal i don't think he's decided that's the end of him in politics i think

the choice of the timing um of his departure was very deliberate it was very intended to be a calculation of how to make a statement upon leaving that you could use subsequently when you want to talk about politics, which brings me to the second point, which is I think that the fuel for conservative success in Alberta, in part, is an anti-Trudeau, anti-Ottawa sentiment, but it's also, in part, the problem with liberals and New Democrats is they don't understand how the economy works. And I think the most trenchant for some people criticism of the permanently unhappy but not moving out law is in that area of what it sends as a signal to the investment marketplace around the economy. There are many, many, many, many, many businesses in Alberta

that value the idea of a stable and predictable legislative and economic policy environment, and they're going to be hearing from Jason Kenney and others that that is not what Danielle Smith is offering, that her permanently unhappy but not quite moving out law is going to be a recipe for continued uncertainty about whether there are going to be exacerbated and they're going to be used by Smith's opponents to say, she only knows one setting, which is a radio hotline show host who hates Ottawa on your behalf. And we need somebody who will help us build the next version of the Alberta economy. And she's not that. I think that's going to be a more powerful criticism in some markets

in Alberta than she may have taken on board as an idea. All right. You really love that phrase, eh? The new name for the act. You're really into that. Well, you know, it's just a podcast. What's the worst that could happen? I still think its actual name is even better. It reminds

Quebecers of Yvon Duchamp's famous line about that Quebecers wanted a strong Quebec within a united Canada, which has basically been the rule. I have always also struck this week that, you know, in Quebec, some of the nationalist politicians have a lot of appetite for what happens elsewhere. And, you know, you'll find that the pro-Brexiters in Quebec were often from that that side of the

political spectrum but I saw no one that said go go go Alberta and we will follow you down that path not happening it's just not on all right we're going to take our final break then we can when we come back we're going to talk about the king, the real king. Well, depends which king. Some people think the real king is Boreasalming. Other people think the real king is Charles. It's the Charles king that we're going to talk about when we come back right after this. And welcome back.

Final segment of Good Talk for this week. And for those of you who are wondering about the Boreas-Salming references, it's a Toronto thing. Okay. He was a great defenseman in the NHL, passed away. A hockey player. A hockey player. Okay.

Thank you. Yes. But he was a great defenseman and was incredibly well-loved in this city. And when he passed away, the city was in shock. He died of ALS, and, you know, there's been a lot of discussion about that in the last week. But his nickname, both on the team and amongst the fans, was the King. Okay, that is not the King we're talking about here now.

And Chantel, you're going to start us off, because this is, on the whole issue of the King and the King's relevance in Canada, it takes on, I guess, a new dimension of sorts this weekend in the Quebec National Assembly. So explain it to us. It was inevitable that there would be new questions about the links to the monarchy between Canada and the monarchy in Quebec and the monarchy, after the Queen passed. And for those who aren't totally aware of how different Quebec is on some of the rituals in Parliament that we see in other provinces, it has been decades since the lieutenant governor has read

what is called elsewhere the speech from the throne. In Quebec, the lieutenant governor attends what is known as the opening speech, says nice words, and then the premier reads the opening speech, as it is called. But you still, to sit in the National Assembly, have to swear allegiance to the king now. And at least two parties, Québec Solidaire and the Parti Québécois, have been wanting this changed. In the case of Québec Solidaire, they brought in legislation that ultimately was not debated in the last National Assembly

to make it optional to swear allegiance to the king. This time, the election has just taken place. The three members of the Parti Québécois declined to swear the oath. Yesterday, they showed up to take their seats in the National Assembly, were turned back by the sergeant at arms because it is the law that to take your seat, you must swear allegiance. arms because it is the law that to take your seat you must wear allegiance but the government is now bringing in a bill to make the oath optional that bill is going to be passed with all party support the liberals who initially had reservations and now decided they do not want to die a little bit

more by making their first battle in the new National Assembly about keeping the monarchy inside the place. And so by the end of next week, probably, there will be a new law in Quebec that says that you can take the oath if you want, but it's optional. Me, I think this will probably have some echoes on Parliament Hill, not tomorrow, but after the next election, because it's really difficult to see how the Bloc Québécois, having been part and parcel of what's just happened, could come back after the next election. And I'm assuming there will be BLEC members re-elected and next time Canada goes to the polls, and swear no to the king or not bring the issue up in that kind of a way. And the reason why I think this goes beyond, you know, the photo opportunity of having people who are MPs being told they can't sit, is because

they are inside the House of Commons on the benches of other parties, people who are thinking that this should become optional. I'm going to name Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP, who said he's uncomfortable with the oath. I'm going to not name, but point to indigenous members of parliament, be they in the Senate or the House of Commons, who are not comfortable with having to swear an oath to the king, that their ancestors were deported, taken away from their communities and spread across the globe by the crown. So it's not a discussion Justin Trudeau wants to have, but I believe that it awaits the next House of Commons one way or another.

Bruce? next house of commons one way or another. Bruce. Well, I think that I could write the speech that Justin Trudeau could give to say, we want to move to make this optional in 10 minutes. I'm not sure. I think Chantal's right that it's not necessarily a conversation that Justin Trudeau is looking for, but neither should it be something that they spend a lot of time on and make it optional. of stating, you know, affirming your integrity or trustworthiness, there are better ways to do it. This is a legacy item that doesn't have a counterparty in the fight. I can't imagine for the life of me that Pierre Poliev would decide that he wants to say, no, no, no, no, we can't make it optional. I mean, he's the anti-gatekeeper, the anti-establishment conservative. It would be hard, I think, for him to decide to take that on,

even though his predecessors in that job probably would have been very tempted to. I suspect that his political acumen is such that he would say optional is optional. And then people who want to take that oath that way can continue to do that. So I agree with Chantal. I think if it happens in Quebec, it'll happen in Ottawa and it won't happen in a counterparty that says King Charles and the British monarchy is so important to our sense of institutional well-being and history that we need to keep it that way. You know, I've enjoyed this whole hour, but I've enjoyed this little part because I learned something here that I didn't know and I probably should have known. But Chantel's description of what happens in the National Assembly on speech from the throne day was something I hadn't realized, that the lieutenant governor

gives a kind of brief overview and then the first minister, in this case Premier Legault, makes the speech outlining the government's intentions. Now, you know what? That's the way it should be. That's what it really should be because speeches from the throne, whether they're at the provincial level or the federal level,

are written in the premier's office, right? It's their words. And the governor general or the lieutenant governor, whomever, ends up then, you know, reading those words. This way, the way it's done in Quebec, I like that. You know, I think that's good. I think that's something that perhaps should be incorporated elsewhere. And it would save Mary Simon from having to practice her French so publicly.

Well, we've seen a few situations like that over time, both French and in some cases, to some degree, English. But to me, it's a much more honest way of dealing with that day instead of, you know, what have so often been. There have been very, let's face it, there have been very few governors general at the federal level who have made that day interesting in terms of their performance out of one of the throne seats in reading somebody else's speech.

Anyway, it's something. Well, our work here is done because, you know, Chantal and i lived for that moment when you said well i learned something here today and this has been just a great conversation thank you both it's only taken two years but i did i learned something here finally uh listen thank you both uh very much as always it was a you know a good program and as I said looking forward to a couple more before we take a break over the holiday season

there will be we'll do a kind of last show of the year you know the best hits of 2022 before we take that break so that's all coming up in the next little while there will also be another more butts conversation program somewhat similar but from a different angle uh before the holiday break as

well so thank you to bruce thank you to chantelle and thank you to you our listening audience here on good talk for this friday um i'll be back next week um all all through the week, Monday through Friday next week. So thank you for that. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again on Monday. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.