The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The Politics of The Pandemic

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Chantal and Bruce start off 2022 with two big topics. We discuss the at times divisive politics of the pandemic in Canada; and then if Joe Biden is right and democracy is vulnerable in the United States, how ready is Canada?

Are you ready for Good Talk? And welcome to the first episode of the 2022 version of Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal, Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm in Stratford, Ontario. And Chantelle, I want to start with you because we've got a couple of heavy-duty things to talk about on this day, on this first episode of a new year. But I want to start with this whole Sunwing thing because my guess is that it has been the dominant story, at least for the last couple of days, in spite of all the other things that are going on in Quebec media, generally in Quebec media. What is it about this story that is attracting all the attention that it has had, and what does it all mean? So for those who have not seen the pictures provided by the perpetrators themselves, this is a bunch of so-called influencers.

And let me right away dispel the impression that these are major voices in the Quebec conversation. But people have gone on reality shows, et cetera, with Instagram accounts. I'm sure Bruce spends a lot of time checking them up because he has to. He's a poster. I don't have to. So they are part of a club, apparently. The plane was chartered from Sunwing and they flew to Mexico on December 30th. And once on the plane, they turned the entire plane into a party scene to the point where the staff on the plane hid in the back because the people

who were on the plane were totally out of control. I'm not going to go into why the pilot didn't just turn back or land them anywhere, particularly in a cold place. I would have picked in this place. But they put those images. You see them drinking, jumping over seats, doing all kinds of stuff that would not be acceptable behavior on any airplane, chartered or not. But in this case, that breaks every single rule in the book about COVID and social distancing. So they posted all that on their book about COVID and social distancing. So they posted all that on their media, on their social media.

And of course, December 30th, about a week later, the picture started to surface. You're right. It's not the dominant story, but it is the story that everyone would talk about if they were going to the office. It's next to the weather for this week. Have you seen this and have you heard? Because they started coming back. And if you thought the pictures were outrageous,

some of the stuff that they say, those who have managed to find flights and slip back in are just about as outrageous. One last night on TV was raving about how someone else had bought a tattoo machine on the plane and how cool it was to get all those tattoos. Why did the story take off like that? Well, I suspect because they have become poster children for everyone who doesn't care about anyone else and who's happy to break the rules, regardless of the consequences to others. So that's one reason. They are this year's version of the politicians who went south last year at Christmas.

The other reason is Justin Trudeau, in French, managed to give it a bit more life and actually managed to make people smile because when he answered, he called them people, mindless people. But in he answered he called them people mindless people but in french he says i don't think very many english-speaking canadians including very learned media commentators would have known what he was talking about but this is from a cartoon series called the astegics my eight-year-old grandson knew exactly what justin trudeau had said and how he had treated these people

uh called these people barbarians and suddenly little sections of sdx cartoons where you see it in context started surfacing on the social media and it kind of connected with a lot of people that Justin Trudeau would use those terms. In a way, he was very harsh on them, but in another way, he really treated them for what they are, people who have no thoughts to consequences and who are basically stupid. You know, when I first heard this story and the use of this word, there was a plane full of influencers. I'm still not comfortable in my mind of understanding what that description is. And it's used a lot now on a lot of different things. But my first fear was, oh, my God, Quebec influencers.

Was Chantal on that flight? Yeah, right, getting my tattoo. I would show it if I had it. It seems, but he didn't show it, this guy, so I'm left to wonder what exactly they got themselves tattooed into. And there were people cooking or something on, you know, on open little, you know, those kind of portable barbecue things on the flight too, which reminded me of flights I'd taken

in Afghanistan 20 years ago, where that was kind of common. There was no onboard meal service, but people were cooking their own meals in their different seats on the plane. Anyway, Bruce, do you want to weigh in on this at all before we move into the politics of the pandemic? Just very quickly, I think the idea of influencer is someone for whom they can post pictures or video on the understanding that other people will want to do what they're doing. And in that sense, if these people weren't completely influencers up till now, they are now, but not in the way that they had perhaps intended. Maybe they've reached maximum influencer value score or whatever that might be.

Look, I think it's easy to be annoyed, frustrated, angry, maybe a little bit amused at some of the the weirdness of the whole thing um and i do think that it if it wasn't happening in this week or two weeks where everybody knows somebody more likely multiple people who are catching this virus and so the level of anxiety about it is is higher perhaps in a way than it's ever been even though people are kind of aware that the severity might not be that bad. It doesn't make people feel like this is the safe time. So I think it's, it's caught people by surprise that people would do something so stupid right now.

And the last thing I would say is that I didn't find myself reading the comments of one person anyway, and presumably there were others on that flight, a woman who said it for her it was her first flight she didn't think about it very much she felt bad about what the choice that she had made and and so uh you know i i hope the story passes for those people who were relatively innocent in terms of their intention and the way that they behaved uh uh on the flight yeah i think the other point that Chantal made is a good one

and will have to be answered at some point, that the airline just kept on flying. I mean, they had problems with flight attendants where apparently, as Chantal mentioned, they were kind of hiding in the back away from all that was going on, but the pilots decided to keep on flying where they could have landed, almost anywhere with some form of an emergency situation. Anyway, moving on from that,

which is a story that's clearly grabbed some attention throughout these last couple of days. Going to take a quick break. We'll reassemble, come back on the politics of the pandemic because there have been a number of things in this past week that are worth discussing and raising our own questions about. So we'll do that right after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to Good Talk, the first episode of the 2022 year. Chantal's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Stratford, Ontario. Okay, so, you know, when you talk politics, one of the words that often comes up is sort of consistency. And there is a certain degree of a lack of consistency, or you could even argue that it is consistent on the part of politicians of all stripes who will often say one thing and then within days, if not hours, say the opposite. It's sort of where the definition of political floppery came from that the you know that their positions changed and we've seen that

on numerous occasions on the covid story you've seen premiers attack for for not doing enough not being prepared enough and then when they in fact do something they're attacked for it to why did it take so long you're too late it's too little too late um that's happened to premiers it certainly happened to prime ministers or prime minister uh and that has happened again this week which is you know again kind of inflamed the political rhetoric around the COVID management story. And they've all taken their hits this week. You know, Trudeau was taking hits yesterday and the day before from Aaron O'Toole

about first not doing enough, yesterday acting too slowly. The same has been the case for Doug Ford on the whole issue around schools. But you can look across the country, and you've seen this kind of discussion going on. So where are we on the politics of the pandemic, if you will? Bruce touched a little bit on this the other day when he was on,

on Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. So let's start with Chantal. Where do you see the landscape of this picture right now? There are no heroes in this chapter of the pandemic management. It starts, and you need to rewind to what, a month and a half ago when this variant surfaced and the notion that it was very contagious. And what you first saw were governments who wanted,

and you still see governments who want to be seen to be doing something. And that starts with Justin Trudeau's announcement that he was closing the borders to people from a number of African countries, but leaving travelers from the U.S. to come. That's called wanting to be seen to do something. And that's one lesson, but not the most important, sadly, that politicians have learned over the course of the pandemic, is that it is

important to be seen to do something. Now, while Mr. Trudeau was doing that, François Legault was telling Quebecers that it would be fine. What was the words of the health minister in Quebec? It's all good to have parties with 20 people at Christmas. And then you think, do they believe in Santa Claus will deliver them from the Omicron virus? In Quebec, to be seen to do something, we have a curfew at 10 o'clock at night. It's January here. Every bar and every restaurant is closed. How many people are going to be partying in the streets of Montreal or Quebec City at 10 o'clock at night? And if they are not, they're probably doing it on a plane, on Sunwing, or in some private house. And that's called to be seen to do something. In Ontario,

Premier Ford, who has the record for having been the least able to keep schools open with kids in person in class in North America, suddenly became an apostle of keeping schools open. And I'll tell you that that's in part because Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, who took a hit over the first phases of this pandemic, saw that François Legault had scored by managing, and he did to his credit, to keep the schools open for as long as possible. The problem is the Omicron variant is not the same as the other variants. So what worked then might not work now. What I think we have overall is not politics. It's politicians who do not know anymore what

button to push in the face of this variant and have fingers crossed because the healthcare system is really in a perfect storm of fatigue from the people who work inside, Omicron variant for healthcare providers, and places that are multiplying. And while they may be less severe, it doesn't take a math degree to know that if you have a lot more cases and a percentage of them will end up in hospital, that number will be very high and more than the system can handle.

And I think that's basically where we are. People slept on the switch for third doses in some provinces. Others decided that Christmas was fine. We need to save Christmas more than we need to save hospitals and doctors and nurses from coming in harm's way over the course of January. More and more, you're right. We all know people who are sick. And the fact is that the society can't function if police officers or fire people are missing in action.

It's not just the notion that hospitals are overwhelmed. I go to a fish store last week. Half the staff was down with the variant. How do you operate a shop when half your staff is down and the other half may be about to go down with the virus? So it's going to be, I think, it's the only thing everyone seems to agree about in politics. It's going to be a tough January. A word on Aaron O'Toole, I do not believe that Justin Trudeau is the sole person responsible for those lockdowns.

I think it's a shared responsibility. Well, yeah, I mean, he really had trouble with that. I was watching the news conferences, I'm sure you were yesterday, and he basically ended up walking out of the room with people yelling at him questions about lockdown, like, explain yourself. We don't get it, especially when it's the provinces almost entirely who are the ones calling for the lockdowns. Bruce?

I think the first thing that comes to mind for me, Chantal, I think hinted at it is that the the pandemic is exhausting it's exhausting to people it's exhausting to people in politics and uh we're all kind of extra gobsmacked exhausted because we kind of thought it was over five, six, seven, eight weeks ago. And now we're back in it. And the more optimistic among us, including me, think five or six weeks from now, we'll feel that same feeling again. In a certain way, I think that for many people, the conversation about which politicians did what right when on time

with enough foresight is irrelevant. They don't really care about it. They might pay some attention to it. Probably everybody who's listening to our podcast will have a view about it. But I think for a lot of other people, it's not really the central issue. It's not how they're going to get through their day. They look at the the politicians and say well some of them could have done more some of them annoy me more than others some of them

got some things right but they didn't cause the virus and there's no politician anywhere that solved the virus and so if some things were, like how many tests we might need at this particular moment in time, I don't think people really most people really dial in on that conversation and say, why is it that we're only getting 140 million new cases, new test sets delivered right now instead of four weeks from now. Yeah, as I say, I think some people do, but I think that that's largely a conversation among people whose minds about politics are, first of all, more engaged in politics and secondly, probably made up from a partisan standpoint. I do think that when politicians use their share of voice to blame other politicians, they better have a strong argument. Otherwise, they just sound like politicians in a negative way. And I think that was true for Doug Ford in the last little bit.

I think whenever he has sounded like he's working in cooperation with the federal government, he does better than when he sounds like he's blaming Ottawa for the things that most people do know are the choices that he's making from the standpoint of whether schools should be open or not, or whether I should make a decisive decision about that in a timely fashion, which he didn't do. And I think the same thing is a little bit true for Aaron O'Toole. I don't know that he helped himself except potentially within his caucus. Maybe he did that conference yesterday because his caucus is restive and say, why aren't you out saying something about this? All you're tweeting about is everything but COVID. But I think that, you know, when you when you grab the microphone and basically say things that don't really make sense from a jurisdictional standpoint, you're testing the mettle and the skills of journalists who feel like they have an obligation, as they did in that presser yesterday. I say just a second now um this doesn't make sense and so you know there was a version of a press conference yesterday that would have avoided trouble for him

but i don't think he did i don't think he found it i don't think he made any progress i think he probably um it was probably not a bad day for justin trudeau if the opposition leader is out there saying things that, you know, reasonable observers would say are over the line, not really reasonable, exaggerations, that sort of thing. But I hope that three or four weeks from now, and I think that three or four weeks from now, most people won't remember anything about the skirmishing that's going on right now, in the same way that a lot of people forgot pretty quickly last year about the skirmishing that's going on right now in the same way that a lot of people forgot pretty quickly last year about the skirmishing that went on about vaccines? If I can take issue with some of that, I don't think people forgot quickly about the skirmishing over vaccines. I believe it hurt the federal conservatives in the election to have spent so

much time predicting a doomsday on the vaccine front and putting the blame on Justin Trudeau. And watching Erin O'Toole this week, I figured it's not just premiers and prime ministers who have not learned any lessons from the past two years. It's also the leader of the official opposition on Parliament Hill who is saying things that on the face of them can't even be analyzed because they're so over the top. And Bruce is right. Justin Trudeau has actually not been having a bad week or about two weeks. in French and English, commentators who follow this story very closely, say about the premier's attack on the federal government on rapid deaths, that on this one, the federal government was

probably in the right, and not the provinces. But I do think people are looking for not someone to blame for the virus, but someone to blame, period. And if they're not blaming premiers and prime ministers, they're blaming people who are not vaccinated. And I think of the two, it would be more comfortable if they blamed premiers and prime minister. It's less divisive than to go after people. I don't believe that the, and I read it, we should refuse healthcare to people who are not vaccinated. We should make them pay for health care. I don't think this is going to lead us anywhere except into a new wall. I'm OK with people you don't really know and who are not going to be convinced. They're just going to be reinforced by the aggressive tone that you're using on politicians. Doug Ford and Francois Legault have elections coming. That's going to make them more nervous over the next few months than they would have

been a year ago when they were not about to go into those elections. And I have read more serious commentators say, for instance, that they had backed every curfew that François Legault had ordered over the past two years, but not on this one. And the coverage is becoming more critical of Lagos management of the pandemic. And I believe that people actually do react to that coverage and do look at it. I listened to his last news conference, I was driving. And it wasn't an impressive news conference, put it this way. I'm being polite here, but I could see how people could be sitting in their cars like me swearing at the memory was is really not that it didn't matter at the time. I think the skirmishing did matter. I think it probably was last year.

You know, it did dissipate, though. By the time election came around, the conservatives won roughly the same number of votes that they had won before. And that wasn't the goal, right? No, no, I'm just saying that if there was going to be a lasting political effect in favor of the government having procured those vaccines when the opposition said we're not going to get them till 2030 and Mexico is going to get more before us and everything else, that seemed not to have accumulated in any sustained way as a as a political outcome. I'm not suggesting that they were they were that the government was buying the vaccines to get votes. But I am suggesting that the opposition parties were criticizing the vaccine policy to get votes. And and so I just look at the math at six months later, maybe. And maybe all really debating is whether or not in the near term, there's a little bit of an effect among people who are really dialed in on this conversation about tests

to the extent that there is i do think that um feeling that there are no tests available in your province and then hearing that the federal government has 140 million of them landing uh this week and next week or you know know, in the next two, three weeks feels like a better week for the federal government in the context of this Hunger Games kind of fight to get the tests that will allow people to know whether they should go to work or go and see their relatives or have dinner with their family. So I think it's material that way. But I kind of feel like if you're the federal government and you're looking for some sort of political management upside in this, that's a fool's errand. There just isn't going to be very much evidence of one. But, you know, I do think that the the question of what the opposition parties do. It almost feels like Jagmeet Singh,

who has been kind of the principal offender of jurisdictional politics, basically criticizing Trudeau for everything that is going wrong, and regardless of whether or not it has anything to do with federal responsibility, was supplanted by Aaron O'Toole, who doesn't want to know about jurisdiction, Quebec's jurisdiction, when it comes to Bill C-21. He doesn't have anything to say about that. On the other hand, he has a lot to say about matters of provincial jurisdiction when he thinks he can kind of poke the eye of the Liberals on the pandemic. But I don't think he's making progress. And I do think

that the question of anti-cial behavior and whether or not people who are practicing socially responsible behavior are entitled to call out antisocial behavior. Maybe I see that a little bit differently. I'm not in favor of dividing people for the sake of scoring some political point or, and I'm wary of the prospect of more divisiveness, but I think it's the antisocial behaviors that are causing the divisions in society. And I do think that just kind of waving it off on some level or shrugging it off because we can't convince them feels like it's, you know, it's what civic-minded people might be tempted to do,

but it might not be the right solution in the long term. Okay. The Quebec government wanted to force everyone who works in the healthcare sector to be doubly vaccinated. That's last fall. It set a deadline for that, and then you lost your job. You couldn't come to work. And then it set a second deadline, and then it backed off.

And that's people who work in the healthcare system who have first row seats on this virus. And unless the Quebec government wanted to risk paralyzing the healthcare system, it had to back off compulsory vaccination for healthcare workers. That kind of suggests something for all of those who are saying, let's make vaccination mandatory, that this is easier said than done, and it has consequences, collateral results that are unintended, but that are totally real. So, you know, everyone wants easy fixes to everything. There are none. It's not going to happen. Just one last point. I know you want to move on.

I think this chapter will have some impact on the healthcare funding conversation between the federal government and the provinces. I'm not going to say whose argument has been best advanced, the federal government for saying we need to have more active input into how the system is run, or the provinces saying our system is so fragile that we obviously need greater participation in the funding from the federal government. But I believe that those talks will attract more attention, having seen the fragility of the system in action, than they would have three months ago. Well, that was going to be my final point on this,

and I wouldn't mind a brief comment from each of you before we do move on on this. And that is, if there's going to be a discussion about how the system could work better, I mean, you know, I want to share the optimism that Bruce has that in, you know, five, six, seven weeks, we're going to be past all this, and we won't be talking about the kind of divisions we see right now between different levels of government. Hopefully that's true. Hopefully that's the case but in the meantime i'm looking at the i'm looking at the map from last night the chart of

of what the numbers are across the country and these are horrific numbers in terms of cases and i understand the debate about cases versus hospitalizations etc etc but when you look at the case numbers these are numbers that we would never have imagined just a few weeks ago. I mean, there's like 1,500 cases, active cases in PEI. We were, you know, a year ago, we were talking about zero in PEI. You know, week after week, there were just no cases there. And for most of Atlanta, Canada. Anyway, right across the country, there's these huge numbers,

which raises this question again. We talked about this a year ago. But was it a mistake not to declare a national emergency by Ottawa and for Ottawa to take the reins of this from coast to coast to coast. So that's the question. No, it was not a mistake. There is no expertise in Ottawa in running the health care system in provinces, BC, Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, where situations are so diverse and where the federal government does have direct input in managing the pandemic.

That would be indigenous communities in many areas of the country. Those communities are just as hard hit in this wave as all of the other communities. It's not because the federal government is not doing its job anymore when it was doing it last year. It is that there is no I know better government. And to add to the complications of this pandemic, the notion that the father knows best government in Ottawa will suddenly take the reins of a healthcare system it does not have the clue how to manage in 10 provinces and 3 territories is, again, a theoretical vision that

has no real practical benefits. And I'm not even talking about the politics of it, which is also very toxic. But just on a practical basis, should we have done that? Would we be better off if this had happened? Forget the politics. Forget the many premiers. I think it's a terrible idea.

Okay. And I agree with you. Let's forget the politics. We know how that would play out if something like this had happened. Where are you on this, Bruce? Well, as strongly as Chantal put it, the only challenge for me is whether I could find words that are stronger enough to decry that idea. And I think all three of us kind of recognize just what lunacy it would be from a i think it would be lunacy from a political standpoint uh quite clearly but i i also think um relatively speaking uh i don't know that i would

sort of look at the way that the pandemic has has evolved in our response to it and say it's proven that our federalism works. But I do think that to some considerable degree, the division of responsibilities, the theoretical idea of the division of responsibilities that we have actually did work fairly well in some respects. I mean, there are some ways to look at the results of the pandemic in Canada and say it could have been a lot worse. It has been a lot worse in some places. And the notion that the federal government could have made better choices on a lot of the things that affect day to day life. I don't I don't think that I'm with Chantel. I don't think that the expertise is there. I don't think that it would build Chantel. I don't think that the expertise is there. I don't think that it would build confidence.

I think it would undermine confidence. I think we'd have chaos right now. I think we're going to have governments at the provincial level that are going to pay a price for some of the choices that they've made. And that's the way it should be. And I think we're going to have the federal government held responsible and given whatever credit it deserves on some level at the appropriate time but no i i don't think our federalism has been the problem and the and the jurisdictional division of powers has been the problem here all right we are going to move on uh to a very different topic but one that uh perhaps is in the long term is probably much more important but we'll we'll

talk about that when we come back all right there we're back with Good Talk Chantelle's in Montreal, Bruce is in Ottawa, and I'm in Stratford, Ontario. You're listening to Good Talk on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. As we always say, we're glad you're with us, no matter where you're listening from. Okay, the other topic that I wanted to discuss today is what we witnessed, well, as part of what we witnessed yesterday in the United States. Joe Biden gave what some are calling the most important speech of his career and perhaps

the best speech of his career. Not everybody agrees with that, but that's the majority opinion from what I've read. When he did a full-out frontal attack on the one-year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection on Donald Trump. Now, he spent the last year never mentioning the former president or at least trying to pretend that he just didn't exist um but he dropped that yesterday and went after him full bore

and warned the country that the future of democracy is at stake the the u.s is at a a point an inflection point, I think is the term he used, on the future of democracy and whether or not it will survive and be replaced by an autocracy. So that's pretty heavy stuff. stuff and what i found among all of the things that i found interesting was that in the past five years a a central part of every broadcast and journalistic organization covering big events has been fact checkers and they get almost as much time as the speaker gets going through the uh the outright lies on some parts and certainly the misrepresentations and misinformation on others um yesterday i didn't see a fact checker anywhere in fact what all i heard from the commentators or at least the ones that i was watching and reading was that everything in his speech was true, that there were no falsehoods, that it was all accurate.

Well, if it's all accurate, we are really at an inflection point. And one has to wonder, and there have been a couple of pieces written about this in the last little while, about where Canada is watching this unfold just south of the border and what it means to this country and whether or not we should be preparing is that the right word for such an eventuality the possibility of such an eventuality, the possibility of such an eventuality, just south of the border by our, you know, supposedly greatest ally. So that's the question. Is there discussions? Are there discussions? Do we know whether there's any uncomfortable feelings in the nation's capital or anywhere in the country about what we're witnessing south of the border and the stakes which Joe Biden has now laid out as to what's happening there?

Bruce, you start us on this one. I do think a lot of people who spend their time thinking about Canada-U.S. relations and global affairs and global relationships are worried about what's been happening in the United States. And I don't think it started this week. And, you know, even in our conversations, we've been talking about this for months. And I'm glad that we have. And I hear you say, are we at an inflection point i think we've blown through 40 or 50 inflection points uh at least in terms of how america has responded to it and i'm always stunned at the degree to which america writ large seems incapable of observing what's happening within its own democracy and always kind of migrating towards this.

America is the city on the hill. They model for democracy in the world, the place in the world that's functioning best. And the rest of us might be able to look at it and say, well, hang on just a second. That isn't a terribly accurate description of what's going on. And that's not just a question of economics. And maybe that's partly what, you know, makes Americans kind of always go back to that.

But I do think that Americans like that. It's almost like they treat the position of their country in the eyes of the world as something that it's not. And as a kind of a machismo kind of measure of how grand the words United States of America sound. But leaving that aside, there's been a hostile takeover of conservative politics in the United States. Watching Dick Cheney, former VP Dick Cheney, be the latest voice to say a voice who would have been revered in the Republican Party not very long ago, say, this isn't the party that I was part of. This is not something that I can support or respect or identify with. And, you know, it didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on the existing kind of Republican caucus in the Senate or the House.

And you could sort of see that coming. Now, I give Liz Cheney full marks for being that lone voice almost who is saying, we've got to fight this. And I do think that America's got to fight it. But I don't know where the tools are. I don't know who the other figures are who are looking like they have the influence, the clout, the share of voice, the platform to fight this fight. The most powerful political organization in America is Fox News. of evidence in the last several weeks with some of the emails that have come out the text messages that that fox news at least some of its people were acting not as journalists but as part of the agitation um part of the kind of the the partisanship is so important that we let's see

if we can't just sort of undermine our democracy a little bit. It's shocking. It's worrying. But I don't hear the sounds that make me think that the side of good is about to win. I only hear more worrying sounds. Chantal? And of course, no matter how much discussion there can be within political circles and elsewhere in this country, it's a spectator sport. We do not have influence and impact on the course of events in the US. We've just seen that over the Trump years. So it would be a delusion to think that suddenly Canada's geography would not be a major determinant in its politics. The other reason why we do not have a

lot of room to maneuver, and certainly not a lot of room to engage on one side or the other, and then have to live with the consequences when we are the other, is that the alternative on the world scene is what, China? You can say quite rightly everything that Joe Biden said yesterday, and that can all be true. But it remains that the alternative is a lot worse when it comes to democracy. There is not a beacon out there and you have a choice. You can realign yourself with that shiny beacon because America went the way that it has done. If anything, China's rising influence in the world

probably house the authoritarian voices in North America, including Canada, feel more comfortable about being authoritarian rather than wanting to be different. So Canada can prepare. I think a lot of illusions about the Canada-U.S. relationship and the history of the relationship were lost, if not after 9-11, certainly over the Trump term. And it has now dawned on many Canadians, those who are interested in this, that A, Donald Trump or some variation of Donald Trump could be back in the White House in a couple of years, and B, that the situation in the United States, the politics of the United States, makes it very hard for whoever is in the White House to deal with allies, including Canada or France, you name them, in the way that partners of the United States were used to.

But when it comes to this country, because we not only live next door, but this should be a major influence, I'll just note that there has been a tendency for the years that I've covered politics, at least, for many, many Canadians, I think a critical mass to define themselves as not being like the Americans. And I don't think that that has faded. I think it has become stronger over the past five, 10 years, that watching to be told that someone is like Donald Trump in this country is literally to be told that you are consigned to the margins of the body politics. No premier wants to be compared to Donald Trump. And it is actually considered an insult to say that about a premier.

Fox News is a major influence on that side of the border, but the experiment with Sun News here showed that there wasn't that much of an audience for it or not enough to make it a sustainable proposition. I think in federal politics, provincially, I believe that premiers and party lines kind of are molded by the personality of the leader. I don't believe the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party has become Trumpian because Doug Ford is the premier in Ontario. I don't see that. And I don't believe that that is how he gets his vote.

I don't equate populist with Trumpian. I think it's there are shades and nuances in that. But at the federal level, I believe that what's happening in the United States is a major problem for the Federal Conservative Party, that they are living and you see it with Maxim Belny and the People's Party. They are enduring all those stresses. And within the confines of that party, our alternative government, until numbers the Conservative Party and to manage those tensions and look like a credible alternative to government. And I'm not putting that on the doorstep of Aaron O'Toole and saying someone else tomorrow would do a lot better. But that temptation is strongest within the Conservative Party. And my fear is that the Conservative Party will become an echo chamber of all those voices. And as it becomes disconnected, increasingly unable to reach out

to mainstream voters, that we will all live the rest of our days under a federal liberal government. Which is bad for the federal liberals, by the way. Right. Let me throw a number at you, Bruce, and you can take it wherever you want to take it. But, you know, I appreciate what Chantel said about the failure of the Sun News, the right-wing television news network that tried to take hold in Canada. It was 10 years ago that that folded.

A lot has happened in the last 10 years. And the whole Trump influence was after that failure of Sun News. But here's my question. You know, our friend Laurie Martin from the Globe and Mail wrote a piece this week where he claimed there are six million Canadians who are Trump supporters, who believe in Donald Trump, think Donald Trump's right, and one assumes, you know, feel that he was, you know,

didn't win the election because of reasons of, you know, the other side stealing the election, believes all that stuff that has been proven absolutely wrong over and over again. But six million canadians now i know that's still you know a minority position but it's not a bad starting point uh if you're looking for trump supporters is a is that number real i mean laurie talks about uh you know pollsters in Canada, of which you're one, have helped him come up with that number.

Yeah, yeah. You know, he talked to me and to a couple of others, and I think that Frank Graves' number is a little bit higher than mine, more like 20%. Mine's more like 15%. But we're still talking about millions of people. And I think it is an important reminder. I think it's a good column for people to read if they want to kind of get a review of the different influences. And one of the things that I spoke about with Lawrence in this piece is that I think it's

important to recognize that Trump is not the cause of what we call Trumpism now exclusively, although he is to some degree a cause, but he is more better understood, I think, as symptom of a desire by a certain portion of the population who harbor certain views, who feel that those views are rejected by the mainstream to give expression to their views in the most hostile and disruptive way possible. And so they gravitate towards people like Max Bernier. They gravitate towards people like Donald Trump.

They gravitate towards the Maverick Party and the People's Party. And that phenomena isn't getting smaller in Canada. I don't know. I'm kind of with Chantal that I don't think that it's getting bigger. And one of the reasons why I don't think it's getting bigger is that there is no avatar for it right now from a leadership standpoint. That isn't to say that there couldn't be one. And it is a cautionary tale that the People's Party did a little bit better than maybe some people had expected, especially in Ontario this past year. But at the same time, if people thought that the election of Doug Ford in Ontario was a signal that Ford had won because he was Trump-like, whether that was even partly true or not, probably it was a little bit true. I think he's learned that success for him in politics is appearing to be not that.

And so his numbers stopped deteriorating when he stopped sounding like he was a Trump like politician. And I think other conservatives who are tempted by that, not all of them have kind of observed the same thing. And I say not all of them because I do think, like Chantel, that replacing Aaron O'Toole for the federal conservatives isn't obviously going to solve this problem. I'm not saying he's solved it, but at least he seems to be working at it. And we're better served. Those of us who believe that we need to have a conservative party that's competitive nationally. I think we're so much better served by having a leader that's trying to manage that process, not by capitulating to the kind of the mob that says we need to be climate skeptics.

We need to have another conversation about a woman's right to choose. We need to be soft on human rights when it comes to LGBTQ communities. Those kinds of issues, they do represent a significant proportion of that conservative voter base. That's where that 15% looks. It either looks there

or it looks to something further right than that. And we only have to remember the last two leadership races in the conservative party before the one that aaron o'toole won max bernier beat andrew sheer 12 ballots out of 13 and lost by less than a percentage point that's max bernier who for me is a pretty fringy kind of character in Canadian politics. And Andrew Scheer won that leadership when he won with the help of a lot of people who expected him to champion these views. So, you know, we do have a problem. I don't think it's necessarily growing. I don't think it's going away either. I think it's something we

need to be very cognizant of. All right've got uh i've only got a minute left so it is the first show of the year give me your one big prediction for 2022 and you got to give it to me in 15 seconds or less one big prediction i did i i didn't warn you of this so i'm i'm i'm padding out time here so you can think of what that may be best summer ever that's what i'm going with feels like a better summer and i don't think we'll have an election okay i will tell so we'll be talking about whether justin triller will be retiring over the next year at this time next year. So no resignation or walk in the snow in 2022. That's bold.

I'll have you know. That is bold. I'm still staying with mine. As difficult as it may be that there will be a resignation this year. That's okay, because then next year we can talk about who was wrong, who was right, and what does it all mean? Bruce has been all over the map on this one. He's up, he's down. That's the only safe play.

And also, somebody, I'm shocked that Chantel agreed to the premise of making a prediction, because I heard from her years ago, she said, I don't do that. That's because I caught her off guard. We're out of time. This is the year of living dangerously. Yeah, well, don't do that. Okay, that's because I caught her off guard. We're out of time. This is the year of living dangerously. Yeah, well, don't live too dangerously.

Stay safe, stay well. We'll talk again in seven days on Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert in Montreal, Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. It's been great talking to you. We'll talk to you again on Monday on The Bridge.