The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk: What Will Monday Bring?

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Quebec elections are always interesting, but Monday's vote carries with it all kinds of questions about what the future holds for the province and the country. Bruce and Chantal tackle that and also the latest moves by Donald Trump. 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, along with Chantelle Iber and Bruce Anderson. And right off, let me concede a couple of facts. One, I'm not in any of my normal places. I'm in Halifax right now. That's the port of Halifax, the harbor in Halifax, just in the window behind me there.

Chantel is in Montreal. Bruce is in, well, he's in the castle. He's in the castle in Scotland. There he is. Looks like you've got a pretty nice room there. I have a nice room. You know, when you end up in a hotel in Halifax and they give you a harbor view, you know, you've done something right.

I don't know who they thought I was, but they gave you. Because you're friends with Chantel. That's probably what it is. I didn't get a harbor view the last time I was in Halifax, which was recent. So I know I'm going to claim mansprice treatment from now. Well, you should. I mean, when I get here, the first thing the guy at the desk asked, me is what Chantelle really like.

Yeah, right, sure. After an hour of discussion on that point, we move on to checking in. You did say you were going to talk about a few facts. Yeah. Let's move on to the facts section. Let's move on to that. The other point I want to concede is we're recording this on Thursday because of scheduling events in my schedule.

It's my fault. Everything is my fault this week. So we'll keep that in mind. But the topic one is one doesn't really matter which day, any day now, because on Monday, just in a few days, Quebecers go to the polls. And whenever Quebec has an election, it's interesting to the rest of the country. And especially so right now, because this issue of the possibility of a referendum in the future, the third one we've seen since, you know, 1980, 1995, and now 19, or 19, 26, the possibility of a third referendum at some point in the near future.

So let's talk about Quebec election. And, you know, obviously, Chantelle's in Montreal. She's been following this very closely. She's given us a few indicators over the last few weeks. But where are we now just days away from the vote? What's your sense of what's, what's, what's, I don't want to get you predicting, but what's your sense of the mood of Quebecers as they head to the Bulls? Resigned, confused, not totally happy with the options on offer would probably capture it.

This has not been the most inspiring Quebec campaign in history. One of the reasons for that is that no one, there are five parties on the ballot, but only three are contenders for government. the liberals, the outgoing KAC and the Parts Heveco. But none of the parties came forward with what would be called. You know, let me give you references. Stephen Harper's five items in 2006, including a cut to the GST, the red book from Jean-Cletecy in 1993, something that you can see as a whole and say,

this is where the government wants to take us on issues. of all kinds, Jean Chalet also had, you know, and Mike Harris went with platforms. Nothing like that happened. It's been a string of promises, five a day,

multiplied by five parties, multiplied by what, almost 40 days, do the math. And the biggest promise is the commitment that the PQ does not want to campaign on, which is its plan to have a referendum

in its first term if it's elected. Why? Because to this day, 70% of Quebecers do not want another referendum and if asked would be inclined to vote no. So it's been a very odd campaign. Competing with that desire not to have a referendum has been a very, very strong desire for change. So, Kristen Frechert, the outgoing Premier's mission, she replaced Francoise O'Go recently, was to convince Quebecers, as Mark Carney did when he replaced Justin Trudeau, that she was the change they were craving.

that it was changed enough. And so people should go on and avoid the referendum thing. That strategy has not worked. And the cack has been going steadily downhill since the first debate of the campaign, which by consensus, including Madame Freshette herself, she did not deliver what was needed for her party in an interview this morning. she was saying, you know, that she said, I have to admit that I'm not a good debater, I'm a good deal closer. But so there's no contest that she started losing the election when the debates came.

As the CAC softened its vote in Francophone, Quebec, where I was in very tight battles with the Parts Quebecois. The Parts Quebecoa took the lead in places where it needs to win. the Quebec Liberal Party would really like the Federalists to rally to it and stop the PQ and is using the referendum card. The problem is the Quebec Liberal Party over the past decade has fallen so far behind in Franco-Foen-Chequebec. There is so much room that it needs to catch up that it is unlikely that it will manage to attract enough voters to upset the PQ at the PQ at the time. the end of the line. The third parties have had good campaigns,

so they are going to get a share of the vote, which will not be going to the PQ or the liberals. So at this point, the main question, short of some magic falling on Quebec, is that on Monday the winner will likely be the Patskhevequa. The open question is, will that government be a majority or a minority government? Okay, Bruce, you'd probably be the first to say you're not an expert on Quebec politics,

but you are an expert on numbers and you look at numbers. Certainly, I always try to say I'm not an expert on whatever it is that we're going to talk about. Certainly, when we're talking about Quebec and Chantal is in the room, I've got to double down on that. But I did grow up there and I do follow Quebec politics as well as I can from a distance. And so I've been looking at the polling numbers. And what I see is that there is the chance that we'll see a government elected with the biggest majority and the least enthusiasm than we've seen in a very long time. It would be hard.

If some of these numbers and the prediction models hold, the PQ could really sweep the province, massive, massive majority with, you know, in the range of 30% of the vote. So that tells us something about how reluctant voters in Quebec have been to embrace Paul St. Pierre Plamandel and the Parts of Quebeccois. That from the time when he first announced that he would insist on a referendum, he's been unable to convince people to take another hard look at his party and to feel enthusiastic about electing them instead of re-electing the KAC. I agree with Chantelle that the Liberal Party of Quebec has been really out of the game for a long time. And it's not that the word liberal is bad. Obviously, Mark Carney is the most popular politician in Quebec, I think, right now. But it's just that party has been unable to kind of light a spark with voters. And I think that's true about all three of those parties.

They've all failed to ignite interest, excite voters. and so I don't know how much of a dynamic there can be between now and the election. I was struck yesterday, and this is my last point, when parties don't have a big agenda that grabs people and says, this is important to me and differentiates me from the others, you see them sometimes devolved to talking about things that feel pretty small ball. And yesterday, I know there's going to be people who are going to think, well, this isn't small ball, but hearing Paul St. Pierre Plano, don't talk about the monarchy and how he would insist that the lieutenant governor not attend at the opening of parliament. I felt like I was listening to a trick, you know, a circus trick almost, something that was designed to kind of make people talk about it and ignite those kind of close.

Culture war, not culture, but culture war tendencies that people sometimes have. I think there's a difference. Quebec elections in my experience have always been about culture in a very significant way. But culture war is for me when you're picking at something that you know will kind of ignite some tensions within the population and make people kind of feel divided against the other a little bit. It didn't feel to me like a really important thing to be talking about. I'm not a big monarchist.

I do think it is kind of silly that, you know, the way he put it, which is that the lieutenant governor, who kind of works for the king, is going to be in our legislature telling us what it is that we're going to do. There's an artifice there that I understand the criticism of, but it felt to me that it was a sign that the campaign was really a campaign about not very much when it came to a, the Patsi Quebecois, maybe for the other parties as well.

I have another take on that because it goes beyond not having her. In Quebec, the lieutenant governor does not read the inaugural speech as it is known and not the speech from the throne. The Premier does. That's been the case for decades. But what he is basically saying is he's going to expel the monarchy from Quebec entirely. The only problem is, we have had an episode of that in the previous National Assembly

when Paul Saint-Pierre Plendon said he would not swear a note of allegiance to the crown. And actually, a legislation was passed in that National Assembly that says that members can opt to do that, but they can opt to swear allegiance to Quebec, if that's how they're so inclined. And as far as I can tell, all five leaders plan to swear allegiance not to the crown, but what one has to know about the monarchy, it's not such an arcane debate.

A law does not become a law in Parliament or in Quebec or anywhere else in Canada without getting royal assent. Guess who signs to give that royal assent? It is constitutionally not a law until that happens. Guess who had to sign the law that does away with the obligation of swearing a note to the crown? It was signed by the lieutenant governor, which kind of tells you something. But what happened with this and a couple of other things this week seemed to be that Paul St. Claudeau-Plamando was revealing more of himself

as someone who would seek confrontations with the federal government or the Constitution than at any other time in the campaign. He had things to say about immigration and Mark Carney saying at some point once we've stabilized the immigration picture, we will probably consider raising our thresholds. He had things to say about counter tariffs, but the overall impression, and I'm curious to see the end of campaign polls,

was if you believe that the next government is going to be seeking to fight or to pick fights with the federal government at every opportunity, including on issues that are not really on the radar, and that being the monarchy. We're not divided on the monarchy, but it's not, you know, not job one.

He said he would do that within the first hundred days. So if you talk, that might be the case. You're going to have a government that picks fights. You have had confirmation of that all week, which I believe is not the strategy that the PQ had been pursuing until now. whether that makes some people back off, not from voting PQ, they've been at 29 or 30% since the day the campaign started.

They have never gone up. It's others that have gone down. So whether that brings people to say, I'm going to go vote for the liberals, go for conservatives, whatever, I don't know. And that could also make the PQ even more victorious. but I would note that in the past, the Parts Quebecois is always underperformed in the polling booth versus its polls. It has never been able to deliver its polling numbers. And in the last many elections, remember when Nussain Bouchard ran against Jean Chalier after the referendum,

Nussain Bouchard won, but he lost a popular vote to a clunky liberal campaign led by Jean-Creschen. Okay, so I don't know. I mean, if you win with 31% and you are going to go to war with Mark Carney, you may want to note that Mark Carney in the last election in Quebec secured 42% of the vote. And let me make an easy prediction. No one is getting 40% on Monday in Quebec. So you are basically dealing with a prime minister who is more popular than you are as you come into, office. And I think there are realities. It's easy to say the Constitution is, we've never signed on it, etc.

But you need to live in an environment where most Quebecers at this point are happy enough to get along with the federal government and to let Mark Carney lead the charge on the tariff war. I think the latest approval ratings are over 50%, which is a rare thing in Quebec for a federal politician. You wanted to make a point there, Bruce, before? Yeah, I wanted to ask Chantal a question. Wait a minute. I'm the host. Yeah, but you missed this question, so I thought it needed to be asked. I have more questions, but go ahead.

It's an observation framed as a question a little bit, which is that in the context, like I obviously look at public opinion in Quebec and elsewhere, and I do see large areas of consistency, recognizing that there are some really important differences too. But the biggest areas of consistency are we care about the economy. We want a pragmatic approach to figuring out what we're going to do in a world that is disrupted by Trump and Trump's tariff wars and a lot of buy-in for the idea of finding new customers, bringing in new investment. If I were running a campaign in Quebec and I knew I had to knock the PQ down,

why wouldn't I spend more time saying at the precise moment where we most need and have relatively good opportunities to attract investment, why would that be the time to plunge the province into a referendum right after Donald Trump exits? I understand he put a time frame on it that maybe got him out of that sense of he would cause an immediate or urgent problem. But if investment looks at political risk, which I think most observers would say does, why wouldn't those other politicians spend more time trying to mind that to concentrate the mind of voters on what that referendum might look like to investors who are trying to figure

out where in Canada should they invest? Because possibly the federalist camp so used that argument in so many shapes and forms over the past, I don't know how many decades, that it's like a broken record. Right. The end of the world will be upon your economy. If this happens, doesn't work anymore. And every time someone presents it like that, the argument was made that this is not a good time to have a referendum. And the way that the PQ got around that was right off the bat by saying we can see that. So we will not be having a referendum until Trump is out of office. What is not said when that statement is put out, is that if you're going to, have a referendum in two and a half or three years, you're going to spend that time preparing it. Yeah. Which is a lot of wasted energy. I think on the sovereignty question, most Quebecers would say, we know how to say no, if he really wants to ask, what or how do you curb your government but in between? I have no answer for that. I see this government as very confrontational.

the stuff about the lieutenant governor, small things. The current lieutenant governor is from the First Nations. If you're planning to have a referendum on sovereignty, do you really want to be telling the first lieutenant governor that is from the First Nations that she cannot come into the National Assembly? I don't know. That doesn't sound like a great approach. All week, Mr. Clementon, and I still believe he was off his script.

all week he's been saying, well, it doesn't matter what the Constitution says because it's illegitimate in Quebec. There are only two provinces that have used the current amending formula that comes from patriation to amend the Constitution since 1982. One of those is New Brunswick for the equality of French and English, and the other is Quebec for language-based school boards. Guess who was in government when that happened? led by Lucien Bouchard and the minister in charge, Pauline Marois. So it's legitimate, but you are the party in government that has actually used it. So it's full of those contradictions. I'm not sure how that is going to work after Monday.

All right. This is a fascinating conversation. It's a good question Bruce was asking, and you can ask the same question in Alberta, as it leads towards the referendum. And you might get some of the same kind of answers that Shantel just gave. Let me ask this last question about the situation as it comes up on Monday. When you look at the kind of the history of Quebec premiers, there are some names that were giants, not only in Quebec,

but on the national stage as well, whether it was duplexie or, or whether it was Barassar, whether it was Levec, or Lucien Bouchard, Jean-Sheret, and others, there have been quite a few names. Are any of these names, and especially the one who's seen to be the favorite now, are these potential giants on the Quebec political stage? I mean, it's hard to predict what's going to happen in the future, but when you look at them in a campaign, you can sometimes get a sense. This person has something.

Well, I'm not going to go back to Duplessi. I wasn't around for that section. But the people you name, René, the people who were premiers under further Parts Quebecua, Gonne Levique, Bernard Andri, Jacques Paizot, Lucien Bouchard, all have, Pauline Marawa, all have one thing in common. They were tested politicians. People who had held senior portfolios in governments and it demonstrated real serious.

skills, above average skills at what they were doing as members of cabinet, be it federally in the case that also goes for Jean Charray to use another example. What we have here, with the exception of Madame Frischette, are people who have been, who are totally untested. It is the first time that Charles Milior is running in politics. So he has had no enhanced government experience. Paul St. Pierre Plamondon led the... They party to a less than a handful of seats in the last election.

He is also never sat in the government or even led the official opposition. Eric Jermann worked in back rooms. That's the conservative leader for Stockwell, they, among others. And the Quebec said that obviously was never in government. So when you look at the choices on offer, you've got the outgoing government. and that with all the baggage that comes with it, which has, you know, a name that has resurfaced in Quebec over the past week and a half talking about the CAQ

and Christian Frischette, Kim Campbell. And when people start using Kim Campbell as a parallel, you know that things are going badly. So no, Brian Mulroney used to say when he was asked, I think it was during the Charlottetown referendum, whether he should be the main. salesman for the Charlotte Town Accord because he was unpopular. And he used to say, well, sadly, Mother Teresa was not available.

Mother Teresa, not on the ballot here on Monday. I like your question, Peter, about whether any of them can become giants. And I don't mean to be unfair or unkind to any of them. But it doesn't look like this is a training camp for giants. It doesn't look like somebody will come out of this field and become that kind of electrifying, interesting, captivating, motivating, politician. And, you know,

let's anybody think that it's impossible to find that person now. I'm spending a lot of times, I'm sure both of you are following the U.S. election and the midterm elections. And there are, you know, there are two people there who are both very young, John Ossef in Georgia and Tala Rico in Texas,

who you can say, say those will probably be big figures in U.S. politics. And so it is possible for people, even in this age of fragmented media and politics that seems, you know, hard to stay focused. It is possible for people to break out. But we haven't seen anybody come close to breaking out in this. And the closest that it feels to me that we've got is in Mr. Plamondon, somebody whose version of how to attract attention is more similar to. to Pierre Pauliev in style than to Jean-Sheret or René-Lebeck or Lucien Bouchard or Pauline Marois. And I say that because it's that tendency to want to provoke where obviously I was living in Quebec when Renéle-Levec was premier.

I remember how provocative he was, but I also remember that he was capable of having a debate, a discussion, and kind of hearing a different point of view and making his argument and being, you know, fairly persuasive, even if you didn't like the end result that he was pushing, you could listen to him make an argument and you could feel a little bit charmed by it. And I think that is a critical factor for a politician who intends to be popular beyond a 30% base

or to rally people to a larger sense of the future. Now, I just want to add, yes, the current lineup suffers from comparisons to past lineups, but I don't believe it suffers from comparison to other provincial lineups, including in major provinces. It certainly stacks up to anything you see in other provinces when you look at the leadership lineup, anything I see in BC, Ontario, with a liberal leadership that is ongoing. Manitoba, where the conservative leader is just quit this week. Politics was like the Montreal Canadiens of politics. Not like the Toronto Police.

No, no, no, no. It's a very... I agree. It's a very provincial lineup. Yeah. You know, I often think about this, and I wonder whether it's because we were much younger then and maybe more impressed by, you know, following the people we followed. But when you look, you know, Shantel says,

There are not a lot of difference when you look at the other provinces in terms of the lineup of potential leaders. But when we covered federal provincial politics, I know I'm dating myself perhaps before some of you, but in the 70s and 80s especially, the list of names in there. We've discussed this before, but, you know, Pierre Trudeau, Rennie LeVecke, Peter Lohie, Bill Davis, Alan Blakney, and the list goes on. Richard Havillard. Those were giants. or were they just giants to us? Or did the issues then, which were issues we could resolve among ourselves, make provincial premiers bigger because they did have, you know,

they had a significant contribution to that conversation. I have looked at what happened to the issue of Trump and the tariff war in the Quebec election. I see what's happening in BC. And I thought really taking off. and then in part that's because those are not issues that people believe that provincial premiers can influence significantly. I'm sorry, Premier Ford for having said that. So the issues have changed.

You are a huge player when you sit around the table talking about the future of the constitution of the country and how you see the country via what you have to say. You are not such a big player when you are talking with Mark Carney about how, how to handle Donald Trump. Because the issue is so much larger than your provincial purview that while you may make an interesting contribution, you cannot be coming out. Same with climate, same with AI. The big files are not even in the hands of national governments.

So imagine provincial governments. And as a result, it's really hard to rise over expectations. in a conversation because you are not on the front line. I agree with that, but only to a certain point, because I feel like for a couple of decades anyway, politicians have mostly been trained in the art of division, how to secure a base and alienate others and kind of use that to raise more money

and to create a more engaged support base. And so that has made them less likely to present themselves as big unifiers, as people who can wrap their arms around the entire electorate and bring people together. I think that we are seeing a little bit of that at the federal level with Mark Carney right now. But I also, if I look at those provincial premiers,

Wab Canoe is the one that stands out for me a little bit as somebody who has the potential to fit in that lineup that you are describing, Peter. I don't feel like, I don't feel like Daniel Smith, belongs in that conversation. I'm not convinced that David Eby has has kind of earned his way into that conversation. And I don't think Doug Ford has either. And I think part of the reason Doug Ford has is that he started as that

conservative base rallying politician. And he's sort of migrated a little bit away from it, but not so convincingly and persistently, I think, to kind of occupy that level. And I know people do talk about him as a potential successor to, to Chair Pauliev, if Mr. Poliyev leaves. And I think he'd be a pretty strong candidate for that leadership, whether or not he could be that kind of person who looks like he belongs in that conversation, in that lineup, in that Hall of Fame or whatever it is that you would call it, Peter. I don't know. I think that's to be decided. But at least Wab Canoe for me,

is potentially that kind of politician. Right. We're going to take our first break, come back and switch topics. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Friday episode of The Bridge. That is Good Talk, of course. Chantelle Iber, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansford, all with you.

We're recording this on Thursday, just so you have an idea in terms of subject matter that we're dealing with and what we potentially are not dealing with because we don't know what will be happening tomorrow. Let me ask you an update question really on where we are with the U.S. Because I found this week's quotes from the leaders south of the border pretty pathetic, really. You know, the best Donald Trump could get come up with it, a speech to some of Spanish-American conference. He ended up talking about Canada and said, Canada is very bad. That was the extent of the language he could come up with in terms of discussing where Canada's position was on the talks. And then we had Peter Navarro, this convicted former jailed trade advisor to Donald Trump, being pushed on the Canada question, he ended up saying, yeah, Canadian lobbyists on, what is it, K Street in Washington.

They should be thrown out of the country. They should be kicked out. We shouldn't allow Canadians anywhere near our American legislators trying to influence them on things Canadian. Now, you look at those two actions, and even Jameson Greer a little bit, who's more of a bureaucrat, a trade negotiator for the U.S., some of the things he said. You look at that and you wonder, are these guys getting worried about where they are, that that's the best they can come up with? in terms of where the situation stands? Go ahead, Shanta. I'm not going to put order into chaos, obviously,

because that's beyond the scope of my abilities. But I looked at the Trump statements. They're going to come begging in four or five weeks or three or four weeks, and they're going to be apologizing as part of a larger narrative where he keeps saying good things are going to happen after the midterms. The diesel prices will go down. Iran will be resolved.

And it's all, if you look at a statement, it's all right after the midterms and clear. Vote on hope because I'm resolving all these issues and don't do what you plan to do with my results, which are really bad. So I think there was an element of that. But otherwise, to think that any of this is going to lead to

some resolution or that anyone in Canada should feel that there is a hand held open to talk again. I guess the merit of those statements is that they are pretty clear. I think there was a bit of a play on steel this week. I don't think it was a coincidence that in the U.S. President Trump was at the announcement of new investments on steel. on the same day that layoffs were announced for Hamilton. And I noticed that the Prime Minister was very fortright in saying, we are going to come after these American owners of Stelco

for breaching the conditions of their buying Stelco in 2024, which was to maintain a floor of employment that they have now disregarded. And the Prime Minister going out of us, a way to note that the current owner of Stelco had applauded, the 50% tariffs on Canadian Steel, which is passing strange if you own and do business in Canada. So I totally believe that the Selko's ownership is in league with the Trump administration and that this is a play to hurt Canada. There are real things happening.

It's not just a war of words. And then I have a third category, which is things could get really, really bad because for reasons that have nothing to do with, in that category, I put the rumors that Mark Kearney might be up for a Nobel Peace Prize, which I do not at this point take that seriously. It's going to happen October 9th, the announcement. But knowing how Donald Trump wants to be the winner, and then rumors that Mark Kearny could be Time Magazine's person of the year.

This must be driving Trump crazy if you see these rumors. if one or the other were to happen, things will get worse. But yes, I do see, you know, I thought the Stelko stuff and the steel stuff this week was the more ominous real thing that was happening. And from what I read from reports of people who have investigated, the government of Canada tried really hard to bring Stelco on board with measures to mitigate the damage of the tariffs. They may actually have orders that they're ignoring.

So clearly Stelko's ownership seems to be supporting the Trump agenda against Canada. Bruce. You know, Trump loves sports, and so I'll use a sports metaphor. His is a losing franchise. It's a deep, deep trouble. And everybody in his party, who's sentient knows that. They're all looking at the same accumulating, polls that show that the Democrats are going to win the House and probably the Senate as well

are more likely than not the Senate. And they're looking at what he's doing and they're coming to the conclusion that every day that he goes out, he makes a bad situation worse. It makes a bad situation worse because it needs to be all about him. He needs to tell people that he's popular because he's reading the polls that say he's the most unpopular president. The term is used in modern times. but I don't know if that's because in pre-modern times, whenever that was.

Was there polling? Kind of an undocumented but less popular. To me, it doesn't matter. He is effectively for most people, the most unpopular president that has been in their lifetime, for sure, in several generations, for sure. Everything that people are observing about him is that he had this promise that he was going to make the wave his magic wand and make the economy better for everybody. And they're not seeing it. They're seeing it getting worse. They're seeing inflation going up. They're seeing corruption and

self-enrichment by Trump. So all of that is going south. So he's in a bad mood. He's in a bad mood in part because all of the candidates who are running on his under his party banner this fall, almost none of them are talking about what a great idea tariffs are. I've kind of got the math on that. It's almost none. The Democrats, on the other hand, are talking about it. They're saying it's part of what he's done to ruin the cost of living situation for most people. And that's not just people in traditionally Democrat states, it's people in the farming communities in Midwestern United States. So I agree with Chantelle. He's feeling that he's unpopular, that he's losing, but he can't stand having that be the perception. I'm sure it drives him crazy. And he's probably consumed more

stories about this Nobel Prize rumor or the Time magazine thing, which I don't know why that's the thing. I remember when Time magazine was a thing, but I don't think it is now. You know, they say there was a story about Julius Caesar at his height of popularity when he used to ride around Rome in his chariot that he made sure he had a guy beside him whispering in his ear as the crowds were cheering and kind of mobbing him. And the guy's job was to continually whisper in his ear, you're only human. You know, times can change. does Mark Carney have a guy like that? And I ask that simply because, I mean, surely he's seen these rumors too. He also looks at, he can't help but look at the polls or be told about the polls that show this massive lead that he has.

That's, you know, as Chantelle mentioned earlier, it kind of leads like in Quebec and elsewhere in the country where we haven't seen this kind of stuff before. But he is only human. Things can change. I think it's not the job of a leader to wake up every morning worrying about the day when that happens. But there is also not the job of the leader to wake up every day wondering how to sustain it. This is he's a banker. So in banker's term, this is political capital. It will be spent.

And it should be spent wisely. at least as wisely as he feels he should spend it. I may have told this tale before, but when Hussein Shah left the Black Caucus to become the Quebec Premier, he made a speech to caucus, and many were saying, why would you want to go there? Like, you're going to get damaged. Here you walk on water, and you will continue to be the great beacon to sovereignty.

and he told them about his mother buying him a football suit and telling him this is a brand new football suit and if you bring it home clean, I'm going to be very unhappy. That story which someone obviously in the room told me stuck with me because I think it applies to great leaders that if you are going to get this brand new suit, it's meant to get on the field and play a little. not to sit because what if I get some mud on myself?

So yes, at some point that political capital will be spent. Some of it will be squandered. It always happens. But it's not the person. It's what you do with this gift that you have and how much you can achieve with it before things go out. And at some point, people do get sick of you and they want the opposite of you. and that will happen to Mark Carney, but not now, and probably not tomorrow or in a year.

But it doesn't matter. I've been watching with curiosity, and I'm sure Bruce would understand that because he, too, has watched referendums and Quebec campaigns in the sovereignty debate, and how the current federal government has been hoarding its political capital, refusing to engage on every provocation of the past week or not giving in to the temptation to step in and say, I'm the most popular politician in Quebec and you shouldn't be doing this. I thought this is a wise keeping political capital intact

because it will be needed for real things. And at this point, spending it would be squandering it because it would probably help the PQ rather than hurt the PQ to have the federal government step in. but they have been so disciplined about not engaging that it is not an accident. But that is part and parcel of what the job is. So, yeah, I'm sure that Mr. Carney understands

that most Canadians do not stay awake at night, wondering if he's going to win the Nobel Peace Prize or the Time magazine person of the year thing. you know, Peter. I love that Bruce Hart story. I've never heard that one before. It's a great story. It's a great story.

Oh, yeah. It definitely is. Bruce. You know, over the years, I spent a lot of time with politicians as we all have. And in most cases, they come with an inordinate confidence in their ability to be popular and an inordinate interest in being popular. You have to be built with a kind of a thick, skin and a desire to be really well liked.

It feels like most people in politics who aspire to that level of leadership come over-indexed on those two things. I don't see Mark Carney that way. I think that when he decided to get into politics, he decided that he needed to think a little bit more than he had in the past. although as an observer of politics, he learned a fair bit, I think, about it, to think a little bit more about it because leading a political party is a different set of functions and you need to be cognizant of what those things are that you've never done before

that you might need to work on a little bit. But he's a very, in my experience, a very clear-eyed person. This is not somebody who's going to be the last to figure out if he's losing popularity or wake up every morning wanting to know that the polls show I'm even more popular than I was yesterday. He's somebody who, of all the politicians that I've spent time with, probably spends less time thinking about the popularity question. And it's not because he doesn't think that it will be a question that's more important to Chantel's point down the road. But I think he's very focused on this idea of if I have political capital and I do,

I should use it for things that I believe in. And it will be important for me to be able to defend those things down the road. But that's not a reason not to do them. That's not a reason to shy away from them. I think he's going to be in Fort McMurray today from the news stories that I saw doing something that is pretty significant expenditure of political capital within the liberal party universe. I think, you know, the Western pipeline. He's not doing that because he thinks it will make him more popular in Alberta or Saskatchewan or in Canada. He's doing it because he thinks it's the right thing to do.

So I don't think he has that person that Caesar had, and I don't think he needs it, because I do think he kind of has a pretty clear-eyed picture of what the job is and how it will at some point end. And Caesar didn't have a free press. And that guy didn't help him in the end either. No, that didn't work out. No, that didn't work out too well. Okay, we're going to take our final break. Be back right after this.

And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this year, Chantelle, Bruce, or not this year, this week, Chantel, Bruce, and Peter with you. We've got a couple of minutes left, more than a couple. What else is on your mind this? We really only talked about two subjects. what else is on your mind? Bruce, what don't you start us?

Well, I do think that these issues, it's this National Reconciliation Day, I think. And I think the questions that continue to surround resource development, environmental protection, labor rights, and indigenous relations, I think those are really important issues. I think that they're unresolved. I think the BC election is bringing to the fore some of those questions in a very pointed way. I think the West Coast pipeline will do that. I think that, you know, the prime minister was in, I think British Columbia a couple of days ago talking about oceans protection. Because obviously one of the things that's going to happen if more oil gets to the West Coast is that there is going to be more shipping of oil. those have always been difficult issues, I think, for the country to solve for.

I'm somewhat optimistic that there is going to be a focus on how do we work through them. How do we try to get to a place that is satisfying enough for the largest number of voices in those debates? So I'm paying a fair bit of attention to that, absolutely. And I think the BC election is a very interesting election. I think that it has a big implications also for the federal conservative party, which I'm sure is grappling on some level behind the scenes with. What should we take away from the fact that the conservative party looked in BC like it couldn't win because it had Carrie Lynn Finley as a leader?

And then when she left the leadership and they found the voice that felt more centric, or at least that's the case so far, they look more competitive. With Scott Acheson leaving the Conservative Caucus in Ottawa, one of the more moderate voices, one of the more appealing voices, at least to me, and I think to a lot of kind of centrist voters in the last leadership race, him leaving is another signal that the Conservative Party is going to have to decide whether it wants to be the Polyev party

or whether it really wants to be competitive for those center voters. Right now, among voters who consider themselves on the right of the spectrum, only 61% say that they would vote conservative. That's a terrible number for the conservative party. We're still, only 35% of voters on the center say that they would vote conservative. That's 20 points behind the liberals. Conservative movements across the country have a big choice to make. and the Trump experience in the United States has been shining a light on the hazards of not resolving that and not resolving it towards the center.

Sean Don. I have the same events on my mind, I, Mark Carney's visit, but from a different angle. So Mark Carney goes to Kittematt and he announces, or he's there for an announcement that stands to double our LNG exports to, markets of the West Coast, so non-new West markets. And then on the next day or the day after, he goes to Fort McMurray and announces, confirms what everyone's new, that the Western pipeline is going to be classified of national interest, so try to speed along this pipeline. This happens a few days before a Quebec election, and it's not going to make a ripple here,

in any way, shape, or form. And he goes to Kittematt in the middle, and that was not planned. The reason the announcement for the Western Pipeline was scheduled for today has to do with the vote on the 19th in Alberta on the referendum for a referendum. But in the middle of a SNAP, BC election, he goes to Kittimat to announce these investments alongside David E. The NDP Premier was campaigning for re-election. If you could have imagined a scene like that two years ago where the Prime Minister of Canada announces in the middle of three votes and two elections in the most climate sensitive provinces traditionally,

a new pipeline to the West Coast and doubling fossil fuel exports via Kittimath and that would not create a ripple. You would have said, well, in what universe of lobbying for oil and gas, do you live to imagine that a day like this would come? And here we are today. And that is a sea change from everything we've seen over the past,

not the past Trudeau decade, including the decade before that that Stephen Harper ran governments and would have wanted to be doing things like that. Whether, you know, the pendulum will swing back in a way that hurts proponents of those projects, I don't know. But I do see David E.B. standing there, an NDP Premier, as a sign that there has been a major shift in a conversation on these issues. All right. We're going to leave it at that for this week. Thanks for helping me out by doing this a little earlier than we usually do in terms of recording it. A great conversation, though.

Chantal, Bruce, have a great weekend. I've been thinking these last couple of days. Bruce mentioned the National Day of Truth and Rural. reconciliation. I've been thinking about Murray Sinclair, who was the commissioner of that report, passed away a couple of years ago. He was actually a friend of mine. I met him first when I was in Manitoba, working in Manitoba as a young lawyer he was, and eventually a judge and rose to the heights that he did, including the Canadian Senate. And I've often thought of this week of what he'd be thinking about the progress that's been made. He gave what 93

recommendations, some of which have been achieved, most of which have yet to be achieved. And so what he would be thinking and what he would be saying now is what I've been thinking about. Okay, thanks again to the two of you and thanks to all of those who have been listening. We'll see you again on Monday on the bridge. The buzz is available tomorrow morning 7 a.m. in your inbox if you subscribe. That's it for this week. Still free. Have a good weekend, everybody. Yeah. Bye.

Bye-bye.