The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Three Days To Go

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Chantal and Bruce join in on where we are with just hours left in the campaign.  Is it too late for voters to change their minds?  And how does the Jason Kenney news change things if at all?

Are you ready for some good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Good talk. Friday, that means Chantelle Hebert in Montreal, Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. And we're at that moment, well, we're kind of almost at the moment where it's all over but the counting. A couple of days to go yet before Monday's big vote. And, well, let me start with this. Bruce, you're the expert on these kind of things because you're doing, I guess, daily tracking, certainly these last few days. And do you get a sense that there are people who are still undecided or still in that position where they could change their vote or are things pretty well locked in at this point? No, I think there's a lot of people who could still change their mind.

32% as of yesterday who said that they had a preference said they could still change their mind by election day. I think that this has been an election that has featured a low and slow level of public engagement. It's picked up in the last week. And we've noticed a trend among the people. I think it was 16% we measured yesterday who said, I wasn't paying attention very much to this election, but I started to in the last week, that's 16% of the population. Now, if we're looking for trend lines and trying to figure out why most of the polls show a little

bit of an uptick for the Liberals, among that 16%, I think 42, 44% say that they're voting liberal, which suggests that recent engagement has been correlated more with liberal support. But your question was really could that and everything else change? And my answer is yeah. And it's part of why I think that there's effectively for people like me and maybe you guys too, There's no sleeps left between now and Election Day. It's just one kind of stay up, look for numbers, look for signs, try to figure it out. And I do think it is quite uncertain, although I do think in the last couple of days, there's been some there's certainly been more encouraging things for the liberals and more discouragingaging things for the Conservatives in both the numbers and kind of the day-to-day combat. Okay, we'll talk about some of those things in a moment. You look at numbers and you look for numbers. Chantel talks to voters, as we all know, and over the years, a lot of that chatter has

proven pretty accurate in terms of how things were going to unfold. What are you hearing, Chantal, in these last few days? Okay, keep in mind that I'm mostly speaking to voters in Montreal or family members who have spoken to voters in Ontario, Toronto, Ottawa, etc. And parts that are not that urban. The engagement thing is real. People suddenly this week started talking to me about the outcome they wished for or the outcome they feared, which had not been happening at all. There are also suddenly people are drawing nasty things on campaign signs,

which is a sign that people are engaged for almost a month. Those signs were pristine. It doesn't usually happen. So that also speaks to engagement. And for the first time over the past week, the people who have talked to me about the election were no longer talking to me about election timing, which has been a question that has kind of been a drag on Justin Trudeau's campaign for much of the campaign. So overall, and a lot of people I've spoken to, an amazing number, and Elections Canada numbers do show that, had already voted in the advanced polls. I think it's 5 million, 20% or something more than over in 2019. So those people were still watching the

election. They were engaged voters, but clearly they decided that they weren't going to take a chance on how voting will go on Monday. So that's where they were at. Of course, here, as in Alberta and Saskatchewan, probably even more so, the pandemic is also coming back to the fore in anecdotal conversations. That is probably something that helps the Liberals more than it helps anyone else, because when you watch what has been happening, and I know we'll talk about that later, what has been happening in Alberta and Saskatchewan this week and New Brunswick with numbers rising and passport vaccines,

it is really hard to put that down to the fact that we're having a federal election. These situations and the heat on the pandemic front is on premiers. It's not on the federal government. No one in an honest frame of mind, nonpartisan, I mean, would argue that if we hadn't had an election, Alberta's situation would have played out differently. It wouldn't. This is entirely of Jason Kenney's making. That's probably also good news for the Liberals.

You know, if you were a Liberal at the beginning of this campaign and you kind of plotted out the five or six weeks of a campaign and you knew it was going to be close and you were looking at what could possibly happen in the last week to impact the vote and to impact the mood of Canadians, not just in one particular region, but the whole country based on something that was happening in one region, you probably could not have come up with a scenario that was potentially to your advantage like the one that they've got as we enter the final weekend with the situation that's unfolded

in especially in alberta but in saskatchewan as well and as you say some indications in new brunswick um conversely if you were the conservatives you couldn't have painted a more bleak picture of what could happen in the in the final days i mean it this is a really difficult one for aaron o'toole especially when you see those ads that the liberals are running already with o'toole and kenny together shaking hands and o'toole you know praising kenny's management of the pandemic situation in a clip that's not that old. So, you know, let's talk about this for a moment and its overall impact on the situation. Is this a serious driver against O'Toole? I think, as Chantel has outlined it, you know,

Jason Kenney wears where's this? No question about that. But the link to O'Toole, how damaging is it? How bad could it be? Bruce, you want to start on that? Yeah, I think that, you know, the first couple of weeks of the campaign were really, as I said, low engagement, but really the dominant question was why are we having an election? And I think that that was really good news for the Conservatives. If an election on election day was, why did we have an election? They win by six points, let's say, in the popular vote, which is enough to win government. But we knew even before the campaign that if it was going to turn into

who do you want to manage the pandemic if the pandemic is still front and center, that's a 16 point advantage for the Conservatives before the campaign. And I don't think we measured it in the last couple of days, but with the advent of the very sad events in Alberta, I think it would probably be close to that. I don't think that's how it's going to end up, but I do think we are headed. We went through why are we having an election, which created an advantage for the conservatives, which then turned into a conversation a couple of weeks ago, maybe about why do we want a conservative government or do we want a conservative government or do we want a conservative government?

And there's an argument that the start, that to me was still like a preseason, created an early peak for the conservatives in Aaron O'Toole, which caused a lot more attention to be drawn to what a conservative platform would look like, which, as I said before, doesn't look as bad to those mainstream voters as earlier versions of conservative platforms, maybe the last elections one in particular, but also didn't give them that really big reason to vote conservative on any particular issue. They weren't the non-conservative, but potential

conservative voters weren't saying in our polls anyway, that they saw something in the conservative offer that made them want to vote conservative and replace the liberals with the conservatives. So I think that's been a challenge for Aaron O'Toole is to find something to talk about in the last week. And I think he struggled with that. I think that there's no more policy in the tank. There's probably no more anger at Justin Trudeau that you can mine. And so along comes this, you know, horrific situation in Alberta, which really raises the question of the, we're still masking up.

We're still not all vaccinated. There are people in ICU. Kids are, you know, still waiting for a vaccine. That's a, that's a very bad situation I think for the conservatives. Now having said that, and I'll stop on this point, if an election was going to some degree be about, well, who is Aaron O'Toole? And what do we know about him? All of the questions that he got yesterday about Kenny and the handling of the pandemic in Alberta, he could have handled differently.

He could have said, it's gone terribly. And here's why, and here's what we learned from it. And we need to learn from the things that go wrong. He could have taken that moment. And I think it would have been better for him. I understand that there would have been people in his caucus who would be a little bit taken aback by it. And maybe it would have caused a spat with Kenny. But he's in an election where he wants to be prime minister of the country and people are anxious about the pandemic. And I think that he should have given a different answer if he wanted to win

the election on Monday than the one that he gave. We'll see how it matters, but that's my take on it. All right. I want to let Chantel in here, but first of all, I just want to go back a moment on, on, on the things you said because either I misheard you or or you misspoke on the the pre election uh data that would indicate which party they felt best would manage the pandemic into the future um i thought i heard you say six 16 points up for the conservatives no for the liberals you mean sorry about that yeah if i yeah You may have said that. I may have

just misheard it, but I didn't want to take a chance and make sure that people realize. And you're saying that it's back to probably around that same number now? I don't. You know, it's definitely north of 10 percent. I think that everybody who's been emailing and texting me in the last 24 hours has been saying, do the polls show the full extent of the Kenny problem for the conservatives? And I think the answer is no, but you know, the way the news cycle works,

it remains to be seen whether or not we'll still be talking about it at five o'clock today. I think we will. And I think there'll be an impact. And there's usually a lag of 24 to 48 hours on some of these things. Anyway, Chantel, did you want to get in on this point? Yeah, a number of points. To start with the Kenny problem, I think that yesterday Mr. O'Toole made the Kenny problem.

He now owns the Kenny problem by running away from it. It has become an issue, cancelling interviews on CTV. He doesn't have a position on the Kenny problem, and that has become an O, cancelling interviews on CTV. He doesn't have a position on the Kenney problem, and that has become a no-tool problem. The prime minister will not even cite the prime minister in waiting something that has captured visibly the attention of voters far beyond Alberta. There is the matter of explaining,

of course, why you would tape something where you explain that Jason Kenney has so better managed the pandemic than Justin Trudeau. It reminds me of the conservative in opposition so misplaying the vaccine issue by giving Justin Trudeau an opportunity to show that they were totally off with their predictions that, what was it, we are not all going to have a chance to get vaccinated before 2030. And it looked like that to me, this kind of play. Now, going on to the larger issue, I think Mr. O'Toole's problems started before this week and before the Kenney week, and it started at the debates. It was inevitable if he was going to win the election that some kicking of his platform tires would happen, and they were not prepared for this. It starts with gun control

and the going all over the map on it, and then it goes on. And this week, while we were focused on the pandemic and whatever damage it could do to anyone in the federal campaign, Mr. O'Toole has been spreading massive confusion as to some fairly big items in his platform, as in not wanting to say if Justin Trudeau's carbon tax would be eliminated if a federal government was conservative. Seriously, I think a number of conservative voters would say, well, wasn't that a given that it would be dramatically transformed and certainly given up on? Childcare agreement with Quebec, $6 billion, some opening from Mr. O'Toole about renegotiating this so that Quebec keeps it. What happens to the six other provinces that have deals? No one knows. We've all watched a lot of campaigns,

but I think the Conservatives will make history on Monday if they win after having had such a bad last week. Because I have never seen a party, a challenger, win an election when the last week is basically a disaster daily for all kinds of reasons. So history is always being made in electoral politics, but this would be history. Otherwise, I'd compare that to Stephen Harper's last week in 2004, when the assumption that he had done so well in the debates that they were going to cruise to victory and Paul Martin's re-election as prime minister. Peter, can I just jump in? I really love the way that Chantal put

that in. I wanted to just add a couple of thoughts. I mean, I like the comparison to the last week of the Harper campaign, except in the sense that for me, Harper just shifted the gear to neutral and let the bus coast. And I don't think that's the way, and the description that Chantal gave about the O2 last week was more yank the wheel to the right, put it in the ditch on the right, yanked it to the left, put it in the ditch on the left. And so they were remarkable, I i think miscalculations we'll see whether that turns out to be the case on monday but the two examples that come to mind for me

is that if you're the conservative party and you're tracking the people's party support do you need to do something in order to attenuate the drift of those votes? And if you do, then saying that you might not, after all, build the gateway pipeline, you might not, after all, replace the liberal carbon tax. I don't know if the O'Toole campaign thought they were going to win votes on the centre by saying those things, but I don't think that that's possible this late in the game. And with them sounding like, you know, fragile and not really announced positions, but more rumored positions. And if people care about having that price on carbon and not having the gateway pipeline, they're not going to be drawn to

the conservatives with those kinds of rumors of a change in position. On the other hand, if you're Maxime Bernier or those candidates running on his behalf, you can make a good meal out of those rumours to whip up sentiment that says this version of the Conservative Party cannot pick a lane. It is not a centrist, progressive Conservative Party. It is not a centrist, progressive, conservative party. It is not a populist voice for the angry and disaffected. And I think it's so those choices, there were others, I'm sure, but those choices in particular stood out for me as either they'll turn out to be genius calculations and I just don't get the math or mistakes. I like you. The last week of the campaign, basically, especially in this campaign, where the gap between the two parties looks very narrow, is to mobilize your base, the people most likely to work hard to get your vote out, because it could come down to who shows up to vote, where, when, et cetera. The liberals used Jean Chrétien to do that. Maybe it made you nostalgic for, you know, a stump speech that gives good clips, but I don't think you or I or a non-aligned voter was the

target of the Chrétien outing. I think it had everything to do with making liberals feel good about themselves and their party and making the base want to do whatever it needs to do to get the vote out on Monday. The Conservatives used Brian Mulroney. Now, Brian Mulroney in Quebec is well-liked and people enjoyed, and I include myself, watching him come back and noted that he had not mentioned Justin Trudeau in a negative way throughout that speech. But there is not a conservative organization to pick up on if there were momentum from Brian Mulroney's appearance. there's not an organization to take that into the ballot box on Monday. Outside Quebec, west of, and I'm not talking about the west here, I'm talking about west of Quebec, that includes Ontario, a hell of a lot of conservative

base members were startled, to say the least, to see Brian Mulroney resurface. Having voted for the leadership candidate who had spent the entire leadership campaign explaining that he was going to shelter them from a return of the dreaded Red Tories and Peter McKay and the Mulroney clan, and even more startled by the notion that no one has called on Stephen Harper, the man who reunited the party, brought them to power for a decade, and has been left to – that's been my image, so I'll still use it – sit in his basement to watch reruns of Law & Order. So I don't think for a second that mobilized the people who they need to get to help with getting vote out in Ontario and the prairies. For one, I also think that if Mr. O'Toole loses on Monday, this was probably this appearance of Brian Mulroney was probably the last drop in the bucket of his leadership. And he will have a really hard time if he wants to hang on to his job.

Just one last point. I'm sure Brian Mulroney enjoyed the opportunity to the fullest, because I think you have the same expression in English. Revenge is a plate best eaten cold. Yeah, he brought the takeout meal. He did, and he served it cold. Let me just say a couple of things on a number of points that you've both raised here in the last couple of moments. On Mulrooney, hey, listen, we've all taken our shots at Brian Mulrooney over the last 20 years, and some for pretty good reason.

But others for, you know, he gets high marks. I thought his speech the other night was, you know, politically, I thought it was close to brilliant. Because if you listen very carefully to everything he said, I don't think O'Toole got anything out of that speech. He was very careful with the words and phrases he chose. And if O'Toole and company were looking for a big pickup from that speech and they listened to every word,

they didn't get it. They didn't get it at all. And, you know, know chantal's point about you never heard him saying anything bad about justin trudeau is correct in fact if you go back through the you know the speeches of brian mulroney since 2015 he's never said anything but good things about justin trudeau uh based on some in in terms of some of their personal relationships and the fact that justin trau asked for Brian Mulroney's advice on how to deal with Donald Trump and U.S. relations, etc., etc.

That's one. Two, I loved your description of Harper putting the bus in neutral in that last week of the 2004 campaign. Not a good thing to do when you're killing time traveling through the Rockies. You probably want to be not in neutral for that drive. And finally, and this is kind of the counter in a way, a counter to some of the things that you were both saying. In terms of historic precedents, you know,

big problems in the last week or two weeks of a campaign, hard to oftentimes oftentimes recover from. Let's not forget, in 2019, Trudeau had the blackface issue, which would have sunk, you would think, anybody in the final throes of a campaign. But it wasn't on the last week of the campaign. Not the last week, yeah. They had plenty of time to recoup. But still, on an issue like that, man, that was a gift that should have been the sinker.

And it wasn't. And this, how about the argument that I've seen some columnists express in the last week or so, because Trudeau's line is, you can't afford to have a conservative government right now. Does that not just further underline the fact that the election was unnecessary? There wasn't a conservative government. There was a liberal government. There was no chance of a conservative government at the time the election was called. But the election allowed it to be one. But that, so since we mentioned Brian Mulroney, that brings you back to his famous sentence about

Mother Teresa is not going to be on the ballot. Fact is that we get to vote on Monday. I voted, so Canadians vote on Monday. And whether you, so here's your choice if that's where you are with that question. You can have a good time getting back at Justin Trudeau on Monday and have a conservative government. Or you can say this was a really bad idea, but I'm not sure I want a conservative government. That's where those choices are if you're thinking about election timing. My bet is that a majority of

voters are going to think first of who they want as prime minister. And they may decide that they want Erin O'Toole, but I don't think it's going to be because they're unhappy about the election timing. It's going to be because they're unhappy about the election timing. It's going to be because they feel Aaron O'Toole would be the best prime minister. Yeah, I think that's right. I wanted to pick up on one other point that Chantal had raised, which is the, you know, the third party endorsement thing. And in particular for me, I thought the Mulroney thing was interesting and I have a high regard for Mulroney. But I also know that, you know, when my wife and I are kind of sitting having a meal with our daughters who are in their 20s and 30s and their friends who are of similar ages, when our political war stories start with Joe Clark and Pierre Trudeau or Brian Mulroney or Jean Chrétien, you have that unmistakable feeling of them twitching to grab

their phones and just start scrolling through social media and see if there's something more interesting or up to the minute kind of available. So we keep those conversations short because a lot of young people don't remember, don't have a defining view about some of these people. But more recently, the Conservative Party has had people who are popular, and I haven't seen them on the campaign trail with Erin O'Toole. I haven't seen Ronna Ambrose. I haven't seen Lisa Rae. I haven't seen Michael Chong. I haven't seen Brad Wall. And I haven't seen Peter McKay. And I don't really think that's a smart calculation not to have those people there when you're trying to project the idea of this is a party with a base of experience and talent and maybe unity and not just a kind of a Western

Canadian caucus led by an Ontarian. So I just, I feel like if I were Aaron O'Toole, I would have designed a campaign which showed a little bit more of the talent. And if it wasn't going to be the past talent, then at least take your top front benchers out somewhere with you, Pauliev, Bergen, Rempel. And we haven't seen that either. And there was a fair criticism of the Trudeau campaign early on that it seemed to be all about him when he had a lot of other people in his cabinet who were potentially helpful

political figures on the campaign trail. And I think they adjusted and they put more of those people out on the trail with the prime minister and did some advertising about team and that sort of thing. So I don't want to overstate it, but I do think it was a strategic choice that the Conservatives made to have this be on the back of Aaron O'Toole and not other personalities that are associated with the party. Okay, got to take a quick break. Got to take a quick break, Chantal.

I'll be back to you in just a moment. Tim Horton's Smile Cookie Week is back starting September 13th. For one week, the iconic chocolate chunk cookies topped with a pink and blue smile will be available at Tim Horton's restaurants across Canada. week, the iconic chocolate chunk cookies topped with a pink and blue smile will be available at Tim Horton's restaurants across Canada. 100% of the proceeds from each smile cookie will be donated to local charities and community groups in each restaurant's neighborhood. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the smile cookie campaign has raised more than $60 million for charities, hospitals,

and community programs across the country. Grab your Smile Cookie from September 13th to 19th, only at Tim Hortons. All right, we're back again. This is Good Talk. Sean Telebear is in Montreal again. This is Good Talk. Chantelle Iber is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. You're listening either on Sirius XM Channel 167 Canada Talks or on any one of your podcast platforms where you've downloaded the bridge. Chantelle, I interrupted you.

I'm sorry for that. Go ahead and make that point. Actually, I interrupted you. I'm sorry for that. Go ahead and make that point. Actually, I interrupted you, but I was thinking about the list of people missing in action that Bruce was raising. Interestingly enough, Aaron O'Toole was some few kilometers away from Peter McKay, who was on the hustings yesterday. And they did not happen to have a joint event. might be courted in the event of a defeat for maybe reconsidering whether they want to run or to run again in the case of one, two, three of them. So, I don't know. It has seemed to me since Aaron O'Toole became leader that he has kept away his competition and certainly has not gone out of his way, for instance, to have Peter McKay run

and be in a prominent position, something that Stephen Harper wisely did when he reunited the party and Peter McKay was the outgoing leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. And from my knowledge of Atlantic Canada, it's not the knowledge I bring to Ontario and Quebec, but still, I believe McKay could have made a big difference for the Conservatives in that region in this election. And that it was a mistake not to use him in that way. I've also noticed that John Baird has been campaigning a lot across the country with Conservative candidates. This is also someone you could have seen with Aaron O'Toole and that no one did.

We were also talking about how, you know, Joe Clark and Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien do not resonate. It's not only that. In this province over the past week, since Premier Legault has decided that it was a good idea to tell people not to vote for the Liberals or the NDP, leaving the Conservatives to be his implied choice.

He has been compared to Maurice Duplessis, the Quebec Premier, Conservative Premier, who is associated in the history books with what is called the dark times, la grande noirceur. I'm not sure that resonates with younger voters, but it kind of gives you a flavor of how not that well received Premier Legault's call or intervention in the election has been going so far.

And, you know know looking at polls i don't see that legault's call has benefited the conservatives in any way shape or form and i don't think that's just because the english language debate and the backlash from it in quebec has also strengthened the let me just say this about peter mckay um at least didn't do, or at least so far hasn't done to Aaron O'Toole what he did to Andrew Scheer in the final couple of weeks of the campaign when he dropped that bomb on him about Scheer. That was after the election. That was in a post-election interview about the Albatross.

No, about the not scoring on, you know, having a breakaway on an empty net. That was the post-election analysis. I thought it was actually a week before, but I bow to you on these things without question. Whenever it was. Someone somewhere will figure us out. Whenever it was. I recall out. Whenever it was. I recall it being after as well. Oh, sure.

You side with Chantel, of course. Side with the facts. This is a science-based show. Let's stay with the facts. This isn't smoke mirrors and the truth. All right, fine. Okay, I, I, I, I withdraw. Nevertheless, it was at a time when his leadership was seriously under

question that might've been one of the fatal blows to it. So just so we're clear here, it was after. Okay. I've just checked so that we kind of settled this issue. There's a penalty in football for excessive celebration, and we don't want that penalty, so we'll just leave it like that. It doesn't matter. I'm going to edit this part out.

I'm saving you a lot of emails here. All right, listen. I will withdraw to the area of just asking questions, and the next one is about the third figure in this race who we haven't talked about yet on this day, and that is Jagmeet Singh. He took a bit of a hammering this week in the interview with Rosie Barton, which was a terrific interview.

But it got to this point that we've talked about often on this campaign that he wasn't being pressed to account for his promises how he was going to do them and i don't think he came out of that interview looking very well but uh you know you look at the numbers and they're still you know they're 20 plus percent in most polls the ndp which is not an insignificant number what it translates into a seats we won won't know until Monday night. But where is the book on Jagmeet Singh? Bruce, you can start us on this in terms of the kind of campaign he's run and what it may mean on Monday night.

Well, I think he's largely run the kind of vigor and bite aimed towards Justin Trudeau. You know, his pitch, I think, has been clear, and it was built on numbers that showed him an opportunity to say, look, if you're a progressive voter and you care about climate or you care about indigenous reconciliation or you care about inclusion and diversity, Justin Trudeau talks the good game and he doesn't do as much for you as quickly as you want to see done. And there's certainly been a segment of voters who've been attentive to that message and he saw evidence that it was working for him. However, I think that in the last little while,

a couple of things have happened that may turn out to be more problematic for Mr. Singh's campaign. One is that when it felt like the liberals were going to win the election campaign, but you might want to vote NDP, just because it felt like a clearer message about what your values were. At some point in the election, it looked like the Conservatives could win, and then the question becomes, you really want to send a message or do you want to achieve an outcome in terms of the election?

And that softens the opportunity for Mr. Singh. And then the second thing and the last thing I'll say is that Mr. Trudeau often finds himself in a situation or has found himself in a situation, especially in election campaigns, where people are kind of frustrated with him on a stylistic basis. Some do, some like him, but a fair number of people say, I don't like the way he sounds or comes across, that sort of thing. And maybe he's more style or oriented towards style and less substance. And then he gets in debates, and sometimes the takeaway for those skeptics is, well, he actually knows quite a bit about the substance of policy issues, and he's prepared to discuss them in a meaningful and in-depth way. I think Jagmeet Singh found out the cost of not being prepared to do that this week. And I think the Rosie Barton

interview, which I agree was fantastic, really encapsulated that, that he did not have a strong kind of policy position that he could pivot to. He didn't really have answers to the question of what he would do with the pipeline, which, you know, I think was strange to see him not be prepared for that. level experts and the Green Party leader in BC, or the former Green Party leader in BC, has put a light on Mr. Singh on the question of, is there substance behind the style? And I don't think it's been a good week for him so far. Chantal? That really matters. It's important what Bruce just said, because part of the reason why the NDP has had a bounce has been related to the demise or the relative demise

of the Green Party. And so the environmental issue and the kind of assessments, independent assessments of how this platform does not come across as one where the NDP spent a lot of time thinking in serious policy terms about the issue. That is bound to hurt. The liberals have to hope that it hurts because there is only one large province that is the scene of a serious three-way battle that involves the NDP, and that's BC. And at this point, the NDP is doing well in BC. It's really hard.

I'm not the pollster here, but it's really hard to know how the chips will fall on Monday in BC. It may be the hardest province to call, not for the first time. But it's crucial to the NDP. I also agree that it would have been easier for Jagmeet Singh to continue the campaigning he had prepared for if the polls showed that Trudeau was headed for a majority. Because at that point, it looks like a safe thing to kind of hold the liberals back and hope to give the NDP a place of influence. But I also think over the past week, it has started to hurt. And it's not the first campaign in this country where I have this quarrel with third parties is in refusing to say, and that also goes for the Bloc Québécois, what are the red lines? What is the bottom line for those parties to support or not support a minority government, liberal or conservative? In places

like the UK, third parties do say, do tell their supporters, if you vote for me in a hung parliament, this is what I will insist on. Both of them are asking for a blank check. And I don't think that at this stage in the campaign, Jagmeet Singh answering, well, I'm running to be prime minister, is something that reflects well on him because he is not going to be prime minister. He knows it. I know it. Every poll shows it. You may be sad about this or happy, but it's a fact. And by refusing to say, well, you know, I would never support this or I would always insist on this. He is not being transparent with voters. That also goes, by the way, for the Bloc Québécois, even more so in this case, because what are the Bloc Québécois

principles in Parliament? Is it everything that Mr. Legault wants? I'm sure that the people who vote for the Bloc and who worry about climate change would like to know whether the Bloc Québécois would, for instance, press the future government to build that third link that is so opposed by environmentalists between Quebec City and Libye, etc., etc. So at some point, we're going to continue to have minority outcomes. They have been more the rule than the exception since 2004. Five out of seven elections have yielded minority governments. And we're not going, I know all those people who are listening, taking proportional representation, new voting system, that's not happening anytime soon.

So we probably need to have a change in the campaigning culture of some of the third parties at this point. And we need voters to start putting those questions to their preferred leader, saying, I want to know what I'm buying when I'm giving you influence in a hung parliament. Five out of seven, if you assume that Monday's going to end up in a minority as well, yeah. Let me ask this about Singh and see whether either one of you bite on it. You know, there's been much talk about what would happen if their parties performed poorly

in terms of both Justin Trudeau and Erin O'Toole. What if after Monday, the NDP are still fourth in the totals in parliament behind the Bloc Québécois? Does that put Singh's leadership in jeopardy? Anybody want to venture into that one? Or should we leave that to next week?

I'm inclined to say probably not. Although, if somehow the Liberals manage to pull out a majority on Monday night, I might have a different answer. I say not because Singh is still a pretty popular figure. And it's not obvious where an alternative would come from. And it isn't that obvious to me that he's kind of compromised his relationship with any important pillar of the NDP. He doesn't seem as fractious a figure within their party as Thomas Mulcair was. And the NDP generally don't pressure their leaders out has been my experience. Mulcair seemed like a bit of an aberration for me in that regard. So, you know, and I don't think he's made such egregious errors in this campaign. We talked about one thing, but otherwise I think he's been out doing what people expected him to do and with some effectiveness and he didn't have a terrible

debate. I don't think their advertising has been very good, but he didn't design it. And, ultimately, I don't think that kind of matters very much to the evaluation that we're talking about. What do you think, Chantal? I think that the third or fourth place behind the bloc is from the perspective of an NDP member would not be something that would necessarily be held against Mr. Singh because the dynamics in Quebec are so completely different from the overall picture. So I think the test of his leadership is whether the next government is a minority rather than a majority. I would say that if the result on Monday, I know it's unlikely, were a conservative majority, I suspect the NDP would be looking for another leader,

would think this is a catastrophic result in the eyes of NDP members that he has failed to prevent. Liberal majority, that's four years is a long time, and it would be more fragile. But if it's a minority liberal government, I think a lot of NDP members who went in this campaign thinking their party was going to lose its influence in the House of Commons would say, well, you know, mission accomplished. I'm assuming the NDP will manage to win a few more seats in this election. It's not hard because they were pretty much down last time. So I think he's probably safe. Jack Layton was on his, how many campaigns for the Orange Wave? Fourth? Third? 04, 06, 08, 11.

Fourth. You're right. So, right. Yeah. Depending on how it unfolds on Monday and depending on whether he wins his seat, I'd be watching Avi Lewis in terms of what he does, what he says. And whether he can say it in French. And whether he can say it in French.

Thank you. All right, we've got to take our final break, and we'll be right back. Starting September 13th, Tim Hortons Smile Cookie Week is back. From September 13th to 19th at Tim Horton's, 100% of the proceeds from all Smile Cookies purchased will be donated to local charities and community groups across Canada. In the last 25 years, you have helped us raise over $60 million, and in 2020 alone, Smile Cookie Week brought in $10.6 million

while helping over 500 community organizations. You can participate by grabbing your own smile cookie at Tim Hortons restaurants across Canada from September 13th to 19th. Okay. We got about five or six minutes left. And, you know, it's been, I've said this before, but I thought this campaign has actually gone very quickly as opposed to some campaigns which seem to last forever. But I wouldn't mind your, as we are on this final weekend and before those who haven't yet voted,

and as Chantel's pointed out, millions have in the various options they had to vote early. But on this final weekend, what are your kind of big thoughts, the big picture thoughts on the state of where we are? Not the state of the race necessarily, but the state of where we are as a country after witnessing this debate that's gone on for the last four or five weeks. Chantal,

why don't you start? I know that people who watch elections and voters often find it's dispiriting to hear the back and forth and all the partisan noise. But if you take that away, you kill the noise. We don't come across as a fractured country, really. Nothing compared to what is going to be happening in France over those presidential elections or what has happened just south of us over the course of the last presidential election. On many issues, people are kind of singing parts from the same hymn book. That would be Maxime Bernier's point, but despite an increase in his support, he remains a very marginal figure on the political scene. So on that basis, I'm not someone who feels that, you know, we should come away from this election thinking this is a really terrible thing. And for

people who think like that, and who look at the leaders, and you see it in your emails, I do too, I'm sure Bruce does too, lament, you know, how poor the leadership has become compared to the past. I'll just remind them that we saw two men this week, Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney, who were totally vilified by the end of their term as prime minister and who are now considered to be people that a lot of Canadians, even if they did not vote for either of them, consider as elder statesmen.

So be careful of the judgment you cast on the people who are campaigning today, because tomorrow you might come with hindsight to think, well, you know, they weren't so bad and they served us relatively well. The last point I want to make is about what's going to be happening over the next few days. There is no certainty if the election is tight that on Monday night, whoever on whichever network gets to say the next federal government will be, there is no certainty that we will have certainty as to the shape of the federal government. The first reason will be the mail ballots that will be counted the next day.

There are not the 5 million that Elections Canada, I think, feared, but there are still a lot more than the 50,000 that were cast last time. So that's one. But the other issue is, if it is, in the end, a very close result between the Liberals and the Conservatives seat-wise, we will see a number of days of negotiations unless the NDP says, I'm going with whoever has the most seats or the BLEC is in a position to say that. But I think if I were a third party in that situation, I'd want to see what's on offer in each window. And I'll just remind you that in places before people say we don't do these things and the person with the most seats always governs, that is not what happened in Ontario, in BC, in New Brunswick over the years. to start to see the dust settle and to see a roadmap to who would get to govern.

Sometimes with the winner in seats delivering a throne speech only to be defeated and replaced a week later. So it could make for an interesting two, three weeks, and we might not have certainty, depending on who votes where and when on Monday, or else we could all say, hey, well, that was that, and move on to take a few days off. All future good fodder for future good talks in the weeks ahead.

Okay, Bruce, you've got a minute and a, well, a minute, maybe a minute and a half to wrap your thought up. Well, I can't help but think that when I compare where Canada's at to the United States, I feel better because we have, you know, a portion of the population that is mistrustful of government, mistrustful of other people, mistrustful of vaccines, angry. And, you know, some of the noises from that segment of the population are kind of a bit anti-democratic in the sense of they don't really trust the democratic system that we have. But that's a small proportion of our population, much larger in the United States and more persistently a problem there.

And I'm not saying every People's Party voter is all of those things, but I am saying that the size of that force in our democracy is relatively small. And if I look at the other parties, there is a spectrum of positions, but most of them point towards similar economic policies, similar social priorities, differences of degree rather than direction. And so I feel okay about that. I don't think we have a unity crisis. I know some people will write us and say, well, we do in Alberta, and some people will probably feel that there's a bit more of one in Quebec, but in my life, I've seen worse evidence of unity crises than I see in Canada. And then the only other thing, Peter, that occurs to me is that I've talked with a number of journalists in the last week is this idea of Canada's two-thirds progressive.

Is the media similarly reflective of that balance, and does it need to be? I think that's a fair question. I think it is too, and I'm sure we're going to be asking it any number of times in the days and weeks ahead. As always, Bruce, Chantal, thank you so much for this. The good news on Good Talk is that we're going to do it every Friday now. Always be available to you either on Sirius XM or on your

favorite podcast. But Fridays, lock it in. Good Talk with Bruce and Chantel in the days forward. Election Day, Monday. Not far away now. If you haven't made up your mind, it's that time. Make it up and head off to the polls.

So I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We will be back on Monday, day of the election, with the insiders. We'll talk to you then. Take care. Thank you.