The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Was This Erin O'Toole's Best Week Ever?

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

So just how good was the Conservative leader's week?  Chantal and Bruce have their thoughts. Should the voting age be lowered to 16?  And here's one to provoke some thought -- should Canada do a Barbados and move away from the monarchy?

Are you ready for Good Talk? I love Fridays. I love Fridays for a lot of different reasons, just like you do, but one of the biggest reasons I love Fridays is Good Talk. Chantel Hébert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. And we've got some good, good talk for you on this day. We're going to start with Aaron O'Toole. And this will be different.

I think it might be different than some of the discussions we've had on Aaron O'Toole in the past few weeks. Basically, since the election campaign. Because the question raised again this week is, are we now seeing the real Aaron O'Toole? I mean, he's had a pretty good week. The speech from the throne is being described by some as, hey, you know, maybe this guy really is a bit progressive based on some of the things he said in his reply to the speech from the throne earlier this week. And then there was the pass, go directly to the Senate,

suggestion by the Conservatives, and it was followed by the government, to take the ban on conversion therapy, which clearly some Conservatives have strong feelings about, send it directly to the Senate without a vote in the House. So people are looking, or at least some people and some observers are looking at all this and saying, these are the things that Aaron O'Toole needed to do. And is it really a reflection of who this guy is?

Because as we all know, ever since he was elected as leader, the question has been, who's the real Aaron O'Toole? Because one day he seems to be speaking from a certain position, the next day a very different position. So, that's the initial question. That's topic one for today on Good Talk. Chantel, are we now looking at the real Aaron O'Toole? Was it really his best week since he became leader?

Those are two different questions. So to the second, the best week, probably the best week. It demonstrated, and I'm not going to go to the real Aaron O'Toole because I think voters, if he manages to hang on to his job, will have to make that decision come the next election, and we're a long way from it. So he does have a chance to reintroduce himself to voters, as long as in so doing, he manages to not convince a majority of party members that that's not who they want. But the week did demonstrate that there is still strategic life on planet conservative.

And why I say that? You have to go back to the history of the conversion therapy debate. This was the government's third kick at the same can. Third, not because of the Conservatives, as much as because the first bill failed when Justin Trudeau decided to prorogue the House and bring in a new speech on the throne. A second attempt failed when the Prime Minister called an election last summer, at a point when the bill was just landing in the Senate. But over the course of those two previous attempts, the conservatives and conservative MPs who have reservations had a lot of time to talk their point about this bill. And when the vote

came, it was on June 22nd, Erin O'Toole voted for the ban on conversion therapy, and so did 50 of his MPs. That leaves 62, that's a majority, who voted against the last bill, Bill C-6. It was a major embarrassment for Aaron O'Toole on the eve of an election. The Liberals undoubtedly had something to do with the timing of that. It sent the message that regardless of how Aaron O'Toole tells you that he's socially progressive, he doesn't have enough command of his own party and his own caucus to prevent the majority from standing in the way of those progressive measures. So fast forward to this week, the government brings the bill back. That's on Monday. It's a strengthened bill. The previous bill did not apply

or did not forbid offering conversion therapy to consenting adults. This bill does that. Effectively, it bans conversion therapy period. If you want it, no, it's illegal to offer it. By doing what they did, the conservatives achieved a few things for themselves. For one, they conceded the point that the issue had been debated at length and they had had their say. Whoever was against it had had their say. By proposing to adopt a motion that saw the bill adopted through all of the phases of the debate, they spared themselves the embarrassment of another vote that would have shown their division. No one this week voted white when they voted black or black when they voted white last spring. That did not happen.

The entire operation that the conservatives launched in the House of Commons rested on the fact or the hope or the gamble that not a single voice would say nay. That's how those motions work. There was a risk there. It only takes one MP, one maverick to kill you for the day. That did not happen. And that is a win for Erin O'Toole. It shows some command of his caucus, because most of the MPs who did vote against that bill last spring are back in this parliament. If it had come to a vote, every member votes, they would have voted against it

again. But the fact that they agreed with their leader to move on, I think that's a big win for Aaron O'Toole. It sends a clear message that he does have some moral authority over that caucus. Now, you might say, yeah, but this isn't the same bill. It's actually a stronger bill. And the liberals possibly thought there was a new trap here for the conservatives. But here's the deal. It may be that because the bill is stronger, it made it easier for the

conservatives to do what they did. And here's why. It is almost certain that at some point, someone will challenge this bill on the grounds that you can't. It's not reasonable to limit the rights of a consenting adult just because it's bad for them. And maybe that will prevail or maybe not, but that issue will be resolved in the courts and not in parliament. And so it kind of gives an added argument for why would we enter in a discussion that we have already lost when the party position is basically we are against conversion therapy, and that's been the case since last year and the year before, when in the end, the biggest point of contention of the new bill will never be resolved in Parliament?

You know what I find amazing about that answer is it was so good and it was so wide ranging that there literally is nothing else anybody could possibly say on that subject that's a that's a polite way to say i spoke for a long time no that that's right peter let's go on to the next subject all right okay from now on i'll only say yes and no no i i look i found that quite interesting as well and i agree with you know people are accustomed to saying i agree with almost all of it i agree with all of it i was thinking about the question from a slightly different perspective. Do we know the real Aaron O'Toole? I think by now we do. I think that what we know about him is that he's somebody who is very focused on winning.

He's somebody who kind of understands the dynamics of winning, whether it's running for the leadership of his party or running as the leader of his party in an election in Canada, neither of which, by the way, is meant to be an endorsement of how he has done those things, or even to say that he's done them particularly well, although he did win the leadership of his party, and he hasn't spent that long in politics. So you could look at his ascendancy in politics and say it's been relatively quick.

And his performance in arriving at the place that he's at has been relatively effective. So I think he knows what it takes to win. I think he prioritizes winning. Again, whether that's good or bad, people can have their own views about, obviously. And then the third question is, is he in command of his party? And Chantal touched on this. And I think that for the longest time now, my jury has been out, and it's still out. But I think that if we're asking, is he really progressive? The answer is, we know that he's progressive in the sense that he knows that it takes that or a certain measure of that in order to win. He also knows that too much of that means that he couldn't have

won the leadership of his party. And now the question is, if we know that he can't be a reliable progressive in every instance, but his instinct is to try to find the majority of Canadians nodding their heads when the Conservative Party says something. In the past, that's been good enough for a Conservative Party to win. Conservative parties win in Canada when, I guess you could sort of say, well, sometimes they win when they have better ideas. But we don't live in an era where very many voters evaluate the ideas of the different parties, if I'm being really honest. But what I see in our polling data, conservatives these days are more likely to win when they're sick to the back axle of the liberals. And the conservatives don't look so annoying that you can't find a way to hold your nose and vote for them. So him being in command

of his party is the single most important thing that he can do to improve the competitiveness of his party right now. There's a reasonable chance that people will decide that they've had enough of the liberals sometime in the next little while. And Aaron O'Toole's sense of what it might take to win is better than Andrew Scheer's. And, you know, some days I might even make the case that it's better than Stephen Harper's. But Stephen Harper certainly had command of his party. I think Aaron O'Toole, it's a bit of a question mark. This was definitely the best week that he had in terms of command of his party. Last thing I'll say is that every time the Conservatives put two or three good days of that sort of thing together,

they've got parts of their operation that just do and say things that then look so juvenile that people who are watching closely for some sign of intelligent life, to use Chantal's term, they, they, you can feel them sag and go, Oh God, if they would only stay on the we're serious professional alternative path, they would have a much better chance of success in my view. But that's, those are things that you can work out. You know, part of, sorry, Chantal, let me just make this point. Part of politics is optics, and a lot of people may be upset about that,

but it's a fact. It is part of politics and part of gaining some attention. So I was watching carefully this week, beyond the substance of what was happening in terms of the topics, I was watching carefully this week, beyond the substance of what was happening in terms of the topics, I was also watching his performance in the House of Commons. Not that a lot of people watch that, but it does tell you something about how comfortable he is in the skin of being the leader.

And when I watched question period this week, I thought, this guy actually looks like a leader. You know, he seemed to handle himself well through question period. He's well prepped. He wasn't stuck to his script like many of the ministers still are right now in answering him. And he looked, you know, he looked pretty good at it. Here's the question I still have. And Chantel, I'll throw it to you. Go ahead and make your first point first. But my question is, the very fact that there wasn't a single nay when this happened in the House does raise questions about what pressure he must have put on that caucus to just shut up and take it, because it's not like everybody in that caucus is a reasonable person, as we've seen in the last month in terms of some of the things that have happened inside the Conservatives.

What do we know? Do we know what happened in that room to ensure that there wasn't a single nay? No, we don't. But we do know that about 80 members of that caucus have roles in the shadow cabinet or around the shadow cabinet and that others don't. And that the message clearly has been that if you will not walk the talk of the leader, you may well end up becoming an independent MP. And in the previous parliament, Aaron O'Toole did boot with the approval of the rest of his caucus. Derek Sloan, remember him? Leadership candidate from the religious right, was booted out of caucus by Aaron O'Toole, shopped himself a seat in what he hoped would be a more friendly environment for an independent conservative of his brand in the prairies,

and is not back in the House of Commons. And I think part of the threat that hangs over MPs who want to fool around with issues like that is the fact that for now, Erin O'Toole has sufficient support in the shadow cabinet and in this caucus to get the required number to kick MPs out of caucus. And there is a solid section of that shadow cabinet that is sick of reading headlines that make the party look like a bunch of clowns. So that combination, plus the numbers in the polls, which have not always distinction between command of caucus and command of party. One and the other are rarely the same, especially in this case. I would also argue that this was the easiest part in the sense that Stephen Harper did that before Aaron O'Toole. He marginalized the social conservative wing of the party. I'm not saying he excluded social conservatives from his environment. And not every social conservative is on Parliament Hill just to oppose a ban on conversion therapy or a return to restrictions on abortions. But he did treat that file and

made it clear that he was not going to be leading the party on that particular front. Big job ahead on two issues, climate change. Yes, many voters may have been repulsed by some of the social conservative stance of that caucus in the previous parliament. But I still think these days, voters need to tick the box. We're serious about climate change, and they are not there. And the policy they ran on in the last election will not get them there. But the other is the disconnect between their interest in making the economy a central focus of their work in the House of Commons, which I believe is a great gamble for them because the liberals cannot easily on their own do much on inflation.

It's a global phenomenon. So they are an open target. But for that, you need a critic. And I'm talking about finance critic Pierre Poilievre, who is actually operating on the basis of facts. It's not good now that Erin O'Toole has more time to look outside the conversion therapy issue. It's not good that most of the columns about this financial critic and his party on the issue are about how he is basing what he is saying on fake news and fake facts.

And that is an analysis of his performance that is supported by economic data, by people who know about the economy. What I'm saying is they're having fun in question period, cheering on Pierre Poiliev, but they are doing so at the expense of their credibility on what could be the central file that could get them to government in a year and a half. Bruce, do you want to make a point here before we move on? Yeah, I wouldn't mind. I feel like the question of how Aaron O'Toole was able to get his caucus, and I agree with Chantal's point that caucus is not the same as party, but managing caucus has not been easy. And so it seems like it's going a little bit better for the leader now. The question of doing that, I think, has been probably aided by the fact that over three elections now, it's been easy to look at the results from the conservative standpoint and say, whatever we all think about Justin Trudeau, our hatred of him, our dismissal of him isn't enough. And we lose because we look like we're just really off kind of mainstream thinking on issues like vaccines and climate change and equal rights. And so if we say after every election that we don't win, that those are problems that

we create for ourselves, barriers to success, and then we don't change our behavior, we're going to keep on losing. And I think that that has become over time a more persuasive argument inside the Conservative Party. And I think that's one of the reasons why it was possible for Erin O'Toole to say, we could have a named MP by MP vote, and then we will have stories that carry on four months and into the next election about how we're squishy on equal rights for the LGBTQ community. Do we want to do that? And if we don't want to do that, then this unanimous assent is the only way to

avoid that. And strategically, it's the right choice to make unless you want to have those kinds of stories continue. I agree with Chantel. That fight on that one issue doesn't mean he'll be able to solve climate change that way. And I completely agree that on the main economic issue that the Conservatives are using right now, which is inflation, it has all of the potential to kind of evaporate as an issue before the next election, but also to draw increasing attention to the role of Pierre Poliev, who, in a different way, it's not a social issue, but the problem with the kind of the more fringe views on vaccines and climate and equal rights is that they sort of convey the sense of a conservative party that is a little bit captured by this

Trumpist kind of populist, fake news, conspiracy theory, we don't have to be moored to the facts kind of idea. And Polyev is a pretty effective speaker. If you just look at the tone of his voice and the manner of his presentation, he's a pretty risky proposition if you're trying to win the confidence of Canadians who don't really like to take big risks in our electoral choices. And so that challenge for him in terms of management, which clearly was a challenge for him. I mean, he took Polyev out of the role and then he put him back in. It's not like this is a, you know, I was going to say, it's not like this is the John and Paul relationship, except maybe it is a little bit in some respects. It's a relationship that is developing before our eyes,

and we don't know how that story is going to end. Did you just compare the conservative caucus to the Beatles? No, I compared it to a human relationship that was a surge. I mean, I know Aaron O'Toole is having a great week, but he's no John Lennon. No, he's no Paul McCartney. Let's roll the tape back and play that again. I would love to talk about Get Back, the new Beatles film.

Well, I managed to bring it in, so there's the opening. Yeah, no, no, it's very good. I think it's fabulous. I can't, you know, I'm fascinated by how a a song comes together at least it appeared to in the in the in this uh in this peter jackson film that's running on whatever streaming service disney plus i think uh one i don't have access to just you got to get it chantelle you'll you'll love it. It really is. It's quite remarkable. Okay.

Before we leave Erin O'Toole and what was at times starting to sound like a love in here, I'll read. I've never had so many letters in such a short period of time as I've had this week through email. There have been dozens of them and no it's it's not looking for a book plate for my new book it was actually picking up on something that was said on on our podcast on Wednesday and unfortunately Bruce's name is in this although it's not really fair because he he was kind of roped into this by me. But here's this letter. And Chantal, you won't mind if I read this, even though it's off topic.

Totally off topic. I'm actually glad you said Wednesday, so I'm off the hook here. Listening to that. But you're on the hook in terms of you look out your window and you can see the body of water that we're talking about here in this letter. So here it comes from Christopher Carey in a place in Quebec I've never heard of, Freelightsburg, Quebec. Freelightsburg. Yeah. It's in the eastern townships close to the border with the U.S.

Great, great, great cycling area. Great cycling area. Okay. Well, he obviously knows his rivers too, because here's the letter. Dear Peter, just listened to your Thursday podcast. To be honest, I was waiting to hear your mea culpas, but instead I heard you read two letters from listeners using Gordon Lightfoot as a reference. Maybe you fell into the confirmation bias trap. This is about the direction of the St. Lawrence River, okay?

There's no denying that you, Bruce, and Gordon Lightfoot are unique tellers of Canadian stories, but you're definitely no geographers. And the Lightfoot references to the Canadian, the great Canadian trilogy, railway trilogy song. The St. Lawrence is a river. And what's a river? The Great Canadian Trilogy, Railway Trilogy song. The St. Lawrence is a river. And what's a river?

It's the path of least resistance that water takes to get to sea level, to the ocean. When has up ever been the path of least resistance? Never. Water runs downhill, hence the terms upstream, towards the source or headwater, and downstream. But why base all this on the river history? Because once upon a time, the St. Lawrence was Canada's only superhighway, and you better bet that the sailors and paddlers of the day

knew whether they were fighting the current to get upriver or coasting with the current on their way downriver. We'll get to why this is important and what it's got to do with Aaron O'Toole in a second. The orientation of a river in relation to the cardinal points is irrelevant. In fact, putting the northern hemisphere at the top of our maps is only convention. So from Montreal, you go up to St. Lawrence to Kingston and down the river to Quebec City.

And you go down to Gaspé from anywhere else on the river. The point here was, Aaron O'Toole had mentioned in comments the other day about going down the St. Lawrence. And I sort of said, oh, this is like an old Stockwell Day story. He's got the direction of the current wrong. It's up the St. Lawrence, like Gordon Lightfoot says.

And I was wrong. I was first backed up by the Gordon Lightfoot song. But there have been a torrent, a heavy current of letters. I'm speechless. Yes. You and Stockwell Day, by the way. That's right. Remember? Poor Stockwell Day was asked which way the Niagara River, I believe, ran for his sins.

And I've never commented on that answer because he took a beating for being wrong but i was raised in toronto and i know the niagara peninsula for all kinds of reasons uh and i wouldn't have known the answer either i've always been confused by you know some people say everybody almost everybody says out west and up north and down south but when it it comes to east, some people say down east and some people say out east. And I don't know which is right, but down east doesn't seem right. We're not going to start this because it'll just start over. If the St. Lawrence River is running down east,

then it all works, right? All right, it works. I'm just happy to be included in a sentence with Gordon Lightfoot. So am I. I'm happy to go. You were part of that sentence too. Yeah, no, I'm happy. If I'm going to get pilloried, I don't mind standing behind Gordon Lightfoot.

You're here. Anyway, we will move on to another pressing issue, or at least it's pressing for people who are 16 years old when we come back. And welcome back. This is Good Talk for another great Friday. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast. And as we always say, wherever you're listening from and whenever you're listening, we're glad to have you with us. This topic comes up every once in a while. It's been championed by different causes, including the NDP have championed this over time. And I think it's still something that they would like to see happen. And that is the lowering of the voting age from 18 to 16.

And it's actually before the courts in some parts of the country right now, being pushed by a number of youth groups. It's also in, I think, a couple of provincial legislatures, one at least. And I've always found this topic interesting because there is this kind of disparity between what ages are are able to do in the country you know you can get your driver's license at a certain age often that's different than the voting age you can be a member of the armed forces and die for your country at an age sometimes. I remember when I was in the Navy, I was able to get into the Navy and train on guns and all the other kinds of things you do in the armed forces,

and yet I wasn't able to drink legally in a bar, which never seemed to make sense. So here we go with this round of discussion. I'm not sure where it's going to go or how likely it is to have any success, but it is an interesting topic, and it's clearly a topic that some youth groups feel strongly about. Should the voting age be lowered to 16? And if it was, would that necessarily benefit anybody politically?

Bruce, why don't you start this one? I think it should. I don't think it's necessarily an easy slam dunk answer, but I've thought about it a little bit, not that much. But I do think on balance, it's probably the right idea. And there's a couple of reasons that are kind of that push me in that direction. One is that politicians do care more and respond more to people who vote. And if we believe that young people are disproportionately put at risk on issues like climate change, then I think that's a strong argument that they should be able to have that kind of connection with their elected officials around that issue. that older people feel that the compromises and the sacrifices necessary to solve it are too severe or maybe won't work, or they just in the back of their minds kind of conclude that this is an issue for somewhere down the road.

I think that's a fairly compelling argument, and the climate change is a pretty unique issue in our time. And maybe I wouldn't have felt the same way about this voting age issue in an earlier time, but it certainly weighs heavily for me on this. And then the second thing is that, as we've talked about in recent weeks, and I kind of worry about a lot because I see the evidence of it in my research, we have a population that's not terribly engaged, not terribly knowledgeable anymore about a public life. And I know Chantal thinks that maybe there wasn't a golden age and that's probably fair. But on the other hand, I'm worried that we're moving

quickly through the silver and the bronze age version of it. And we need to do whatever we can to try to attenuate that problem. And if younger people having the franchise means more younger people will be engaged in understanding politics and thinking about those choices and voting according to their values and interests, then it's hard for me to see that that's a bad thing. And so the argument against it, which is what, that they'll make poor decisions because they won't be fully knowledgeable, whatever the words are that are used to describe that kind of paternalism, I think they do apply a little bit.

So that's where I am on it, on balance. You know, when we had a small talk about this a couple of weeks ago where we talked about what were young people learning in school and why weren't they learning things about Canadian politics and the structure. Man, I got to tell you, I got a lot of letters from teachers who said, that's not the case. You know, we teach that. We teach it in class i even had a

letter this week from uh from a grade three teacher saying where were you in grade three we taught the direction of the rivers in grade three and we still do in our in our school and you know i thought grade three i i missed that year i skipped skipped grade three. I went directly to four. So obviously that's what happened for me, and that's been a problem for me ever since. There were a lot of things happening in grade three that I didn't learn. Anyway, I make that point, and Chantel on the larger point.

So something we have in common, I too skipped three threes. That probably explains why I too am challenged by the direction of rivers. Voting at 16. I think it will possibly come. I'm reading here the rules for the leadership votes in Newfoundland and Labrador, the Liberal Party of Labrador, a party that tends to produce premiers, so it's not a third party. And you could participate and register to vote on the next premier of the province, which those people who did register did, because Andrew Ferry is the premier now. It's free for anyone 14 or older. This is not a one-off. A number of parties

in this country at all levels allow people to vote for the leadership of the party at age 16. Why? Because their theory is if you start them young in the party, you will have them for a long time. That is also true of voting. There are studies that show that if you voted at your first opportunity at an election, when you turned 18, you showed up to vote, you are more likely to be a regular voter than the alternative. It's easier to find 16 years old in an election campaign and get them to go to the polls because they're usually not yet in university. And so they're still living in the same area as their parents by and large, while 18 and up can be spread across campuses and then the campus vote, where do you register to vote, etc.

So many people assume, and the NDP certainly seems to assume as much, that this would benefit the NDP and the Green Party. And there was a time when it was true that the younger you were possibly the more likely you were to vote for for the ndp i'm not sure that's uh still true and i suspect that if the liberals wanted to score a hip they would as they have the power to propose an amendment to the elections law to lower the age to 16 they would have support from the DP. And probably the Conservatives would not move a motion to make it unanimous because when you look at the demographic breakdown of support for parties, the party that does the most poorly consistently for decades is the Conservative Party. And the main reason is climate change.

So it's an interesting discussion. I don't think necessarily that it will be resolved in the courts, but I could see something like that happen. And remember, things change. There was a time in Quebec when many sovereignty strategists believed that if you lowered the voting age to 16, they would have a greater shot at winning a positive vote for sovereignty. And the demographics of the vote in Quebec did show that, until it didn't. Today, we are, what, 20-some years off the last referendum. The typical PQ supporter is over 60. And the youth vote has fled to Québec Solidaire and other parties. So the picture today is not tomorrow's picture. But I suspect for reasons of civic engagement that moving to 16

would probably make the life of those teachers easier in the sense that it would relate their course material to something that is actually real. Yeah, I just want to add a couple of quick things if I can, Peter. One is that Chantal kind of alludes to the idea that changes like this, it's easy to kind of go, well, maybe they're never going to happen because they seem like a bigger, more structurally important change. And then all of a sudden the change happens and everybody goes, oh, what were we so preoccupied with? Legalization of marijuana kind of comes to mind. And certainly if I think about the political dynamics among the parties, I agree with Chantal's analysis that on the surface of it, this is not automatically an opportunity for the Green Party or the NDP, but it it takes to win is more younger progressive voters in the mix so that there's even more evidence that they need to find a place on climate change, on equal rights, that kind of embraces the interests of young people and gets them a little bit out of the comfort zone of the older and the angry, as some of the kind of the polling and the fundraising indications have been in recent years. So I don't know whether it will happen either, but I did learn from the marijuana legalization debate that it can seem like something that's impossible happens on a dime.

And all of a sudden, the political culture just moves on and says, well, that wasn't that complicated and probably for the better. What's the downside? I mean, some people say, well, you know, they don't know enough. Well, there's a lot. If that were a reason to make it inside that polling booth, a lot of us would not make it. Exactly. Especially if they asked geography questions. Right.

So what is the downside? Crickets. There used to be 21, right right and then it moved to 18 uh there's certainly less of a downside to allowing people to vote when they're 16 and there is a downside to allowing them to drink if they can drive a car up and down my street i i really struggle with the idea that they shouldn't have a franchise in an election, especially when I see how many people vote in every election who really don't know some basic facts. It's not like everybody over 18 is in this kind of bubble of knowledge and judicious choice. That's not what our democracy looks like every day. So yeah, I don't have a

downside argument, Peter. I'm sorry. Go ahead, though. You must have one because you asked. No, no, I don't have one. I'm telling you, I am always puzzled by these differences on ages in terms of what's, you know, legal. You know, and if you as, you know, if you say, if you can drive at 16, why can't you vote at 16? But then it will stretch out, you know. It will be, okay, why can't you drink at 16, to Chantel's point? And, you know, like, why can't you join, legally join the armed forces at 16? I mean, you know, these can't you join legally join the armed forces at 16 i mean

there were you know the these differences in the age barriers about legality it was sort of what's the legal age generally for any number of things countries some countries do allow votes at six at 16 and germany is a case in point and possibly it's possible to drink a beer at 16 too Germany is a case in point. Possibly it's possible to drink a beer at 16 too in Germany from memory of trips there. But their democracy sounds like it's in good shape. I don't equate voting at 16 with a remedy to voting turnout. I think those are two different issues

where if we were having a discussion about mandatory voting, we would be having a discussion about how you drive turnout. But the same question would be asked, take away our discussion on 16. Look at mandatory voting. And what's one of the main arguments against mandatory voting is a lot of people who don't know much about anything will go vote. So it's not age-related ignorance. It's spread across the political spectrum and across the electorate. And I don't find the argument that they don't know enough to vote to be persuasive when we use the same argument about everybody else to say mandatory voting would be a catastrophe because too many people who know nothing and have no interest would show up. Okay, we're going to take a break, our last break, and come back with a different topic right after this. back with Chantel in Montreal and Bruce in Ottawa that you're listening to good talk um

Alex Panetta is a really well-respected reporter, usually based in Washington. He's with the CBC right now. He was with Canadian Press for many years, and we all enjoyed his CP articles and as we do his CBC articles. And he's got one out this week because he's been trying to track what's been going on in Washington kind of behind the scenes between various Canadian delegations and U.S. delegations to try and understand what's happening in the relationship between these countries because it's tense on some key issues.

You've read Alex's piece, Bruce. What's the take? Well, I was really interested in just staying in touch with this idea of a Team Canada approach to go to Washington to meet with lawmakers on the Democratic and the Republican side and to kind of press the argument that Canada must press about our economic relationship and how it can be intentionally or unintentionally seriously damaged by some of the provisions in the Build Back Better program of Joe Biden and in the general kind of interest in domestic supply chains, domestic production, domestic jobs. And I've been hopeful that repeated efforts by Canadian officials to have this conversation will start to result in more awareness on the Democratic side that some of the provisions that they've been kind of baking into their policy proposals come with some negative consequences. And Alex's piece correctly identified, I think,

first of all, that the problem is as much on the Democratic side as on the Republican side, and that a lot of effort is now going into having real conversations with Democrats saying, did you know that this provision would cause this problem? And I think the, you know, the indications in his piece were a little bit hopeful in the sense that some of those conversations resulted in people kind of leaving the meeting saying, I wasn't aware that Canada was quite as concerned about this. And in my experience working on these cross-border issues, that's no guarantee of success, but it is a prerequisite of success that you start to get on the radar screen and that you do it in a way that says,

well, it's not just Canada that would be materially affected in a negative way and potentially with some countervailing measures, which Deputy Minister and Finance Minister Freeland has talked about. But there are democratic interests in certain states that are at risk as well, or worker interests, let me put it that way, that are at risk, non-union labor, that might be democratic voting. And so it feels to me like a good update from a fantastic journalist on an issue that we all need to be very attentive to. You got a brief comment on that, Chantal? Yes, but the same story is also a reminder of how crowded the agenda is on Capitol Hill and how adversarial the debate is and how in that big puzzle Canada is little more than a little piece of the sky. And so, yes, you can try to fit that little piece from the sky in some other place, or you can forget about it because you need to focus on the big picture and you'll deal

with the sky later when you have time. So, I don't know. It sounds from a distance that it may have been easier to find allies for opposing anything Donald Trump had done to Canada, because Donald Trump was doing it, than for fixing a section of a Joe Biden bill. I've deliberately kept three minutes for the end of this program. I tried to kill it. Then I could see the look on your face. To deal with a pressing issue. Barbados this week said goodbye to the Queen, became a republic.

And there are those who think that this is something Canada should be seriously thinking about in the post-Queen Elizabeth era, which may be upon us within the next few years. Thoughts? Is this a direction you feel this country is willing or prepared to go? There are two questions in your question. Willing, Bruce can probably confirm this, polls show that the majority of Canadians would react positively to the idea of, once the Queen is gone, of moving on from the monarchy. Whether they care a lot about

that, or whether that's something you tell pollsters because that's how you feel, but you don't feel all that strongly, is one issue. Prepared? Well, you were there and I was there. If you think you can have a constitutional round about the monarchy without having all of the other issues, Indigenous, Quebec, Equal, Senate, go down the line, show up for that same meeting, you and I would be getting too old to do what we do because we would have lost our memory of events. And I seriously don't believe we have the political

energy to put in the monarchy issue or the political will to address all of the constitutional business that we failed to resolve 20 years ago. Bruce? I think the answer, as long as Elizabeth is queen, is there's not going to be any margin for this discussion to take root in Canada. I think that the bulk of people separate out the question of whether the institution has merit or relevance from do we want to do anything that would be seen as an affront to somebody that we don't feel a desire to disrespect. And obviously, the strength of that feeling will vary by age and kind of political cultural attribute. but you don't see anything in our data that says, I'm mad as hell at Queen Elizabeth. So I separate out Queen Elizabeth, who, you know, is seen as an institution or representative of an institution who's kind of

done work that appears to be pointed towards the public interest and the next generation, which not to be unkind, but are like bad celebrities. They're people, many of whom appear to be more in the news and more known for personal behavior. And I would probably separate out Prince William from that. But Prince Charles, you know, if he becomes king, I think all bets are off on whether or not there's some desire at some point for this conversation to have. I don't think people are hostile towards him, but there's really no, there's no sense of understanding of the value of the institution for Canada. And there's not a lot of appeal for him as the monarch of Canada, I don't think. You know, the thing that whenever we have this conversation, the thing that strikes me is that, you know, for the overwhelming majority of Canadians,

and I mean, I don't know what it is, 90%, have never known any other monarch other than Queen Elizabeth. She's been the queen since 1952. And to suddenly be affected by a change, whether it's King Charles or King William or whoever it may be, I mean, that's such a different thing to get your head around, you know, singing God save the king. You know, it's so foreign in sounding, looking at your currency

and seeing a different face other than Queen Elizabeth on your money or on your stamps or hanging in the arena or whatever it may be. Right, right. It might make you think there's something goofy about the idea of some people having a bloodline right to these roles. You know, people might start thinking about that and go, what exactly is the rationale? Yeah, because we haven't had that discussion with Queen Elizabeth.

I mean, when she became Queen, Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister of Britain. You know, it's all been a long time. And it's been an automatic part of our lives. Anyway, we have dealt with the monarchy, and we've had a fascinating discussion on it, as Chantel had pressed for and been sending emails to me every day for the last week saying we must talk about the monarchy and now that has been done um thank you both another fascinating good talk have a great weekend we'll convene again you guys yeah we'll convene again next week Chantel in Montreal Bruce in. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto

on this day. I hope you have a great weekend. Stay safe. Stay in touch with the news. Keep your mind and your body focused on what's important. Take care. We'll talk to you again on Monday.