The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- What Should Conservatives Learn From How The Republicans Messed Up Midterms?

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

It wasn't what Donald Trump and his band of deniers expected and they are still trying to figure out what happened.  Bruce and Chantal have their thoughts on what those US midterm results should mean to Canadian Conservatives. Plus whither Canada-China relations?

Are you ready for good talk? And of course you're ready for good talk. I'm Peter Mansbridge, Sean Talley-Bear, Bruce Anderson both with me and we've got a kind of a packed agenda here. We've got a lot of different topics we want to get at in the next hour, so let's get started. We'll get started on the big story, which was south of the border this week, the midterm U.S. elections, and what impact, if at all, it has on Canada and the way this country operates, the way some of this country's political leaders operate.

The assumption going into the midterms, as you all know, because history has kind of dictated this almost every time, that the party out of power would do best in the midterms, and the party in power would lose. Well, to some degree that happened, but nowhere near the degree that it was expected to happen. It looks like at this moment that the Republicans will regain the House of Representatives by a couple of seats, and it looks like at this moment, although it could change because there were a couple of runoff elections, that the Democrats should hold on to the Senate. But once again, the underlying factor is that there was not a huge shift. At one point, they were talking of more than 60 seats changing in the House of Representatives going to the Republicans.

That didn't happen. It didn't even come close. And the finger-pointing is going on, and most of the fingers are pointed at, you guessed it, Donald Trump. Even though he wasn't on the ticket, he wasn't running, but he had endorsed a number of candidates, many of whom lost. So let's bring it back to the message here for Canada. Was there a message for Canada? Does it make any difference for Canada, this new alignment that looks like it's shaping up in the U.S.? Does it make any difference on the political front

in terms of the future for certain politicians in this country who may have hooked their wagon to some of the things that were being said by the Republicans? You know what I'm suggesting there. So let's see. Chantal, why don't you start? Okay, well, in the general political sense, probably good news for Canadaada in a sense that canada and the u.s at this point are aligned uh more or less on climate change and on ukraine

and uh a stay the course prospect is probably uh the best thing that the Trudeau government could hope for. I think there were lots. And on the partisan side, I think there were more messages, lessons, ominous messages possibly for Pierre Poilievre and for Justin Trudeau. When an unpopular incumbent holds his own in a time of economic turmoil, it's always reassuring for the incumbent who is eventually going to be running for re-election in this country. But I think the first, there are many lessons, but I think the first lesson is Pierre Poitier has tried to make the economy, the economy, the economy his only message to just about the exclusion of any other topic, thinking that he would get to victory in 24 Sussexes via

the pocketbooks of Canadians. Well, set aside the fact that if the economy takes a turn for the better in a year and the election doesn't come for a year and a half, then everything that is Justin Trudeau's fault today will be something that he has magically fixed tomorrow. But it was Dan Robertson who ran Erin O'Toole's campaign who said quite rightly that what this shows is that conservatives can't win just on the economy and on pocketbooks because people, voters, vote also for values. And they will not, and he felt as a conservative, that what the midterm showed is that people will not set aside or become blind to values just because they have pocketbook issues. And that should be a warning to Pierre Poiliev and his team. Among many other things that happened that kind of say you want to associate

with people that most people feel are off the political grid, you may be losing votes as you gain votes in the fringes. Bruce. Yeah, that's really interesting. I agree with a lot of Chantal's points, more than the usual 85%. Bruce. election outcomes based on polls, which are softer and a little bit more fluctuating in some respects, a little bit more stable in other times, because people are paying more or less attention. And because at the end of the day, you don't know who's going to turn out to vote. All of the turnout models that have been used have sometimes worked, sometimes been off. And

this time, they were a little bit off, I think think because there was a uh it's hard for the modelers of turnout to anticipate how many young people are going to turn out to vote how many women are going to turn out to vote mobilized by the abortion decision that was made by the supreme court so i'm watching the u.s media to talk about the outcome of the election and there is a lot well, it's usually not a media organization criticizing itself, but criticizing other media organizations for having had this conventional wisdom that the Republicans were going to have this red tide, which they didn't in the end. Second thing is young people. Is it written in stone that young people will always vote in lower numbers than older people? We had an election in 2015 which said, no, it's not written in stone here. I think that the data that I'm seeing now suggests a fair number of young people turned out, maybe an unexpectedly high number of young people turned out, maybe an unexpectedly high number of young people turned out. If so, that's great. But it also, it's great for democracy, but it also

rewrites some of the thinking on the part of campaigners in the next round of elections about what it is that's possible to do in terms of inspiring young people with a message and a set of policy ideas. The third was the whole question of abortion. And I think there is a message for Canadian conservative politicians in this, which is that there's always this tension we know in the conservative caucus between a whole lot of MPs who would rather if they could, if the leadership would allow them to be more pro-life, more actively pro-life. The leadership of the party has pretty consistently said, we're not going to go there because we see the ceiling in terms of how many votes we can accumulate. And of course,

those who defend the Conservative Party on this issue are very fond of saying, well, you can't judge them as being a pro-life party because they never do anything with that instinct. But I think that there's now maybe going to be a little bit of a different debate about what the risks are politically. And maybe it will equip the leadership that really doesn't want to go in that direction with some data. But the last and the biggest impact, I think, is I believe that the election in the U.S. ended up becoming not a question about are you happy with the status quo or do you want change,

which is normally what fuels the out-of-office party, but it became a question of how crazy are the Republican candidates going to be? Is that a race to some sort of finish line that so excites the far reaches of the base, but so alienates a lot of other people that they don't know where it's going to end? And in the 24, 48 hours since then, you can see a whole lot of people in the U.S. Republican Party grabbing onto the opportunity to say, we don't want any more Trumpism. We want to get away from this election denialism. We want to move in a different direction. We want to be back a little closer to the mainstream.

I don't want to overstate how durable that is. But Trump had a terrible day yesterday and Trumpism had a terrible week this week. And that might mean that for the Conservative Party in Canadaer who's a pro-convoy person. These reverberations can't be ignored by them, and I'm sure they're not ignoring them. I'm sure they're thinking this through and wondering, has the tide and the temperature maybe turned a little bit? Sorry for how long that was. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't.

But on abortion, I've long talked that Roe v. Wade and what happened to it has made abortion an even more sensitive issue and an even more risky issue for the conservatives. campaign and to appoint Erin O'Toole's campaign. And it will again, because ambiguity on this issue is not something that many female voters will not put up with. The notion that there is a strong contingent, most of whom supported Pierre Poiliev for the leadership, who are identified with the pro-life movement, who are certified by the anti-abortion lobby as good people to elect for our cause, that is something that will continue to haunt the conservatives going forward. It's impossible that it will go away because, and there were those who said, well, Joe Biden and the Democrats playing the abortion card so hard is a risky proposition. Actually, it turned out to be a winning proposition and not a risky proposition.

And there is a clear message there. that a future federal government wants to play in that movie or could play in that movie than the debate in the U.S. has demonstrated in the case of American women. To go back to the kinds of people you hang around with, yes, if you're going to hire a director of communications for your party that is unambiguously pro-convoy, who is happy to go around and say, wasn't it great that they hung for eight hours after being asked to cease and desist?

You are sending a clear message that that's the kind of people and the kind of stance you're comfortable with. And voters look at that and they say, gee, you know, this is someone who's friends with the premier, allied with the premier in Alberta, who wants to take her directions on how to run health care in the province from anti-vax medical fringe establishments and who is also friends with a premier in Ontario would do away with labor rights and pile it up and it adds up to not a pretty picture. Bruce says the other thing sorry go ahead now Bruce says they're paying attention I'm not sure they're paying attention I'm convinced there's a number of them who are saying these are just the usual gatekeeping pundits who are saying all this because the capacity for a party,

liberal, conservative NDP, to deny reality and to live in an echo chamber is really high. And I find that Pierre Poiliev, since he became leader, has been living in an echo chamber. Okay, Bruce, briefly. Yeah, the one other thing I was going to note that has to do with this director of communications, which I think will come back. Can we just name her? What is it? Sarah Fischer?

Sarah Fischer, I believe. Yeah. And I don't know the woman. I don't have anything personal to say about her or anything like that. But I did notice this story in Press Progress about a blog post that she put out some months ago about globalists and the World Economic Forum. And the language that's used to make that argument is certainly seen by significant numbers of people as, I don't know if you'd say bordering on, well, it's very troublesome language uh let me put it that way it's troublesome if you're trying to keep the uh the tent that you've got intact in terms of uh support and it sounds a bit conspiratorial well it sounds more than a bit conspiratorial. And I'm surprised, given, you know, maybe Chantal's right,

maybe I'm giving them too much credit, that they're paying attention and trying to avoid making mistakes. But this one looks to me like it could end in tears, because the positions are so obvious and so high profile and so associated with this more radicalized version of what conservative means that the world is the is awash in conspiracies to deny uh regular people the things that they want whatever those those may be uh so i i've been struck by that but on on the whole i've kind of felt that paliev was doing himself some favors by staying out of the limelight and kind of avoiding contact with the media. I don't endorse it as a kind of a strategy for democracy, but I think it might have been helpful for him so far.

But we'll see how that continues. Well, he broke out of some of that this week and in the last week, talking a couple of times to the media in general and one specific in a in an interview but let let me just pick up on a couple of points that you both mentioned in your uh your opening remarks first of all um from bruce on the you know on the desire the wish or the hope or or perhaps even the thought that the uh republicans in the united States are going to move on from their, you know, past five years. I would like to believe that as well, but I won't believe it until I see somebody of some significance from that party actually stand up and say it.

You know, whether it's a Mitch McConnell or a Ted Cruz or a Marco Rubio or a Mike Pence or a Ron DeSantis actually say it's time to turn the page and move on from the Trump years and the Trump stuff. And, you know, whether it's social media or conspiracy theories or whatever it is, until I actually hear somebody say that, which I haven't yet in the opening hours since the midterms uh of any significance say that you wonder whether that in fact will happen now sometimes these things take time but there's also no time like the present to strike a new chord and because the other guy uh seems in a bit of a shambles right now every report we get from from, from a Trump land is that he's, you know, throwing things at the wall again.

Um, so we'll see how that, how that plays out. The other point you, you talked about was, uh, was polling and, you know,

there's, there's no doubt that there'd been a lot of criticism. Um, and I think probably unduly, uh, because from what I've seen of the looking back at the at the past four weeks of polling data and you know lumping them all together and it's going to averaging out it's kind of close to what happened kind of more or less within the margin of error

now the was the commentary in the margin of error? I don't think so. I mean, there was a lot of commentary on all the networks, not just Fox, but on all of them, suggesting in those last few weeks that this was going to be a blowout for the Republicans. That didn't happen. So it's been interesting the way that's seen. You warned us last week or two weeks ago, Bruce,

that the youth vote could make a real difference, and it appears that, in fact, it did. And the last thought I'll give, and I appreciate the time you two are letting me have to ramble. Well, you're almost done here. I am almost done. But it's a point, it's one of the statements you made, Chantel. It was a term we have not heard in Canadian politics in seven years

when you said Polyevs wished to get to 24 Sussex Drive. And 24 Sussex Drive. But maybe he wants to live there. You never know. It's a metaphorical one. He better get a tent to do that because, as we all know, it hasn't been used in seven or eight years now. I can remember the day that Justin Trudeau was sworn in.

I was doing a documentary on his first day in office and so spent a lot of time with him, including the drive from the Parliament buildings to Rideau Hall, where we stopped in the driveway of 24 Sussex because he wanted to walk across into Rideau Hall. And as we pulled into that driveway, I looked at him and I said, are you looking forward to getting back here at some point? He looked at me and he said, I don't think I'll ever live here again. And so far, he's right.

It's just sitting there because nobody wants to cough up, well, I'm sure lots of people could cough up the money, but nobody wants to be associated with having to spend tens of millions of dollars on probably fixing that place up. I believe, frankly, that Justin Trudeau does not want to live there. It's not just a money issue or wearing the cost. It's that he is not going to be raising his kids there. Never going to happen.

He never wanted it to happen, and he had a really good excuse. And I'm not saying that as criticism, but I think there is that more so than any of the let's not renovate, let's not fix the official residence. I just want to say something about the commentary and the many of those who made the commentary but as you were talking I was reminded of an instance in this country 1995 and the Quebec referendum where the the no side the federalist side over the last week of that campaign really wanted the commentary to say that sovereignty was going to win. And why did they really want that? Because they rightly assumed that the more you said it was real, the more people would think again, as they did.

I remember strategists from the No Committee insisting that the media was cheating by not publishing poll numbers that showed that the yes was well ahead. So all that commentary probably makes the commentary industry look bad, but it has, I believe, achieved the purpose, and that is drive up turnout for the Democrats and possibly drive down turnout for the Republicans on the assumption that they didn't need the vote. Right. What's your take on that, Bruce, the sort of commentary versus polls? Yeah, I think in this case, the commentary sort of drove a little bit of the polling, the way the polling was interpreted a bit. You know, it felt to me like a lot of commentators had been so bruised by underestimating the importance of Trump and Trumpism for so many years now that the last thing they wanted to do was to make that mistake again. And it became easier to just gravitate towards this soft Biden's not, you

know, his numbers are bad, the economy's bad, he's going to do badly. The out party always does badly, but he's so old and he's so uninspiring and the economy and the economy and the economy. And I felt like as people were describing the polling, you know, there's a range of pollsters out there and some of them are more Democratic leaning and some of them more Republican leaning and then some of them are right down the middle, but all of them get kind of bunched together. And the narrative that people were stringing a little bit, at least in the commentary I saw was, well, the Democrats were looking good a few months ago, but more recently, the Republicans have been on the rise. I don't think it was there if you really looked hard at the motivation factor, obviously for younger people

and for women. But I also don't think that anybody was really measuring how fed up people were getting independent voters with Trumpism. And with the furthest reaches of it, this competition of the Boebert's and the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and the Ted Cruz's and the Ron DeSantis's and the Donald Trump's and the Donald Trumpie Taylor Greene's, and the Ted Cruz's, and the Ron DeSantis's, and the Donald Trump's, and the Donald Trump Jr.'s. The list goes on and on. These were the major figures that people were exposed to as the voices of the Republican establishment for the last year. And it made for great, explosive, dynamic coverage. It was catnip and clicknip, if that's a word. But a lot of people would have in the middle said, this party is about itself. It's not really about us anymore.

And this kind of cult of who's the new Trump? Is the old Trump still the best Trump? That was a discussion about the Republican dynamic internally. And I think it's sort of either bored or it turned off and pushed away a bunch of voters. And nobody that I saw was really measuring that effect. Okay. We're going to pause here. Take a quick break.

I think that means you both agree. So that's great. Good. You ran the clock. Yeah. So that's great. Oh, God, you ran the clock. Yeah, we think that you ran the clock, but you managed to change your position more in line with ours. And, yeah, absolutely. That's what I did, Tom.

No dummy here. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk China. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or because it's Friday, like Wednesday, you also have the option of the video podcast, the video, the makings of the

bridge, the makings of good talk. It's all available for you right there on my YouTube channel. So if you go to my, uh, IO on Twitter or Instagram up there in the corner, um, you can just click on that and you can subscribe, cost nothing, and you'll get it automatically every time we do a video. Okay, next topic. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson with us, as always. When it was 1970 that Pierre Trudeau,

the government of that day, recognized the People's Republic of China. And it was one of the first nations in the West to do so. A couple of years later, I think it was 73, Trudeau went to China, one of the first Western leaders to do so, which launched a whole era of China-Canada relationship, especially on the trade front. In those days, we were the big beneficiary of the trade balance between the two countries. They were buying a lot of our stuff.

We weren't buying much of anything from them. That gradually changed over time. We all remember the Jean Chrétien running up the Great Wall of China. And if you've ever done that, you'll know that it's very hard. It's hard enough to walk up some stretches of the Great Wall of China, but Chrétien kind of ran up and he was bicycling around Beijing and he had in tow with him a lot of Canadian business leaders, and he initiated quite the trade arrangement with China and Canada. That has continued on to some degree over time, never to quite that degree,

but some things have changed, clearly. CSIS has been overly concerned, not overly, but has been concerned about the relationship between China and Canada, especially when it came to China getting its kind of influence into Canadian politics, and sometimes very directly with particular MPs, and apparently also in the election campaigns. All of this to the point where the opposition, for some time, has been really pushing the government to do something about the China relationship. To the point where this past week, Melanie Jolie,

the Minister of, I still call it, Foreign Affairs, but Melanie Jolie is warning Canadian firms of risks of business with China. She's put out a new policy. It's on Indo-Pacific relations. So it's more than just China, but the headlines seem to have been pulled out of this that it's clearly a lot about China. So where are we at in this relationship? How significant is what's going on?

And there's some hints that there's some tension within cabinet over some of this stuff. And what do we know, if anything, about that? Who would like to start us off on the question of China? Chantal. I've been watching all this for a number of years, and in particular over the Chrétien era. I also spent quite a bit of time in Asia over the years.

So I think the first thing we, or the first takeaway I would take from what you said about Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, is that at this juncture, we now know that one of the rationales that were offered for embracing and engaging with China economically, beyond the fact that there was profit to be made, was that as China's economic performance improved, so would its affection for democracy and democratic values and respect for human rights. And that is not at all what has happened. That has been demonstrated to be a total fallacy. It is possible to run a prosperous economic superpower without having any respect for human rights or for democracy and casting itself and it as a virtue, which is basically where we are today. Now, the warnings about Chinese interference in the democratic system of this country date back to the Harper era. They're not recent.

This has been a simmering issue that cabinet and prime ministers have been briefed on for a long time. But the business lobby, in particular in this country, had as a mantra, you must engage with China. Our economy now depends on it. And the other fallacy, partly fallacy, was that the U.S. was going to be in permanent decline economically, and we needed to hitch our wagons or diversify. We hitched our wagons quickly, and it was impossible to bypass China. The tensions in cabinet have more to do with some ministers wanting to go even further in decoupling Canada's economy from China than the actual statement put forward by Mélanie Joly. And that means there has been a complete reversal

on the part of this government from how they saw the file, and the prime minister in particular, to where we are today. When Justin Trudeau came, he was all about engaging and promoting more ties with China. I think in part because of the fact that his father walked there before him. And I'm not even saying that as a criticism, but I think he was seeing China with the lenses that were already outdated when he came into office. And it took the two Michaels to kind of send the message that this was unsustainable and it absolutely had to

change. Now, what that means for China is they've basically turned Canada's most China-friendly governing party into a party that now shares the same suspicions to almost the same degree as the Conservatives. There will not be a reversal on that in government. They have also, over China, over the past decade, managed to turn Canadian public opinion against any rapprochement or even any maintenance of many of our links to China. And I don't want to be pessimistic, but when I look at what's happening, when I look at this policy statement, but also what's happening around the globe,

I think to myself, we are bracing for a war in that region, where we will end up having to take a side and that side is going to be the side of taiwan and they're the economic shocks from that we will endure one way or another so better start preparing for them even if it's late in the game bruce well um i'm glad that chantal didn't want to be pessimistic uh but i'm gonna pick up the conversation and sidestep the war in Taiwan, because I think everything that Chantal said is absolutely accurate. I think that the hopefulness that we had about a bigger China could be better for everybody in the world. And that by getting bigger and more prosperous, China would embrace more Western,

not necessarily values, but kind of operating ideas in terms of how their economy would work and how their diplomacy would work. And we've seen exactly the opposite, that bigger is definitely not better in terms of China's impact and role with the rest of the world, rather than westernizing in ways that might make it easier for us to deepen cooperation and deepen trade. What we've seen is that China has emerged as intent on disrupting Western democracies. It has far more tools and resources at its disposal than Russia does. And that the combined impact of these two nations is really worrying. So I felt like the speech that Ms. Jolie laid out was important.

I thought it was useful that what she tried to do in that speech and often gets kind of left aside in politics is people sort of talk at the expert level. They don't really explain what's going on and what the rationale is and what the thought processes are as policy is being developed. And I thought that there was a good amount of that and more is always better because we need to build up Canadian public knowledge of what's going on here because those kind of institutional memories are, are short, and they're not generally being renewed in terms of the way that people consume news now. So good that she talked and explained the context. Also good that she talked about the economic issues and implicitly, or explicitly acknowledged that there's a tension between wanting to do business

with China and being clear-eyed about the risks. I think that's the language that she used. I think that was well chosen language. I think she said, it's not our intent to tell businesses not to do business with China. It is our role to tell them what to be aware of, what to be careful about, and to recognize that that relationship isn't necessarily going to be stable. And the last point about her speech that I liked is that our politics tends to want to get really shouty about China, as opposed to kind of deliberate, what can we actually do, especially since the US is a bit of a question mark in terms of the role that it's going to play. Less so with Biden,

but who knows with DeSantis or if Trump comes back. Trump this week was saying, I like President Xi. I call him king. He's a great guy, a great friend of mine. He's going to be president for life. This is not what we expect or have ever been able to see coming out of leading politicians in the United States. So that's a measure of uncertainty. So within that context, what Canada can say that doesn't sound like we're shaking our fist at the moon to no particular effect is a bit of a challenge. I thought some of the language there was well put, that we will cooperate with China when we must, and we will challenge China when we ought to. And a lot of that obviously has to do with working with allies in that respect, and I thought that was good, too. I, too, like what Chantal said about what was really behind so much of that opening up in the 1970s, it wasn't just about trade. It was about trying to show the Chinese the way to a better economy

and therefore hoping that that would lead to more freedoms and more democracy within China. That was the great dream always of Deng Xiaoping when he finally, that was the great dream that many had of Deng Xiaoping when he finally achieved power after his various re-education periods under Mao Zedong.

But when you get through to June of 1989 when Deng was still around and we saw what democracy meant for the Chinese then with the slaughter in Tiananmen Square. And then, you know, it really was, as Chantel points out, it was only a couple of years later that they had Great China running up and down the Great Wall of China as if nothing had happened in Tiananmen Square. And we watched China explode with new economic power,

but freedoms weren't there. And the continuing discussion about Taiwan, which continues to this day to the point where, you know, it's not just Chantel who's saying this, but many of the great defense experts around the world really feel that more than anywhere, that could be the place where the next, you know, world conflict begins as a result of Taiwan.

So you wonder when they're kind of going to get it. You know, it's right, too, that CSIS was warning Harper. It was a little different than the today one. Today it's about they were interfering with the election process. Those days, I remember because I was involved in doing that story, it was more about did they have in their pocket some Canadian politicians. And so that was kind of a different angle. But nevertheless, the curve has never slighted from this fact that China, China bad, you know, Canada good, and this isn't working out.

So it's interesting to see how this is playing, how much of this is because the government of today has come around to this position or because they feel pressured by the conservatives who have never let go of the China angle in these last couple of years, and Polyev especially has been hard on it. After 1989, what you described as a hope turned into a convenient rationale, a spin line to justify continuing along the same track for economic benefits. Basically, that is what it is. The Chinese government never sent Canada signals that the take on the human rights democratic evolution is happening. There were never any signals along those lines. It was always the opposite.

It's a case of going somewhere with eyes wide shut, literally. And, of course, we have been on over those Team Canada missions and going forward. Now, it's easy these days to say that everything that the government of Canada does is in reaction to the Conservatives. But I do believe that what happened this week

was driven by the two Michaels, more so than by Pierre Poiliev's advent. And by the way, I do find that on foreign affairs, I'm still waiting to hear anything from Pierre Poiliev that would amount to a prime minister-in-waiting's foreign policy speech. He's been very, very silent on everything from Russia and Ukraine to China. But what is certainly noteworthy is that this speech, again, like Chrystia Freeland's speech in Washington earlier in the fall,

would never have been speeches that were given by top, high-profile Canadian ministers of Justin Trudeau even five years ago. And that tells you how fast time has finally caught up with the government. I wanted to add, Peter, that Chantal made a point about public opinion towards China. And you talked about whether the liberals were reacting to the conservatives. My experience with the public opinion about China, the Canadian public opinion, is that people were never super enthused about the idea of free trade with China as one kind of surrogate for how close should the relationship be, but they were open to the idea. They're a little bit more close to the idea now. But the reason I put it that way is I don't think

there's any real public opinion developing on this that would make the liberals wary about the conservatives gaining some big advantage on it. So I don't think the calculus was really, you know, the conservatives are kind of winning votes from us by being more full throated in their criticism of China. I think the conservatives have tended to think that there are Chinese Canadian communities that they are successful with, with the position that they've taken. And I don't really have enough evidence to come to a conclusion about the reliability of that hypothesis or not. But I do think that Chantal's point about Pierre Polyev makes me kind of think about the fact that he so far seems to be betting heavily that frustration and fed-up-edness with Trudeau

and inflation are all that he will need, in addition to what he's already got by co-opting the people's party vote and he may be right about that but if inflation sort of starts to go away if the deficit sort of starts to go away as a trenchant criticism of trudeau and that's partly how the the liberals kind of present themselves from a fiscal standpoint, not necessarily the hard numbers of it. Then he's kind of left with just how fed up are people with Trudeau and conservatives have always tended to overestimate how much people don't like Justin Trudeau. And that to me is still the case. We're still looking at a number like 51, 52 that says, I really care about getting change. And those people are not all going to vote conservative. So I think that Polyam is going to need to develop policy in this area. And people are going to be looking for something that feels a little bit more meaty and thoughtful, not necessarily because they can judge all the details of the policy, but because they can tellotal measure of how fed up people are with prime

ministers, which is how much people talk to me about them and in what terms. And I have to say that, and I know I live in Montreal, but still I meet more Francophones than Anglophones who tend to be sympathetic to the Liberal Party. I have to say that Justin Trudeau isn't even on the radar of discontent compared to everything I was hearing about Stephen Harper or Jean Chrétien. It's non-existent. People do not stop me, as they did with Harper and Chrétien, to say, how are we going to get rid of these people? It doesn't happen.

I know it's not a scientific measure, but it is striking that he doesn't seem to elicit the same visceral, and I know if I were in Alberta, things would be different. I understand that, but you do need to win elections in Ontario and Quebec to become the prime minister. And it's not just, you know, to be fair, it's not just in Alberta. There are other parts in English Canada where it's pretty ugly out there, including in Ontario, in southwestern Ontario. I've only got a couple of minutes left.

I want to touch on the federal-provincial relations for a minute. But, Bruce, do you want to make one last quick point on this before we take our final break? Well, look, there are no questions that there are some people who feel quite strongly, but I've been tracking that number since 2015 or even before for Trudeau. The very negative number is definitely up, but it is still definitely a minority and more like 30%. So that's not nothing, Peter. I agree with you. It's out there. But I don't think it's reasonable to say there are big chunks of the country

beyond Alberta where he's really disliked. That's not what I see in our numbers anyway. So two to one, the unscientific meets science. There we go, Peter. Okay. We're going to take this last break. Back right after this. And welcome back.

We're here for our final segment of Good Talk for this week. Bruce Anderson, Chantelle Hebert with us. Chantelle made a point the other day, which I'd like to get her kind of quick analysis, the big overview, which basically suggests that federal-provincial relations right now on the First Minister level are not good. I mean, there's a lot of bad stuff out there, bad feelings, between the personalities at the top of various governments. Do you want to give us that rundown, Chantal, and tell us why we should care about that?

And I probably said that before the Prime Minister went after Premier Ford in Ontario for using the notwithstanding clause to try to avoid a strike in the province of schools, which, you know, the Ford-Trudeau relationship has probably been one of the better ones. And I don't think that the well is poisoned, but certainly a lot of flack has been going back and forth. Over the past week, we've seen the prime minister, who has usually been as reserved in his comments about premiers

as he has been over the Trump era about the American president, show a little less of that restraint. He was in New Brunswick, where he blamed Premier Higgs for appointing someone who has made a career of opposing bilingualism to a committee to review bilingualism in that province. He's gone after François Legault for sending Quebecers checks, as promised in the campaign, while asking for more money for health care. He's gone after Premier Ford over the notwithstanding clause, obviously. He's well set to have things to say about the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan and their so-called, quote-unquote, sovereignty bills in those provinces.

All of that to say that it's not even a source that needs to tell you that the relationship between the federal, the prime minister and the premiers is souring. You can see it on a daily basis. But I think what we saw this week, which was a meeting of health ministers, where I'm assuming the mission of the federal health minister, Jean-Yves Duclos, was to come out with enough progress or signs of progress that he could say, this paves the way to a meeting and a discussion between the prime minister and the premiers over funding, actually was torpedoed by the premiers. And why do I say that? Because clearly the premiers instructed the health ministers to tool down and say, we will not be making progress here until the prime minister

has a conversation with our bosses, the premiers. And what they want to talk about is sign a check with no strings attached. There are merits to both positions. And that is not what I'm trying to say. But I think some of the stuff we saw from Justin Trudeau this week were a result of anger and frustration at the premiers over health care, the feeling the federal government came away from the Vancouver meeting feeling that it had gotten played. Does that advance the healthcare conversation or is it promising for what is happening in the healthcare system and for solutions to those problems? I think that there will be solutions,

but you should not find them at the federal provincial table because clearly we are witnessing what in French we call a dialogue of the deaf. Bruce? You know, I was reminded, listening to Chantal and seeing the note that she sent us the other day, of the fact that Pierre Trudeau, as I recall his time in politics, some of what worked best for him in terms of building political support was when he challenged the provinces where he used that language of, you know, the federal government shouldn't be the head waiter to the provinces.

He used that as a cudgel against Joe Clark. And it meant something to people. of government and the federal government shouldn't always kind of lie down and acquiesce to whatever it is that the provinces have to say, because that would create too much of a patchwork version of Canada, inconsistent health or education standards and that sort of thing. But by the same token, some of what was most problematic for Pierre Trudeau was the amount of conflict that he seemed to be constantly in with, not just with some premiers, but with others in society, whether it was labor or business. From time to time, it just seemed like there was a little too much pugilism in him some days, and just the right amount other days. And some of that was about him, And some of that was about the mood of the country. Fast forward to Justin Trudeau. And I feel like, for the most part, he hasn't been

very pugilistic. There have been a lot more people in his caucus and his cabinet, I think, who at different times over the last several years would have wanted him to be more aggressive in taking some of the positions, but he doesn't generally play that way. I think he believes that he gets more done by working behind the scenes and taking the hit for maybe not being that expressive about his frustration. So what he's doing now on healthcare care, I think, is probably necessary. It does seem as though there are big, big problems in the health system. They're hugely expensive to deal with.

And that having some measure of accountability isn't something that's happening consistently within the provincial jurisdictions. Ontario, where I live, is a pretty good example where you've got the premier saying, well, you've got the Ontario government basically saying we can't figure out what happened with the $4 billion that we were given to help deal with some of the COVID pressures. And meanwhile, you've got ICU problems that are kind of bursting our hospitals at the seams. So I think it's the right time probably politically for Justin Trudeau to be a little bit more aggressive with the provinces. I don't know that as a political strategy to do it on too many issues too often is a good idea, but I think that there's probably some room for Canadians

to hear that in the sense that that tension is being put both ways. All right. We're going to have to leave it at that. It's a discussion I know we're going to keep having. We've had it a number of times already in, you know, basically this fall on healthcare. But you're right, the problems keep piling up and some of the stories coming out of the healthcare system right now, especially as it comes to young kids. Pediatric ICUs overflowing in many parts of the country, and issues that seem

unsolvable. Whether they're aggressive or non-aggressive, these First Ministers have got to find a solution to all this somehow, and soon. Alright, we're going to leave it at that for this week. Chantal Hébert, Bruce Anderson, thank you muchly, very much. Quite a bit.

Yeah, quite a bit, yes, please. Have a great weekend. And all of you out there, have a great weekend as well. We'll talk to you again on Monday.