The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- What Did Air Canada's CEO Moment Tell Us?

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

A terrible crash of an Air Canada jet in New York becomes a language crisis at the top of the country's national airline.  The airline employs more than 35 thousand people, about a third of them in Montreal.  But their Montreal based CEO speaks only English and this week that became painfully clear.  Bruce and Chantal have their thoughts on what this says about Canadian bilingualism.  Plus final thoughts on the NDP race. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Sean Tilly Bear and Bruce Anderson. It's your Friday Good Talk. Good to have you with us. We're going to start with the Air Canada story. And they're really kind of two parts to this. It was obviously a tragic, terrible crash last Sunday night at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. An Air Canada jet of two pilots were given clearance.

by the tower to land on the active runway, they landed. At the same time, a fire engine was given clearance to cross the runway. Investigations will determine why that happened. But as a result of it happening, the plane moving at about 100 miles an hour down the runway, slammed into the fire engine. Both pilots were killed, almost certainly instantly. A flight attendant was thrown out of her... area behind the pilots, in the section behind the pilots, still strapped to her seat 100 meters she was thrown.

She survived, badly injured, but she survived. Many of the passengers were hurt. The CEO of Air Canada, now, Air Canada's not the way it used to be. It's not a Crown Corporation anymore, but it is the nation's flag carrier and it has certain obligations. The CEO of Air Canada, based in Montreal, where the company is based, a third of its 35,000 employees live in Quebec,

puts out a statement of condolences and grieving by the Air Canada family, and that's understandable. Now, he could have put out written statement, one in English and one in French, but no, he decides to do a video statement. And that video statement is all in English because he admittedly has a limited ability to speak,

French. That has caused an uproar. It calls for his resignation, among others, the Premier of Quebec. But the Prime Minister had harsh words for him as well. So where's all this going? And what is it telling us about the state of play of language in Canada? Chantelle, why don't you start? Well, I'm not going to go from Michael Russo to a generalization on the state of play of language, because that would be an exaggeration. I think this is on an individual who had demonstrated in the past a total lack of sensitivity.

This is someone who lives in Montreal, has lived in Montreal for years. It's totally understandable that if you live in certain parts of Canada, you will not have heard French a lot, and it's really hard to keep up a language that you never hear. But he actually does live here,

as you say, working for a company that is under obligations. And that was part of the privatization deal to operate in the two official languages. And so let me go back to the timing and the circumstances. The first thing that happens, obviously, that we can all agree on is news of that tragedy. The second thing that does happen much earlier than the third. thing, is the identity of the first victim. A pilot called Antoine Foley, if you can tell by the name, even if you're not bilingual, someone who is from Coteau Zulac right next door, a 30-year-old. And then eventually the name of the second victim does come out. But before that happens, and knowing that the

first victim is a francophone from next door, Mr. Russo decides that he's going to do this video. fine and put it on social media. This is not an interview. This is not a scrum. This is not a moment when in the heat of the emotion, your voice catches and you say, I can't do this in the language other than my own, which is totally understandable.

This is a recorded video where Mr. Rousseau properly talks about the tragedy that has just unfolded. When you first look at it, I did. There are two words. You're not totally wrong, but I should say that Bonjour and Merci were also mentioned. So that's the French.

When I first saw it, I thought, okay, you know how it goes on Twitter. I looked for the French version or for some sense of French in there. And I saw a lot of subtitles. Now, we do live in a country where a lot of people who were not proficient in the second official language have to once in a while speak French.

Ministers in Ottawa will do that. MPs will have to do that. Some of us will also have to do that. We're not all as fortunate as I am to have had the opportunity to live on both sides of the language divide. But what we all know from this experience is that just about anyone can read off a teleprompter, two sentences, and another language. whether it's English, Italian, or German. Mr. Rousseau had in the past spoken entirely in English at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce and opined that it was so great to live in Montreal, you didn't even have to learn any French,

as he had lived there for decades and didn't have to learn French, that had caused an upro, and so he undertook to learn French. Now I'm going to take off my journalistic clothes and get my summer job close as a French language instructor in Toronto. Anybody who has had 300 hours of French teaching, as Mr. Rousseau has, should be able to read two sentences in French off a teleprompter. anybody. So this is not, I'm sorry that I don't speak French, I'm sorry that I couldn't learn it. This is a choice, not an error. And that's a choice that is made in context with background to it. Now, there are those who said, well, you know, you are all detracting from the tragedy to politicize a terrible moment. In the actual sequence, this video came out and it took a full 24 hours because it was a tragedy

before commentators, politicians, others moved on to the next step of how is this person so insensitive with so little judgment and on that the prime minister was dead on and so little sensitivity to his own employees but also to his clients and to his neighbors, not able to say two sentences in French. And I will just refer to another tragedy that unfolded not that long ago in Tumble Ridge, British Columbia. And the words that were said in the House of Commons

and Black Quebeico leader, Yves Francois Blanchet, that I'd never heard speak English in the House of Commons, switching to English to talk about this tragedy out of respect for the people to whom it had been happening. I should mention just to add to your point about the captain of the aircraft for a the flight attendant I talked about was also a francophone or he is a francophone Sophie Trombly I believe it's her name who is it was a it was a Montreal outbound flight so obviously you would have staff and passengers yeah there were a lot of passengers

sorry. Exactly. Bruce, where are you on this? Well, I'm watching a lot of the commentary and discussion on social media, which isn't always a great illustration of the balance of public opinion. But the thing that I'm struck by first is that there are a lot of people who are saying, by talking about this question of how the President of Air Canada approached his public statement, we're losing sight of the most important issue,

which is this tragedy that happened. And I don't really, you know, personally I don't accept that. I think it's possible to be horrified by the tragedy, you know, worried about the people who remain injured and empathetic towards those who lost loved ones. But also to focus in on this question of what did this president of Air Canada do and why did he do it the way that he did. I think he made a terrible choice. I agree with Chantelle completely.

it was a choice. I've worked with a lot of companies and with CEOs of different companies in the past. They're usually surrounded by people whose job it is to make sure that they don't make the kind of choice that he made on that day. First of all, the choice to make a video is essentially a choice to say, I want to do something other than a written statement because I want to show a degree of empathy. I want to show respect. you don't have to do that. He could have put out a written statement in French and English, and I don't think that we would have heard people saying, where is the video?

So to make that choice, and for nobody in his entourage, I don't know if this is true. I suspect it's not to say, well, you're going to have to do it in French too or include a certain proportion of it in French. This is a company that is, Chantel said,

headquartered in Montreal. I worked on the privatization of your account. I remember, you know, we're all old enough to remember how qualified Canadians' opinions were about privatizing corporations like Air Canada. It was, will we keep some of the features of them that we think are important? And for Air Canada, that was clearly including that it was going to be a bilingual company, and it was going to remain headquartered in Montreal. all. I think a lot of people outside of Quebec, not everyone outside of Quebec, but many people outside of Quebec sometimes struggle to understand or have trouble believing that Quebecers

are really concerned about the protection of their language and the promotion of their language, but that doesn't make it any less true. It is a significant concern for the large majority of Francophone Quebecers. And so that whole series of decisions. that Michael Rousseau made were bad even if he wasn't married to a Francophone. His mother wasn't a Francophone. He hadn't lived in Montreal for 20 years. He hadn't taken 300 hours of French instruction. All of those things should have been in his mind as he thought about what he was going to do, not after there's a backlash. So he's definitely being taken to the woodshed and deservedly so. so and it remains to be seen how it's going to go i see some people criticizing the prime minister

for um for adding his voice to the chorus of criticisms but i think anybody who is in the role of prime minister of canada uh today in those circumstances would have had no choice but to take the same position i guess what i want to try and get at is was this simply a not simple's not the right word, but was this a communications problem or was it something more than that? It had to be a conscious decision. If you say, if you say, Bonjour and merci, somebody has alerted you to the fact that if there's no French in it, that's a problem.

And if that's the most that you can come up with, to Chantal's point, 300 hours of training, I've seen what 300 hours of training does to your golf game, and it improves it. Peter. That's a lot of training and he just appears not to his position I think and Chantelle alluded to it has been

a kind of an aggression towards the French language. That was his statement five years ago. I don't have to learn French. If you have that in your background how five years later do you put yourself in the same position?

It's just poor judgment and a decision. There is also there is something to be said about the culture that comes down from this headquarters when it comes to bilingualism year in and year out for decades. Air Canada has been the top topic of complaints

to the official language commissioner for a failure to offer proficient service as it is obligated to in French and English. Someone read off the radio journal read off the radio, a report that said, Erkanda systematically fails to provide the level of bilingual service that it's supposed to. And that report dated back to 1976.

So here we are, what, 50 years with the same issue. There is also, and those of us who are old enough to remember it, will remember this battle that took place in the 70s, over the use of French to communicate with control towers. It was called the slogan for it was, There's French in the air, which was apparently in Canada, not in Europe, consider this that if anyone spoke French,

a Francophone spoke to a French language air controller in Montreal, we would all die in an air crash because the language didn't jive with the color of the clouds or something. So we've moved. And remember Jean Marchand was the transportation minister back then and did whatever he had to do. So you're talking to many Canadians who live in Quebec, who have had experience in Air Canada,

and who have had bad experiences with language issues and with attitudinal issues. And then you watch this. He could have gone, if he was going to do a video, he could have done what ministers and MPs on Parliament he'll routinely do when they have a news conference and they don't speak the other language. They bring someone along to do the French. That's not an insult. It's just a fact.

I watched a conservative news conference yesterday where Pierre Polus, the Quebec lieutenant, was on hand to provide support in French. It was a very funny news conference because at some point one of the journalists asked him. It wasn't the topic, but asked him, how do you feel about the Air Canada controversy? And he looked and he said, do you want me to answer in English? But that is normal. That's what you do. There are vice presidents and others on the Air Canada staff at the higher levels who are Francophones, who could have doubled up with Mr. Rousseau to do this message if that was the point of the exit.

No one would have said, well, You know, the CEO speaks English only, and it takes a number two or number three to do the French. That's not what happens. But this was just a, eh, they can do it with subtitles. Then I'm with Bruce. If that's where you are going, maybe then just don't do it at all. And I know, Chantelle, you passed on the idea of taking this beyond this particular incident and trying to draw any conclusions about kind of what it says about where we are

on the nature of a country with two official languages and people in certain positions who are expected to be able to converse in both those languages. And I raised this, you know, in a way about myself. I mean, I retired 10 years ago from the CBC in what was the top, and as far as I was concerned, the top journalistic job in the corporation as chief correspondent. I couldn't speak French. And I see it as one of the great failures in my career.

I tried, obviously not hard enough. They sent me on one of those kind of 20-hour, as opposed to 300-hour, 20-hour Berlitz courses one summer, but it didn't improve my situation. And I saw that as a failure. I interviewed Quebec premiers and they were always understanding. And immediately, as soon as they saw me, would start speaking English, which I realized at the time and certainly since later how awkward that was.

But my question now as a result of witnessing what happened this week is, are we kind of backtracking at a certain level, for the ability to be able to converse in both official languages? I mean, official bilingualism was never meant for you personally to become bilingual. Of course, if you'd wanted to be Prime Minister, that would have been an issue because you're not going to get votes if you can't speak to people in the language that is their language on their way to voting.

But institutionally, I still think that we have, in many ways, moved forward. And I say that for having watched the past week in the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court dealt with the Quebec law on secularism and the notwithstanding clause, a big case. And for a long, long time, the Francophone lawyers would show up. in the Supreme Court and a number of the justices would have to use simultaneous translation. And if they had questions, they would be asking questions in English or francophones. That is not what I saw this week, where it moved relatively seamlessly from French to English,

depending on who was pleading, and with questions coming in French and English from both Francophone and Anglophone justices. So in some institutions, and I happen to believe that it does matter. We've all subjected ourselves to simultaneous translation. It is not the same as having someone here and understand what you are saying. This is not on the interpreters. It's just the fact of life that it doesn't come out the same way when you can understand it directly. There are still people out there who seem to believe that this is just some symbolic thing.

And I invite them to travel to Quebec outside Montreal and feel a bit of anguish at worrying that maybe they're not going to be able to get themselves understood, which will not happen. But they will probably realize that nobody is speaking English around them and nobody plans to speak English around them

in any way, shape or form. There is still this reflex, and it's also on francophones, that if there's one anglophone in the room struggling, nine francophones will speak English. And it has driven, you know, when you watch the national, you talk about all those interviews. If you're an English Canadian living far from Quebec and you're watching the national, and you see all these Quebec politicians, they're all speaking English fluently. You may be under the delusion that they are representative of all Quebecers.

And sometimes you're sitting on a plane and you're asked, do you want the, safety instructions in France or English if you're sitting next to an emergency exit. You can see people think, well, that person obviously speaks English. So why would someone bother to explain it in French? Same on via trains. But the reality is that you can't have it both ways. You can't have a country that claims to have two official languages that are, one of which is expendable.

And I don't think we've moved past that in many. areas of the country. You know, I remember once there was a First Minister's Conference in Ottawa in the old days when they used to do the big FMCs and the old train station there, the conference center.

And Premier Boasa was there and he was holding a scrum and there was all the Quebec media were there and a lot of the national media as well, but it was all en Francaise. And suddenly he saw me at the back of the crowds

of sort of standing there. He went, oh, Peter Mansbridge wants to ask a question, he said in English. It just really centered me out in the moment, right? But underlined how easy it was for him, but how difficult it was for me. Bruce, you know, Chantel's obviously absolutely fluent. Bruce is pretty fluent.

You know, he grew up in Quebec and was one of those people outside of Montreal, who Chantelle talks about, who grew up in that venue and learn French and still has a certain grasp of it now. Bruce, where are you on this? Well, first of all, Peter, I want to, you know, you said this is one of your great failures. I think it's maybe in the top ten. I don't, I think you're being a little too hard on yourself.

I've got a lot of failures. I'm saying, you know, it's up there, but it's not. one of the great. He seems to think there are 10. This is my... Only chance. That was the point, I know. It's in the top 10. Let's put it that way. I haven't made the list lately. I've been kind of keeping track of it over 20 years. And it's sort of moved down the list a little bit. Look, I think there's a number of things that occur to me that I don't really know if I'm

expert enough in the institutional, in the performance of institutions at respecting bilingualism. But I do think that we have been living in different solitudes for a long time around language and that the way in which we consume media exacerbates that problem. People outside of Quebec are less likely to be consuming news and information and exposure to the fact of the French language in Canada than would have been the case when I was growing up and there were three English TV channels and one French channel.

And you were very familiar with the fact that if you tuned into anything about national politics, it was going to be a pretty healthy dose of English and French as part of our political discussion. So I think those two solitudes have grown a little firmer, but not necessarily with more antipathy. We see the antipathy in social media commentary, but I don't see it in the public opinion.

I don't think that English Canadians outside of Quebec feel more aggressive towards francophones, and I think the reverse is also true. But I do think part of the reaction that we're seeing to Mr. Rousseau's statement is a little bit of this conversation that we've been having about political correctness. People felt like there was too much pressure or there was too much emphasis being applied to the way in which people conducted themselves publicly and expectations thereup.

I don't think this is that, but I think that is part of why the debate is as heated as it is, is that some people, and I want to just point the finger at Western Canada is in Ontario and presumably it's in Atlantic Canada as well, are kind of looking at this and saying, well, why is this really important? And I was thinking about, you know, if somehow Westjet, headquartered in Calgary, I believe, had hired a Francophone CEO. And something like this happened. And he put out a video only in French. And I know it's not the same because there's no legislative or regulatory requirement. But just from the standpoint of whether that would have shown appropriate respect for the situation and for the people affected by it or empathy, I think people would kind of go, well, no, that wouldn't make sense. Find a way to put out a statement in English.

So I don't, you know, the discussion about political correctness here is obscuring a basic fact. And Chantel laid those facts out right from the get-go. A lot of those employees in that company whose job it is, if they're running aircraft, is to make announcements in English and French all the time. A lot of employees who work in the headquarters are Francophones and they expect to be able to work in French, and that's the law of the province. And it's been working relatively well, it seems to me. And a lot of the passengers who would have been on that plane.

So, yeah, I don't think we're getting better at understanding these two linguistic solitudes. I don't think the antipathy level is growing. I think the social media conversations feels a little. bit exaggerated around this political correctness question. Okay. We're going to move on. We'll move on, though, in remembering, you know, those who were hurt and certainly those who lost their lives.

Those two pilots in my view, a little I know about aviation, were heroes. They had seconds at the most to decide how to handle the situation they were in, and they did, as other pilots have said at the time, including those who were in the immediate area at the time and witnessed what happened. They did all they could. They were heroes. Okay, we're going to take our break. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to Good Talk this Friday. Bruce Anderson, Chantelle-A-Barre, Peter Mansper, here with you. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, are on your favorite podcast. platform or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. You're welcome wherever you're linking to us. Good to have you with us. All right. In I guess about 48 hours or maybe less than that,

depending on what time you're listening to this or watching it, the NDP will have a leader, a new leader. And we'll move off into the sunset or the sunrise of this party's future with that. a new leader and I guess a new challenge in front of them. We have discussed this a number of times during the campaign. I'm not sure what more there is left to say in the hours before the party makes a decision. But if there are two people who I know will have something to say, it's used to. So let's hear on Bruce.

You can start on the NDP. Well, this is the first time that I can remember the NDP having a leader. change and a race where I literally didn't consume hardly any information about it because there was almost none to consume. The party has struggled to find a share of voice, in part because it struggled to define what it exists to do. And in the public opinion that I see, the public also wonders why they need an NDP. And by that I'll be precise that half of those people who voted NDP

last year, which was not a very big number. It was a pretty low watermark, are happy with the Carney government and would want to see the Carney government reelected if there was an election now. So the level of motivation among even last year's NDP voter is extremely low. And this is results that I gathered this week at the end of a leadership race, which is normally an exercise in drawing attention to a party, drawing attention to leading figures. They the spokespeople of the party are the the leader is going to be chosen from this group of people who presumably have been working to become known and become hurt over the last a while and they just haven't been able to succeed and I don't think that there is a sense of there are two or three

really good candidates in this field and they would take the party in this direction or that direction there's Avi Lewis and then there's others and I think that as a As an exercise and building interest in the NDP, it feels like a failure. And I don't hold any of those candidates responsible for it. It feels to me like you probably have to look at the performance of the last leader to say the party really kind of lost its bearings or lost its mojo or lost its connected tissue with Canadians. Chantal. Yeah, you want to document a failed. leadership campaign, the Angus Reid poll kind of told you part of the story this week.

They went back to people who had actually voted NDP in the last decade, which makes the pool a bit larger and founded 44% of them, didn't know any of the candidates who were running to lead the party, which is, you know, we all like a horse race usually in this country. And at the very least, we know who's running for one of the top jobs in Canadian politics. And a quarter of them believed that the NDP wasn't relevant. Now, having said that, I don't put it down completely at the door of the leadership candidates. For one, I'm curious to see if there will be a tribute to Jokhneed Singh at this convention, because he took a party that was in a fairly healthy position with representation in most areas of the country and brought it to its current predicament over the

course of multiple elections. And if that's not on the leader, who is it on. There are limits to saying he fought a good fight and brought us to the edge of a grave. And here we are standing. The other issue which is a problem for the NDP has been a problem for Pierre Puelle, is a problem for the Black Quebecois, is that our main political conversation does not leave a lot of room for third parties at this point. It's been a long time since there's been so little room for third and fourth voices. Why? Because our main conversation revolves around Trump, Canada, U.S., Iran. And this is a conversation where you look to the person who is prime minister and the person who could be prime minister. And no one seriously believes,

including those candidates who will find out their fates over the course of the weekend, that they are going to be the next prime minister, or prime minister ever, that. that's another issue. Does that mean that the NDP is dead? Well, you can't say that about a party that's basically the official opposition or the government in every province west of Ontario. Because if you said that, you could also say that about the federal liberals in west of Ontario. They don't have much of an existence provincially. But the onus is going to be on whoever is that next leader to work with these provincial governments that tend. for the most part, and that's not new.

It's always been the case to be more pragmatic than the federal NDP base. I remember, and he's not going to like me for signing that, but I feel I can do this this week as he is on the board of Air Canada. Gary Dewar used to be the Premier of Manitoba, and the NDP would have conventions. This is way back when, right? before he was an ambassador to the U.S., etc. And he would come and hang out with journalists

because he would rather be with us than with many of the members of the federal NDP who would take him to task for not being pure enough as a NDP premier and being too pragmatic. Well, the next leader is going to need support from David E.B. in B. and Naid Nenshi in Alberta and of course Web Cano in Manitoba

and they are not going to be sitting around saying, well for instance we are to be good new Democrats we should take our cue from Avi Lewis for instance and completely get out of all or LNG or oil and gas developments that's not going to happen. That's not the way it works they are in government

and the federal NDP leader is going to be the leader of what is it, the fourth, not official party in the House of Commons. So how that kind of comes together is going to be a real issue. But I do tend to believe that at some point Canadians will want to reconnect with a diversity of voice in the House of Commons and that the NDP has a voice that can matter in the future, but that future isn't tomorrow. You know, you mentioned Gary Dewar, and you mentioned kind of the provincial NDP governments, and their difference in the way they operate than the federal party.

You know, Gary Dewar had a balanced budget in Manitoba. So did Roy Romano in Saskatchewan, Alan Blakeney in Saskatchewan. Howard Pauley in Manitoba, all very different than what has, what is put forward by modern-day New Democrats on the federal scene. And what did they do? The federal leader who promised balanced budget, that would be Thomas Monkier. They fired him. Right. You know, the other thing that occurs to me, Peter, and I was thinking about the election of Zoranamami as mayor,

of New York, which I certainly, and I think a lot of other people looked at and said, you know what, there is quite an appetite for some radical solutions to some persistent problems, food, insecurity or affordability, shelter affordability being really prominent among those. And those were really important features of what led him to a surprise victory in the city that has more millionaires and billionaires than any other city in the world. He ran a campaign that said they're going to have to pay more of the share of the cost of this city than they have in the past. A certain amount of that public opinion does exist in Canada, and that would naturally be an important breeding ground for the NDP.

The difference, I think, between that kind of opinion in the United States sometimes and in Canada, is that people might like a radical idea here, but they'll generally want it to be implemented by a pragmatist. and the NDP version of how do you take a radical idea and make it sound like it's something that could be done was the gift that people like Ed Broadbant had, I think, back in the day. And Jad Miet Singh didn't have the ability to connect with people like that. I don't think Avi Lewis has it.

I think he has the opposite version. In other words, he might put a radical idea on the table and people will say, well, if we did like that idea, we'd want somebody with a more pragmatic lens to figure out how to do it in Canada because at the end of the day, that is our political culture most of the time is that we don't run with scissors. We like to identify what it is that we want to do, push ourselves into some areas of discomfort sometime, but not to the point where we feel like we're putting a lot at risk all the time.

That's not how our democracy has functioned. So I don't think the NDP has figured out what to do with that phenomena where there is an appetite for the radical idea on some issues and how to speak to it in a way that draws attention and some sympathetic votes. You know, Chantel mentioned a point a few minutes ago about the leader who's being displaced or has stepped down or has been thrown out and wondering what kind of a reception,

Jugmeet Singh will have at this convention, if at all, whether there'll be a few minutes put aside to remember his leadership, or talk in nice terms about his leadership. When you come to think of it, that's kind of a passing fad in Canadian politics. I mean, I can't remember the last time there was a really truly felt, we're going to miss you moment. Well, truly felt when that happened, maybe not even Pierre Trudeau in 84, I'm sure you were there. Yeah.

I was too. there was a lot of crocodile tears as he made a well speech same for cratian you know the room full of people holding dives in their hands you know i mean it's uh what did harper get i mean the problem is they've had so many leadership conventions and these guys just sort of pass through the turnstiles fairly quickly since then. The night of the election, I don't remember what kind of a send-off

he got. I think it was, I mean, the anniversary thing, that was a couple of months ago or weeks ago, was very heartwarming, I think. Well, time helps. Time helps. That's absolutely true. But I remember on election night,

you know, Harper just vacated the building. He did kind of a David camera, and I'm closing the door and he walked out the back door of the parliament buildings, as I recall, and was it heard from for quite some time after that? Am I right about that? Chantelle, do you remember that? No, I do think you're right.

But the difference between Mr. Harper and many leaders who lose elections is he actually stayed on as MP 401. So he would be using the back door of parliament quite a bit because he was not the interim leader of the party that was in the process of replacing him. I'm not sure, but I think I heard something like 10 months before he eventually left, and there was a by-election. But what's going to be interesting, so let me gain the possibility that Avi Lewis wins. It's fascinating to watch all these candidates, but one, Heather McPherson, who is an MP, say, well, I won't be in a hurry to enter the House of Commons. Come on, people, you are running to not run a pub. You're running to run a party whose existence is based on coming to parliament to hold the government accountable and to put your ideas forward.

Otherwise, just stick with some lobby group. There are many on the left that will be happy to have you. But there will be a by-election in the Toronto area and Beaches East York, sometimes between now and next fall. Why do I say that? Because Natorskin Smith, who is the current Liberal MP, as announced that he will be running in a provincial by-election in Scarborough when that by-election is called. I checked this week, and it seems that Premier Ford has to call the by-election by early August for a vote at the latest in early September. Now, Beaches East York, as opposed to other writings in the country, is a writing where there is some ground, some fertile ground. for the NDP, enough so that the Main Street poll found last week that if Avi Lewis was on the ballot, he would actually start with an edge in a by-election campaign. Now, that's absent knowing who the liberal

candidate would be. But I find it very hard to believe that if the NDP picks Abby Lewis and that writing is open, that he can afford to say, I'm not interested in running for Parliament. My work is on the ground to reorganize the party. And if that were the case, It would condemn the NDP to relative obscurity for even longer than it currently is. That writing has a history of NDP voting, right? Wasn't that Bob Ray's writing when he was Premier or? No, I... Or was that his federal writing?

Yeah, I looked at the history of the writing and it is mostly elected liberals, except in the orange wave, but it is an area of Toronto that should be winnable for the NDP with a name candidate. There are writings in Toronto, Edelinton Lawrence, for instance, or, you know, St. Paul's next door.

Those are not neighborhoods where people routinely vote for the NDP. But beaches would bind, High Park, Trinity, they may have changed names over the years were writings. We're in town. Yeah.

Yeah. So there are, right? And beaches would be on that list of it's doable. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not, you know, if you're going to look at what's going to be opening up over the next year, that one is probably the most user-friendly. It would be ironic, though, that to have, you know, Jack Meets saying it was an MPP from Ontario at Queen Spark when he became leader. And he moved to BC to get elected. And now Avi Lewis, who is based in BC would be making the move back. But the MVP really, really needs to get itself back on the map of Ontario if it's going to be a serious contender for official party status. That's 12 MPs. It's a modest goal in the House of Commons. The Erskine Smith departure, that must put the liberal dreams of a majority with the other by-elections in some question.

Yes, because, but that just goes to show why it's not wise to play the numbers game and say, oh, they're a majority by one seat. Oh, they're not anymore. At some point, a majority needs a bit more padding, I think, than a one seat thing. Yeah, I mean, I think that for me, the question about by-elections is it's tempting to always look at them as the moment where people get to send a signal to the federal government, the incumbents, that they're unhappy. And I'm sure that day will come for this government as it has for every other government before. But there is no sign of it now, the absence of a sign. And in fact, if anything, you would expect turnouts to

be low because people don't have a, let's throw the bombs out. And, you know, I was looking at the numbers among BQ voters, current BQ voters in Quebec on this question of, would you rather, if you had a choice between a Carney government and a Poliyev government, it's 70% among those BQ voters. That is not a signal of people saying, let's all call our friends and neighbors who live in Terban and make sure that they go out and send a message against the Carney government. So as I say, I think that time comes for every government, but I don't see it now,

and I don't imagine it will happen in that period of time that we're talking about for the beaches by election. But three questions, going back to Therbon. First, Therban is not going to be about having Plyar Puehliv as Prime Minister, which kind of makes you freer to decide that if you're a black voter, you want to vote for the block. Second question, how much baggage from the Parti-Chequevique's commitment to a referendum is Yves François Blanchet, the block leader carrying.

And will that matter? The two of them have campaigned together in Therbonne. I'll be curious to see if they do so again when the vote the date becomes closer. It's April 13. But that issue is somewhere in there. And the final question, which I think will be a question for Beechers' voters when that time comes to, is... And the opposition parties rightly should. campaign on that, the third parties,

do you really think that you want to give Mark Carney a majority or give him more control? Are you convinced that's where you want to go given that you resisted that appeal last year when you didn't want Pierre Pueleve and it really mattered?

And I'm curious to see what the answer will be in both of those writing. Okay, we've got to take our final break when we come back. It's there, what's on your mind moment and you'll only have a moment to answer that. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the

final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantelle, Bruce, Peter, all here for you. Reminder that the buzz is available in your inbox. Tomorrow morning 7 a.m. Eastern Time. You have to subscribe. It doesn't cost anything. National newsletter.

Dot com slash newsletter is where you subscribe. Okay. Are what's your mind segment as we close out this week. The last good talk for March and the last one for a couple of weeks for Chantelle, who's off on another one of her guided tours of the world somewhere.

Guided by me in this case. That's right. Bruce, what's on your mind? You know, I long for a day when what's on my mind isn't how Donald Trump is destroying a world stability and harming the world economy and threatening world peace. But that is on my mind right now. I keep reading about the incoming price shock on everything because of the disruption. And then I watched yesterday as he was in the Oval Office talking about the pens that he loves and announcing that his signature was now going to be on money and

thinking, you know, I'm so glad to live in Canada because the degree of outrage about this kind of behavior by the leader of the country would be so far off the charts. And you could make the case that we don't have the institutional mechanisms of impeachment or whatever, but it wouldn't be possible to be so bad and so deliberately disruptive and put so much at risk and still to have massive support within his congressional caucus and with his, his partner. party more broadly. So that and the economic aspect of his adventure in Iran is very much on my mind this week. That moment on the on the Sharpies yesterday in the middle of the discussion about the

impact on everything from food prices to oil to the TSA situation in airports across the country and for him to go on and on about how the head of Sharpies had made a special pen for him was unbelievable. His party gave him an award. Definitely. An America first award. I mean, people will not hear what I have to say because they will turn off the show for having been reminded of those key moments in the week. Boy, they don't say enough, I can't do this anymore, which is where I am out. I watched the Supreme Court all week.

That's the nerdy in me that's coming out and the challenge to Bill 21 and the use of the notwithstanding clause. And for those who didn't watch, it was fascinating. If you're tempted to have black and white opinions on any of those issues on what the court should do or shouldn't do,

it was really worth watching because it illustrated how how complicated and how much it's going to be hard for the court to figure out where balance is on these issues. It was not a trial of the law on secularism in Quebec. Yes, that was part and parcel of the deliberations. And there were lawyers arguing for and against the Quebec government lawyer. But the real issue was the notwithstanding clause. I watched

Guy Pratt, who was the lawyer for the federal government, give his arguments. And I'm not sure that he ever mentioned secularism over the course of the time that he spent speaking to the bench. But the number of provinces, and you have to know that in the Supreme Court, and that's good news for journalists, especially those

like me with short attention spans, there is a limited time afforded to interveners, as there is for me, I can see on your face. And five provinces intervene. So three of them in support of Czech, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and what's the third one, Ontario, we've all used the laws to subtract or laws from the application of the charter. The two NDP provinces, BC and Manitoba,

had another take, and I was really intrigued by something that came from the Manitoba presentation, i.e., Manitoba is not saying you shouldn't use the clause, but it is giving itself a law that says, if you do use it, you should refer the law that you should refer the law that you're are protecting to your higher court for answers as to its perils or its advantages within a few weeks or months of having used a clause to make sure its charter protected. Good to know. You travel safe, Chantal. I will try. It's hard in this world to know where safe is anymore. Exactly. And you have a good weekend. Bruce. We'll join forces again. in another week. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening to all of you. Take care.