The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Was The Peterborough Incident A Sign Of Where Protest is Heading?

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

It was ugly and dangerous ..and Peterborough Police now claim they are investigating who was behind it.  Jagmeet Singh was visiting the Ontario city when he was aggressively harassed verbally and threatened physically. Is this the new norm for Canadian politics?

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there. Yes, of course you're ready for Good Talk because this is Friday and Fridays are Good Talk. Chantelle Ebers in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is still in Scotland. They're holding him hostage in the Highlands. But we're glad they're both with us because we have a couple of interesting things to talk about today, as we always do on Fridays. I want to start with a story that got some degree of coverage this week, but I don't think a lot, certainly not, I don't think enough,

I think there was more warranted, more discussion on this topic warranted. It was a story that happened in Peterborough, Ontario, and if you're unaware of where that city is, kind of a little northeast of Ottawa, a little southwest, sorry, southwest of Ottawa, northeast of Toronto, not halfway, a little closer to Toronto than Ottawa, but nevertheless, that's where it is positioned. Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, was there this week to speak actually on behalf of one of his provincial counterparts, one of the NDP candidates in that region, Peterborough, running in the provincial election coming up on June 2nd. Well, that's not abnormal.

Those things happen. But what was abnormal, or at least in our world today, perhaps is not as abnormal as it used to be, was a crowd formed outside the event location. And they were an aggressive, angry crowd. Not big, not a huge crowd, but big enough to make a noise and big enough to draw attention. And what were they upset about? They were upset about Jagmeet Singh.

They called him a lot of things um they yelled at him directly in his face as he came out to leave to get into his car i'll give you some quotes you're an effing piece of s and you lying piece of s people got really close gave him the finger in his face yelled yelled and screamed at him, called him a traitor. Who were they? I don't know. There was a few titles of the group. Freedom Through Unity.

Peterborough was one of the names. Now, the backdrop to this was a statement put out by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS. It was two years ago now. It was obtained by the CBC through an access to information request. But CSIS put this statement out to its political masters that quoting here political figures in canada are facing threats of violence and online abuse with increasing regularity that was two years ago and we've seen evidence of that since then most notably i guess was the last election campaign when they were basically attacking Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, coming out of his bus, throwing rocks at him. I think it was around London, Ontario.

And then, of course, there was the convoy in Ottawa earlier this year and some of the things that were said, not necessarily done, but said at that time about political leaders in Canada. So the question I want to start with is, is that CSIS report from two years ago now starting to show that, in fact, not only was that sense of where we're heading accurate, but that it's getting more and more difficult, more and more open, that there's no fear, it appears in the hearts of these demonstrators, to do this kind of verbal and almost physical attack on political leaders in Canada, political figures in Canada. And what, if anything, should be done is being done about it.

There was no police follow-up to what happened in Peterborough, at least as far as I can see, partly because the NDP didn't complain about it. They just took it, although Singh since has said this was the most terrifying moment of his political life so far. So Chantelle, why don't you start us on this? I think the Peterborough Police is actually looking into some of the individuals that are seen and the visuals. You don't always need to complain for someone to be guilty of harassment or assault in a

public venue. There is no rule that says the police are forced to look the other way. I think it is getting worse. And I think every political figure in this country needs to pay attention to this, not just because their own security could be at stake. And the last thing you want if you're a politician in Canada is to be walking around with a phalanx of policemen around you and security guards that put you off. That is not how we do it. What Jagmeet Singh was doing in Peterborough is something that all of us who cover campaigns

are familiar with. You drop into the local candidate's headquarters, you say something encouraging, you walk out and you go home or on to your next event. You usually don't do it with a layer of security around you. I'm saying every politician, not just for their own safety, because their over-the-top language by politicians and leading figures does trigger bad behavior. The more charged the atmosphere in politics, the more likely you're going to trigger this sense that anything goes

because you are angry and you're going to show that you're angry at whatever target is pointed at. I'll bring you back to an incident decades ago now, after the 1995 referendum when 24 Sussex, Jean-Claude Saint-Exupéry and his wife found an intruder in the house. That person had clearly been triggered by all the rhetoric around the referendum and the states. Since then, language coming from politicians, often leading ones, has only become more and more um over the top there was a tweet this week from a leading conservative candidate capoeira not to name him that basically tells

people that the trudeau government has been following them tracking them to the drugstore, and to the supermarket. Give me a break here. And I have to say I waited all week for politicians who do have an audience among the kinds of people who are protesting in freedom, so-called freedom convoys, and whose theme is freedom, to kind of say there are lines and limits to what you can do. And I did not hear that. And I think at some point it's going to turn against the very people who are exploiting it for their own partisan purposes. I should mention at that point that, you know, some politicians have spoken out in Singh's favor,

including one of the conservative leadership candidates, Scott Acheson. And John Sharkey. And John Sharkey. And John Sharkey. So, no, there were a number of them. There were some very, very silent ones. A lot of silent ones. Bruce?

Well, I'm glad Chantel mentioned the question about police, because I do think that, you know people get charged for going out and complaining about a politician that the police do nothing. So I'm glad that the police are looking into it. I don't think at the end of the day that the solution to this problem that we're talking about is more policing. However, I think it is more guardrails over our conversation as a society. And I don't think it's only politicians who are finding themselves a victim or drawn into it, but it happens disproportionately in politics right now. it would be a mistake from my standpoint if if i felt that the conversation that we're having this morning suggested that it is equally triggered by all political parties i don't think that's true and i don't think you've said it i don't think chantal said it but um i've never heard jagmeet singh say things that would incite people to do the kinds of things that we saw against him or against his

political opponents. I've not heard Justin Trudeau do that. I don't think I can feel the same way about the kind of comments coming from Pierre Poliev. And he's not the first conservative to use the kind of language that makes people feel not that he's they're being instructed to do things, but rather that they're entitled to take more action than anybody ever had thought was reasonable in a democratic society. And so when they see the kind of coverage, I think what's going on now is that the people who feel inclined to go out and take these kinds of actions, say these sorts of things, they don't look at it and shrink from it and say, oh, I guess we got carried away. Maybe we better not do that again. I think they

feel empowered by it. And I think that when politicians are either silent in the face of it or continue to say things that are unmistakably fire all the gatekeepers, do away with all the gatekeepers, they're doing horrible things to your life. You don't even know about some of the things that they're doing to your life. It's not a mystery that this reaches a certain part of our society, not a very big part, but not a very, very tiny part either, who then take that and say, you know, my job isn't to go to a public town hall meeting once every four years and offer a different point of view. It isn't to wait for the politician to come to my door and say, I don't agree with what you're saying and here's why. It's to go and find them where they are and to connect with other people who want to find them where they are. Those people didn't just happen to be in that place where Jagmeet Singh was. They were instructed by others,

probably using one of the social platforms, we don't need to name it, to go there at that moment, if they wanted to verbally attack and assault this individual who's the leader of a political party in Canada, and by the way, happens to be the most popular leader of a political party in Canada at the federal level. So I saw in your note earlier that we were talking about this because we were worried about polarization. And I am worried about polarization, but I'm not seeing it as an equal force on either ends of the spectrum. And I know we're going to have some conservative leaning listeners who are going to say there goes Bruce again, he's kind of always on about the conservatives, but I'm sorry, if we're going to talk about this subject i feel like

that's an important part of it in the states too yeah let me let me make a couple of points and i know chantelle wants to get back in first of all you know i don't think this happened as a result of uh you know conservative leadership race. Some of the things that have been said on that may have given license to some people to get more involved. But let's face it, this CSIS report came out two years ago, more than two years ago. So you can't even blame the pandemic feelings in the country for it. There's something out there that's caused this depth of anger

to the point we're seeing these kind of incidents happen on an increasing basis, and they have been happening for a number of years now. I agree with you absolutely, and I'm sure Chantel does as well. We're talking about a minority, a very small minority of people, but nevertheless, they're having an impact. They're disrupting the process, and they're putting people's lives at risk, at danger. So what I'm trying to understand is what is the root cause, if you will, of this depth of anger? Why has this suddenly emerged over the last few years as a real risk in tidy, old, quiet, old Canada in terms of the political discussion that occurs in our country. Chantal?

I'd say that it's hard not to look south of the border to the Trump experiment as part and parcel of how it has been on the rise. And Donald Trump's approach to people who were not of his views as enemies and the rejection of institutions and leadership figures as being deliberately disconnected or not interested in the fate of ordinary, quote-unquote, ordinary people, workers. All of that kind of builds up a case that the system is rigged against you, and anyone who argues otherwise is part of the system. You have to tie it into the spread of conspiracy theories, the World Economic Forum, where people gather once a year to plan your future and to take over your life and control it. I think it ties into all of those things and the tools of social media, which makes mobilization in the sense that you are not alone in feeling this. There are others like you. And if you look back at the convoy, and I always hesitate to call it the truckers convoy, because I know that the majority

of truckers are actually on the road doing trucking over the course of those weeks. So I think we should take that word out of the bucket. And vaccinate it. And vaccinate it. But the agenda they published, that manifesto, called for overturning a duly elected government. You cannot just take one incident in Peterborough and say, this is a bunch of people who are prone to violence and not look all around at the environment that fosters it. And while we do not in this country have an environment that has fostered these kinds of ways to express your convictions, you call it intimidation, there is a constituency for that.

And while I know that conservatives will say Bruce is always on against them, it is a fact of life that the only party in this country that has a sizable group of members who believe that Donald Trump was robbed of his victory is the Conservative and the People's Party. They are not liberals or New Democrats or Bloc Québécois members. And that's why I think if you're a leading figure in politics in this country and you are not calling out intimidation in the shape of what happened to Jai Singh this week, you are not exercising leadership. It's basically what it boils down to, no matter what your right, left or center. Bruce? Well, I just wanted to add one thing.

I agree with everything Chantal just said. And she referred to the Internet and the role of the internet. And I just can't look at what's going on without saying that we've created essentially the largest new manufacturing industry that we've seen probably in 100 years. But the manufacturing product is hate and anger. And I don't think anybody really set out to do that. But we found something about how these connection platforms work, that revealed something about what you can monetize in human nature and what exists in human nature that maybe hadn't been able to connect in the same way in the past. So when I say this, I don't really, I think social platforms can do a lot better job at dealing with the issues that have come up. But my point is more that we didn't have the same ability to instantly connect people who are angry

and who want to give vent to their anger with other people. And we didn't, as a consequence, also have politicians who made it their business to seek out this phenomena and to try to make a meal of it. And that isn't only conservative politicians who have done that over the last decade or two, to be clear. I think it's disproportionately small C conservative politicians in Canada who've done it, but it's not only conservatives who can and do do it. But it's a big problem and politicians do it at their peril because, as Chantal said before, and you did too, Peter, this is going to come back to bite them at some point. It doesn't only work one way.

The more angry and hateful people get, the more entitled they feel they are to express their hatred and anger at public figures, the more people whose lives, and I don't think you were wrong to use that expression, whose lives are at stake. And it would be typically Canadian of us to understate that risk and to say, well, you know, their safety is at risk or their quality of life is endangered, but their lives are at risk too too. And we should we should call it what it is. Just to add one short point. It's one thing to say that the constituency self-identifies more to the right than the left. But the invention of culture wars is not the property of the right. It has come from the center and it has come from the left and it has come from the center, and it has come from the left,

and it has come from the Liberal Party, to name just one. If you're a voter in this country, at this point, you have a choice, and either you are a good Canadian and you are de facto liberal because you are so accepting of others and so tolerant, or if you look at the conservative side of the spectrum, you cannot be a good conservative because you identify with some of the values of the Liberal Party. All parties have played to this. It used to be that the NDP had a brand that was more ideological. I would say that the Liberals now own as ideological a brand as the NDP used to in the past, maybe more so than the NDP, and that contributes to it. This sense that you're just out of the conversation because you don't share our liberal values

and Canadian values are de facto liberal values. It's a trend that the Liberal Party federally has had for years and it's been accentuated over the past decade that Justin Trudeau has been leader well i i think we uh as a last comment on this before we move on all i would say is i think we all have to keep our you know our eyes wide open on this because the trend appears clear over these last few years and you know when you look at that trend over time and the direction in which things are going it's not a nice picture and the fear for the future

should exist on the part of not only political for uh parties but on the uh on the side of security forces, and the awareness of people about what's happening and what they may or may not be able to do about it. I mean, listen, protest is a natural part of our system. It's a good part of our system. Protest usually is against the government in power or those who are supporting the government in power and that may be part of what peterborough was all about because of the deal between the ndp and the liberals on continuing in power for another three years uh on the part of the liberal government but those kind of things are natural protests what isn't natural is the kind of protest movements that we've seen over these last few years and how that depth of anger seems to be

increasing, not decreasing. So that's all. I'm glad we've had this discussion. And now let's move on to one of the other bigger stories of the week. When we come back from this quick break, we'll talk about another interesting conservative leadership debate and we're back with good talks on telebears in montreal bruce anderson is in dormock scotland i'm in toronto I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto this week. I won't say anything about last night's

hockey game that involved a Toronto team other than to remind you they call it a best of seven series for a reason.

And the seventh game is tomorrow night. Congratulations to those fans in Edmonton who were hoping their Oilers could keep that series alive and get to a Game 7, and that they did

last night in Los Angeles. So, good for them. Alright. You're listening to Good Talk on SiriusXM Channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. Alright. Last week we talked about the Conservative Leadership Debate, which XM Channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. All right.

Last week, we talked about the conservative leadership debate, which the first one, the unofficial one, was a bit of a gong show with people going after each other very directly. This week, in the first official debate, English language debate, and likely the only English language debate that's going to take place, it was a different kind of gong show. I mean, the first hour is dominated by kind of bizarre theatrics on the part of the way the debate was organized. It was kind of like a kindergarten show quite frankly the second hour was more interesting but actually did kind of debate issues and one of the issues they ended up discussing and arguing about was the future of the bank of canada and specifically the governor

of the bank of canada pierre polyev who, who is often at the front of these kind of discussions and whatever fireworks are associated with it, announced at the debate in Edmonton that he would fire the governor of the Bank of Canada because he doesn't believe in the way he's been fighting inflation. Now, that has garnered lots of headlines not the first time a bank of canada governor has been kind of isolated um by uh the opposition party jean cretien ran a campaign at least partly against john crow who was the bank of canada governor back in 1993 92 93 when that election took place. But this was a pretty direct comment, a direct attack, and said he would fire him if he was the prime minister. Not that he'd wait until his term was over, but he'd fire him. And that's seen by a lot of people as intruding on the arm's length relationship between government and the Bank of Canada, even though, of course, it is the government, the Prime Minister of the day,

who appoints a Bank of Canada governor. Nevertheless, it garnered a lot of interesting discussion and debate, and a lot of the other candidates attacked him directly for it. So in terms of this week's debate, which, once again, could be the last English-language debate, there's a French language debate coming up. Even though, as Chantal points out, only two of the six candidates actually speak fluent French. Nevertheless, Bruce, why don't you start us on this week's developments. Well, I hope there are more of these debates cause I, and I'm not, I'm going to resist the, the opportunity to talk about the format,

um, because a lot of people have weighed in on the format. And, um, so I don't think I have anything to add there. I do think that in, in kind of considering the commentary that I read after the fact about what happened, what was said, these are always inelegant. And there's always a kind of a, should we overmanage because the risks of undermanaging the debate are too great? Or is it the reverse? And in the end, all I ever really hoped for is that as a vetting process, they add something to the ability of viewers to discern between the candidates. I say I hope that there's going to be more because I think that Pierre Pauliev is probably the front runner and not by a little bit in this race. And I think that it's important that people have a chance to hear what he has to say and hear him challenged and see how he responds to those challenges.

And I think that more of that is better for the Conservative Party and for the country. I think Jean Charest still, to me, looks as though he's got the most to offer as a leadership candidate, but finds it uncomfortable and awkward to be running for the leadership of a party that isn't really the party that he left way back when, and isn't sure that it wants somebody who has his experience and his values. And I can understand his anger, his discomfort, I suppose, with that. I do think he's making progress of a sorts over time in presenting himself as an alternative to Pierre Pauliev. And the last thing I'll say is that the conversation about cryptocurrency, and we

talked about this before, has taken on a new sense of urgency and interest, I think, given where inflation is at, given what's been happening with stock markets. gatekeepers and wanting to avoid inflation by introducing the cryptocurrency. He thought that that wasn't that no harm could really befall him because the economy looked pretty strong because it didn't really look as though people would measure the risk of a poly of economic plan the way they may be willing to measure it now. now and i saw in what justin trudeau said yesterday who in an untypical mood move weighed in on the on mr poliev's comments about the governor of the bank of canada and what was most interesting to me about what he said was he talked about how canadians not just consumers but businesses and investors look at Canada in a positive way because we have a strong and independent central bank and because our currency can be counted on and I thought what he was doing was kind of setting up the conversation that might have to happen later, where moderate, maybe business-oriented, conservative-leaning

voters having to choose between a Trudeau and a Polyev, if Trudeau runs again, would look at Polyev and say, he sounds too disruptive. He sounds like there are too many things that he's going to do as part of his mantra against gatekeepers and for the people and against all of the elites that maybe we can't we can't get behind him so i think that's it's been an interesting week in that race obviously i don't think the debate was everything that everybody on the stage hoped that it would be. Okay. A couple of points. When the two debates came up last week and this week, Pierre Poiliev was widely acknowledged to have a lead and to be running a good campaign. So here were two opportunities to step into the frame of a future prime minister, something that a lot of people were now considering quite possible.

And he missed both of those opportunities. He comes out of the debates with more questions about whether he is a suitable prime minister than were raised before the debates. And those questions, which he will dismiss as being the mainstream media, come from the left and the right and the center. I have rarely seen so many columns after a debate that say the same thing about the leading candidate, and that is that Pierre Poiliev is not demonstrating the gravitas and the maturity to be a suitable prime minister. I think that's not something you

want to do when you're trying to win the leadership of a party to be prime minister. I am not saying that will prevent him from winning the conservative leadership. Those are apparently two different things, and that speaks to an ongoing problem of disconnection between the conservative base and mainstream voters, not the mainstream media. If you were going to suggest that you would fire the governor of the Bank of Canada, you probably would want to do it in a frame other than a partisan debate where you just drop it off the top in your presentation. You would want to explain it and explain why that would solve any problem and how you think, what would your Bank of Canada governor

look like, really, if you think that that's where your problem is. I believe part of the reason that was dropped at the debate is to deflect from the Bitcoin debate. This is nothing short of a catastrophe to have suggested to people that they should go for Bitcoins to shelter from inflation. I'm quoting Pierre Poiliev here, and then see what has happened to Bitcoins over the course of the past two months. Now, for a guy who says that he can second guess the governor of the Bank of Canada on inflation, that's a pretty poor bet and a pretty poor sign of what is coming.

So there will not be another debate before all members are signed up. And that's probably good news for Pierre Poilievre, because it's one thing to argue in the parallel universe of a partisan crowd, as he has been doing. And it's another to fail the test of reality in the larger world, where most Canadians who are watching did not go there with a sign that says, Pierre, Pierre, Pierre, please become our leader. A word on Jean Chagall, who is someone I have covered for decades now. I think he looks too angry. And my memory of Jean Chagall looking angry is usually when things are not going his way or the way he would want it to be. I understand that that is probably the case, but he does look too angry.

He's a professional politician. He's been at this game for a long time. He looks like he's chiding conservative members who do not want to vote for him. And I think his campaign team should look at those tapes and get their own internal anger in check, because there is now a lot of it and a lot of bad blood, to think that the people who are watching do not every morning wake up in the middle of this bloodbath that is the CPC leadership campaign. And they are looking for voices of reason, not voices of anger. That being said, Jean Chalet and others this week on the Bitcoin, and that's why Justin Trudeau, I think, jumped on it,

really provided the liberals with even more clips for the next campaign and these go and the party should worry about that they go to the reputation of fiscal competence of the conservative party that this is their front runner and this is how he goes about talking about the economy and the bank of canada this is um this is an interesting discussion because it's one of the things that I've always found difficult to accept in terms of political party leadership campaigns. And I'm not isolating the conservatives here. In fact, I'm not just talking about Canada. It happens elsewhere as well. Where the people you're trying to attract are your own party members, and that's all. And usually what goes over best with a party, a political party, is attacking the opposition, right?

It's really going after them, throwing red meat to the base, getting people excited about the way you can perform against the opposition. And then sometimes in a leadership race, the opposition is right there on the stage with you so i i loved um chantal's image at the beginning of her comments there about this was the opportunity for polyev to step into the frame the picture frame of a future prime minister and that he lost that opportunity um as much as he likes to say he's campaigning to be prime minister, he's not. He's campaigning to be conservative leader. And so you wonder if the frame that he was stepping into in that regard was one he was fulfilling because he was throwing the red meat, either whether it was an attack on Justin Trudeau or an attack on the Bank of Canada or an attack on one of his opponents on stage, after all. Didn't he just call Sharia Crook last week?

So it's funny because when they're running for the leadership, they're taking one approach which they then have to water down if they win to try and unite some semblance of their their party afterwards um but i i i find that really an interesting part of this discussion and an interesting part of this moment that we're in in terms of watching the history of the cpc bruce you want it in yeah I think it's an interesting discussion too. And I know that every party, all of the major parties anyway, have their own internal dynamics. There's a near left and a far left in the Liberal Party, and they don't all get along very well. But,

you know, in the best days or months or years of the Liberal Party, they managed to kind of bottle it up and deal with it internally and make whatever mistakes the majority of them want to make or whatever mistakes the leadership group wants to make. But the bad blood between the near right and the far right, to oversimplify the categories, has been intense for a long time. I know what it felt like in the years 93, 95, 97, as the kind of reform oriented version of the Conservative Party met up with the progressive Conservative Party, and kind of understood the math of getting together, but always hated the chemistry of getting together. It's always been a problem. It's never really been resolved. And as I watched the Harper years, it felt to me like he was skilled at bottling up those

tensions. And he did it by force of personality. But the reflexes of the party, when they they fail fail because they veer back towards the furthest right most animated segment of the party because that puts them out of touch with the mainstream that's required for them to get to the you know the extra five percentage points basically five or ten percentage points of voters that allow them to win elections. And I was reminding myself that of what ultimately I think ended the career of Stephen Harper as prime minister is the way that his party campaigned in the run up to that 2015 election. Now it's possible that Justin Trudeau would still have won that election, but Justin Trudeau wasn't expecting to win that election.

Some of the decisions, the political choices on the kneecap, on cultural practices that were taken by his conservative government and his conservative party set them up for defeat. And that's not just me saying that. That's Michelle Rempel-Garner and a whole bunch of other people in the Conservative Party who say, when we look back on that, those were mistakes. And they weren't mistakes that were born of a really serious policy thoughtfulness. They were mistakes born of doing the political math in a way that felt energizing, but was in effect reckless. And I think that is the problem that the Conservative Party has now is that the less reckless people aren't really around very much. I mean, they ended up almost picking Max Bernier, which would have been arguably the most reckless choice. Instead, they ended up with Andrew Scheer, who was a pretty reckless choice. And then when they found Aaron O'Toole, a less reckless choice, they threw him

out almost immediately. Even though, you know, by my lens, anyway, I thought he was sort of working on building a more competitive, conservative party. And so now they're reflexing back towards this, you know, this kind of reckless instinct that we want to holler louder than everybody else. And, and that'll make us feel good. But where it ends up, I think, is, is putting them in a situation where when they should be positioned to defeat the liberals in the next election. By any kind of historical math, that should be the frame going into the next election. With Pierre Pauliev, if he keeps on acting like this, I don't know that they will be in that position. And that's the heart of the choice that they probably should be thinking about, but don't appear to be. All right. I

know Chantal wants in on this, and she will be in on this right after this and welcome back you're uh listening to good talk on the bridge on series xm channel 167 canada talks and your favorite podcast platform, Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Dornick, Scotland. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. Okay, we're into the last segment of Good Talk for this week, and the floor is yours, Chantelle. I want to pick up on something Bruce talked about,

about the 2015 election and the conservative brain trust around Stephen Harper falling prey to its worst wedge seeking instincts at cost to the party and to Mr. Harper's reelection prospects. Just to note that, yes, the chemistry was never really good, but prior to the 2015 election, there were always people of influence around Stephen Harper who stood as standard bearers for the more progressive approach and the bridge building to mainstream voters that the Conservative Party needed to do. By 2015, James Moore, who had been the heritage minister and was part of the inner circle of Stephen Harper, was gone. So was Peter McKay, former leader of the Tories. Jim Flaherty was not around anymore. And when I listened in this campaign to Pierre Poilievre talk about Jean Chagrin the way that he does, as in that he's not a pure conservative and that he actually doesn't even belong on that stage, I see James Moore and Peter McKay and people like that being talked about. I believe that the Poiliev clan seriously at this point has convinced me that they would rather purge the conservative party of those elements than have them on board to win an election.

And that they believe that they can purge them and still win an election because they are going to be winning back the Maxime Bernier crowd and bringing to the ballot box voters who have not been engaged in the political process. I don't think that's going to work. But if it does, one, it means the Conservative Party will be a smaller version of itself going forward. And two, if a government like that ever came to power, I think we would see a government that would have a seriously hard time advancing its policies, not only in Parliament, House and Commons and Senate, but also with the larger public. You cannot tell 60% or 65% of voters that their opinions are disqualified because they are not true blue conservatives and this is the way the country will be going without courting an electoral

disaster at some point down the line. One of those things you would be courting is a coming together of all those progressive forces under a single roof to make sure that you are banned, not beaten, banned from power for the foreseeable future. So these are the real risks that the conservatives are running that they do not want to look at on the one hand. And the risk to all voters is a permanent hold on power for a party that is called the Liberal Party that gets tired intellectually and depleted of political energy, but just exists by default as the only governing alternative. So there is nothing good that we watched those debates. Even if you're a Liberal partisan, you've been celebrating, I don't think you should. It's not healthy for your party to feel great about the Conservatives

maybe doing to themselves something that will make them less competitive against your party to feel great about the Conservatives maybe doing to themselves something that will make them less competitive against your party and allow your party to become more complacent, it already is, and less effective as a government. Bruce, you've been in the field of late both on the Ontario election but also on national terms. election but also in national terms what is happening with that Max Bernier crowd the people's party during this period especially with the conservative leadership race going on do you sense any movement within that within that crowd I mean what did they represent in the last election five or six percent a little higher than that i mean i think that the um the potential voter pool

for the people's party is just north just a shade north of 20 percent um and in order to win some conservative and it hasn't really been changing peter and i don't think that those voters are really paying that much attention to the People's Party choice. Now, they probably are dialing in the conservative leadership thing a little bit. The challenge, of course, with those voters is that they will always want the angriest solution, the most radical sounding solution, because that's what got them to that place in the first place. So if the Conservatives end up choosing somebody who is less radical than somebody else who's on that stage or who Max Bernier can say is not really true blue, most of those voters are likely to continue to vote for the People's Party if Max Bernier runs again and if the internet continues to exist, which I have no doubt that it will. So I think just to clarify, just to clarify, when you say

they have a pool of 20%, you're not saying that's how many voted for the People's Party, but you're saying that's the group that they're trying to break into, that 20%. That's the number who say I would consider voting for the People's Party. And so if you're running the leadership campaign for Leslyn Lewis or for Pierre Polyev, you're looking at those kinds of people and saying, well, you know, they're not members of that party. They can join our party and they can vote for one of us. And I think Leslyn Lewis is trying to find that part of the People's Party supporters who are faith-based to the nth degree. And she's saying, Pierre Pauliev isn't your candidate, vote for me, join the party and vote for me. I think it remains to be seen how well that's going to work. And I think Pierre-Paul Lievre is saying,

you know, I can saddle up with these voters for the course of this leadership campaign. And because I'm clever, once I win, I'll be able to pivot. How many times have we heard that idea before that I'll be able to pivot and create a different image of myself for Canadians to consume. I think it was a mistake for Aaron O'Toole to believe that it would be easy to do that, but he had a better chance of doing that because he never took positions that were as hard to pivot from as Pierre Polyev is. And so I think Polyev is looking to cultivate his support in the leadership among a lot of people's party supporters. And that's why he uses the language that he uses. It's not a mistake. It's deliberate. He keeps going back at it over and over and over again. It's not something that you do if you have anybody in your circle who is saying, hey, you know, boss, maybe we should just kind of soften that a little bit.

We're getting hammered by all of the gatekeepers. They say, we're getting hammered by all of the gatekeepers, and let's put the pedal down to the floor. And I'm with Chantal, which is that the ideal world in Canada is competitive parties that can appeal to a broad cross section of Canadians and offer different ideas on how to accomplish goals. Because complacency does set in when competition sucks. And, you know, I kind of feel like this party has a chance to be a stronger competitor. And right now it looks like it's not taking that chance. I've got less than two minutes left. Do you want a final word on that Chantal? Yes.

Two, two points. What's that expression? You don't get the second chance to make a good first impression. I think that chance to make a good first impression, that was the two debates that we watched. to make a good first impression. I think that chance to make a good first impression, that was the two debates that we watched. And I covered Stephen Harper on his way up,

two leadership campaigns and then two elections. He did not spend his time on his leadership campaigns, seeding the ground for a defeat in an election, which is basically what's happening. And then here's the predicament, going back to the 20% who are open to voting for Maxime Bernier, here's the predicament for many conservatives. They fear or believe that if Jean Chagall became leader, that 20% would start looking at Maxime Bernier more seriously. And so the party is really not at the crossroads uh with the two highways but trying to figure out what's on the other side of that big hill on either side and

it's not an easy place to be you know one of the things i love about politics is anytime they you think somebody is dead in terms of their reputation in politics, time can offer you some chance to bring that reputation back. You know, Brian Mulroney is still in the process of trying to do that. Stephen Harper, when he left office, and even if he ran for office today, well, at least when he left office, he was not a well-respected or liked person. But when you've seen what's happened to his party since, you start to understand that what he achieved in his election victories, and there were three of them, at least three, 06, 08, 11, yeah, three.

Yeah, three. You know, he achieved a lot. And he achieved those gains and those victories by having a strong hand on the rudder of his party and the things he allowed members of his party to say and do. So it's interesting. peter remember you have 10 seconds he followed the model that mulroney used with clark he did the same thing with peter mckay and the blood was never great with them but they kept it together and it was a good thing for their

government all right we'll leave it at that for this week chantelle and montreal bruce and scotland great to have you with us as always and we'll be back again next week for good talk and the bridge will be back on monday really interesting show on monday can't tell you more about it because i don't have time but i think you'll find it fascinating that's monday on the bridge i'm peter man's bridge thanks for. Talk to you again soon.