The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- What's Going On With Your Money?

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Carbon Taxes, Carbon Rebates, Arrive Can, the Auditor General ....another week when the questions of who's protecting your money, how it's spent, how it's promised and who's accountable are all up front. Chantal is back and with Bruce they tackle all these issues trying to determine accountability and yes, even political wisdom. That plus some new thoughts on Brian Mulroney.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here along with Bruce Anderson and Chantelle Hebert. That's right, she's back. She's back. They let me back in. They let you back in. You know, I'll admit there were more than a few letters in the last couple of weeks asking. They know you love Iceland because it's not your first rodeo in Iceland. You still feel the same way after this latest trip?

Yes, I also got to see firsthand the damages of inflation. And, by the way, for those who think we're having a tough time, a young person there, a young parent told me mortgage rates in Iceland run around 11% these days. Oh, wow. Yeah. So some people are walking away from their lodgings because the rise from around 3% to 11% is too steep.

But there was otherwise a really nice place to spend a week away from all of you guys. And I discovered I was fitter than I expected, despite having not been able to cross-country ski most of the winter because no snow. And no, there was not more snow there than we have had here. Well, Peter, I don't want to rat Peter out, but I'm going to. He did roll his eyes and exaggerate your love for Iceland a little bit. You probably didn't watch. What are you talking about?

I think you might have had a... Yeah, no, the second I got back, I watched everything I'd missed. Of course. And if you believe that, roll your eyes. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to dwell on Iceland, but why is the inflation rate at 11%?

It's not the inflation rate. Why are they so high? Well, I'm guessing inflation hits hard when you're a northern country. The prices in Iceland were already very high for that reason. You're getting a lot of stuff from outside, right? So you're really sensitive to those supply chain problems plus the normal inflation. So combine all of that together. I can report, though, that their tourism industry is in great shape. I was amazed at how many tourists were

pouring out of the plains. And what is still not necessarily the dead of winter, but the first week of March is not necessarily the height of the tourism season. So if you're planning to go to Iceland, you will not be alone. I met many Canadians as part of the trip. That's fascinating. Good for them, the Icelanders, because they've made tourism an important part of their economy. And they've made it attractive for foreigners to come through Iceland if they're on their way to Europe or what have you. And, you know, someday, hopefully, the Canadian Arctic will find ways of doing this because it's spectacular as well,

but it's so damn expensive to get there. But one of the things they do have that we're missing sometimes on the road in this country is the guarantee that you'll almost always eat well which matters if you're going to go out of the larger centers to know that if you stop somewhere it's going to be good food it does make a difference and that is also something that without paying for the high price place around you that is something that I think our tourism industry needs to be thinking about. Okay well let's focus on Canada here for the last little while because I mean

in the last little while I you know we're always amazed at some of the things that come out of Ottawa, and you kind of roll your eyes and you go, oh, that's Ottawa, and it's the same old story, and it's our money, but it's being wasted this way or that way. This was another one of those kind of crazy weeks, whether it was the discussion around the carbon tax or whether it was the discussion around Arrive arrive can and we'll deal with both of these things in the next few minutes but the one that really kind of threw me for the the final loop on on the question of what the hell's going on up there uh was watching the auditor general you know a couple of weeks ago she unveils her her report on Arrive Cannon. It's pretty blistering.

Something that was supposed to cost thousands ended up costing millions, and where did the money go, and who was getting it, and all of that. So what happens this week? The Auditor General fires two of her people and investigates a third about working outside the department, taking contracts outside with whom, I think it's still a little unclear, but it's clearly outside government, and raising all kinds of ethical questions

about what people who work at the Auditor General should be doing aside from the work they're paid for by the people of Canada. So I don't know. It left me all these things combined with, once again, that question of what the hell is going on in Ottawa, in the government of Canada. We've seen decades of this through different parties in power

where questions are raised. But this one, for me, this trio of stories has kind of topped the bill for me. Bruce, why don't you start us on this before we go into anything in particular on these three? Well, you know, I had a number of thoughts thinking about this. I read a piece a little while ago. It was out of the United States, and it characterized two different kinds of politicians and described why one kind is having trouble these days and another one seems to be more successful. And type one is very aspirational, talking a lot about values and direction and purpose and very high order kind of ideals. Another is just focused on getting things done. And I think one of the things for me about where the Trudeau government is right now

is that it invested very heavily in a way that made sense in 2015 and the immediate subsequent years in this idea of describing kind of higher order vision and values and calling on people to you know listen to their better angels and everything else and if they're vulnerable right now they're vulnerable because in part the Pierre Polly of is remarkably effective at saying I'm just gonna fix some stuff there's stuff that's not working that stuff that government hasn't been able to get right and I'm gonna do a better job of it now whether that's true or not doesn't really matter. It sounds to people like he's talking about, I'm going to fix some things that are broken. Where the Trudeau government is right now, and I listened to the prime minister talking about carbon tax the other day. And I agree with him

about the merits of the policy. But he was again kind of trying to appeal to people's sense of what is the right thing to do for the long term. And I feel like, you know, maybe it's what he should do, but it's probably a losing argument, especially since he kind of undermined the argument that this was both immaterial to your cost of living and necessary, vital even, for the future of the planet. So on Arrive Can, to bring it back to your question, what we saw with the testimony of these principals of that company that was involved in it was obnoxious and appalling to a degree that I don't think I can remember seeing. I don't know what advice or thoughts were going through the minds of the individuals,

and I'm not making a comment on their culpability in any legal sense, but just from the standpoint of feeling as though they had an obligation to answer questions and to say things that on the surface of it appeared to be plausible, it was a total failure by them, and they seemed completely at ease doing it. So it was shocking, and it's terrible for the Trudeau government to have this show, to have the Auditor General's problem and not have the Auditor General. As far as I can tell, she just, you know, the announcement was some people here did some wrong things and now they're gone. I feel like there's a requirement to apologize for that. And maybe she did and I missed it. But it's part of the, can the government right now get things done, manage things properly, finish projects that they start, keep control over the cost? And it's a big problem for the Trudeau government right now.

You know, the thing that amazed me most about the testimony of those, one of them in particular, hadn't even read the report. He's testifying in a committee about the report and about his company's work on the Arrive Can app, and he hadn't even read the report. It's not like it came out an hour before. It was like a week or two weeks before. Anyway, sorry, Chantal. I'm going to steer away from the politics of it. I suspect

we will be talking about the carbon tax and the politics of this going forward. And I am not sure that this is, and I totally understand that the liberals have to wear this because they've been in government for eight years. But I believe that the problem goes well beyond whatever party is in power. What I took from what we watched this week from the two principals of that company was that clearly if you were looking to hire smart people to do smart things and you were looking at this, they were not projecting that image that makes you say, I want to sign a contract with these guys. I want to subcontract this important mission to them. So I'm thinking, do they show better when they're presenting to the civil servants who have given them contracts? Because I mean, I'm not the one on this panel that does these things, but Bruce does. He has to agree that if he went to a committee and looked like that, you would think, why would anyone give Bruce Anderson or anyone associated with him a contract? Look at how sloppy he is. And usually when we watch parliamentary committees, and people are, and it's hard for people from outside politics to be in front of an adversarial parliamentary committee.

But they do try to project an image of competence that makes you at least sympathize with them and think, well, you know, I can see what these guys were bringing to the table. There was zero effort on their part for doing that. And that brings me to the other question. What did those who gave them contracts in the plural, not just a Rife can, what did they see that was not apparent in any way, shape, or form in front of the committee. I look at the Auditor General's story of having two persons on staff who were also people with contracts privately with the government, and I'm thinking, sure, the liberals wear that, but seriously, can any minister be going inside, in particular the operations of the Auditor General of all

places to check that these things are not happening? So what I think is that there has been for a long time systemic culture issues within the public service, but that the pandemic kind of made these issues worse and has also brought them to light. Without the pandemic, we might not have noticed this much. And my final word on this is, why are you all so stunned by the fact that the public service is operating in such a sloppy way since you all know that it had trouble delivering passports. Something really basic. That's like saying, well, that's not like saying you can't deliver driver's licenses, because in my province, there were

problems with delivering those. But if a major operation like the federal government can't deliver passports in a timely fashion, something inside is not working well. And I don't think that a change in government is going to fix it. I also think that questions should be asked of those who led the public service over the past decade and a half. Yeah, Bruce wants back here but you know my concern is that it's you know incompetence is one thing accountability on the on on public funds and the ethical standards you know that that takes it to a whole different level and that's what I don't know that's what's bothered me a lot about these stories of the last couple of weeks. Bruce? Yeah, you know what? First of all, because every once in a while, people do like to imagine that I do a lot of work for government.

I want to clarify something that Chantal said, which is that I don't think I've done any work for... No, but you do do work for organizations, right? When you present to them, you try not to look incompetent. Absolutely. I pitch projects and services, and it's absolutely true that what we saw in that committee hearing by those two contractors was like a parody of what you would do if you were trying to make a living at it. And so that's just that kind of blew my mind. It actually seemed comedic. It was so it was so weird. But I would say this, I think that Arrive Can is something really different from, you know, run of the mill sloppiness. And there is a lot of run of the mill sloppiness. I don't know how much of it is sloppier than it was because of the pandemic. Some of it, no doubt.

I do think that the passport thing got sloppier because of the pandemic, but I also got a renewal of my own passport. It took me 15 minutes at an office and I'm expecting it to arrive eight days, eight working days later. It works pretty well, I think now. So things ebb and flow in terms of the sloppiness of basic stuff, big things like the Trans Mountain Pipeline. I still can't get my head around why the cost of that just keeps on going up and up and up. And I think on something like that, there does need to be determined accountability. I think the scale of the Arrive Can story is also too big to miss, obviously, as a political argument by the opposition parties. But I do think a government that is concerned about protecting its flank and positioning

itself for another run needs to sound very aggressive about this stuff because they're responsible for it. And people need to understand that they take it as seriously as it sounds like it should be taken. But mostly I wanted to say, no, don't send the cards and letters about Bruce pitching services to the government. And that wasn't what I was trying to say. It was he pitches services.

Surely he does pitch better. He looks like he's got a nice home, so he must be successful. I can just see him in the passport office. It's all a backdrop. Filling the thing out and the nice woman in the passport office saying, here, Bruce Anderson from the bridge. We'll rush this through right away. Yes, sir.

Move on. Okay. We'll do that. We'll move on to another live wire, which is the carbon tax. That has become the name of this issue, the carbon tax and tax attacks and all that. Here's what throws me. Nobody seems to be able to have the one-line explanation of it in terms of the government putting it forward.

The opposition certainly has the one-line explanation of why they think it's a rip-off, even though most Canadians would actually get money back, if I understand it correctly, as opposed to having to give money. Yet it has become this explosive issue over time, and we've seen this will be the third election campaign where it's an issue. The Conservatives actually supported it in the first two. They're certainly not going to this time, or the last time, I guess, they supported

it. They're not going to support it this time, for sure. But all the premiers, the seven premiers of the provinces where it is an issue because of the federal involvement on carbon pricing, they seem to be lined up against it. Doug Ford is saying, and this guy's a friend of the federal government, he's saying he can't believe that they would be so stupid as not to withdraw this right now. What do you want to say about this issue? Because it is now once again the headline-making

story. Once again, after years of it, it still is. Headline-making in possibly the provinces where it applies, and I will get to that. But Doug Ford was one of the premiers who fought against carbon pricing in the 2019 election. So the fact that he still dislikes it intensely is not new. And the reason why the federal levy applies to Ontario is because the Ford government has declined to put in place a system of its own. So no surprise there. The number seven premiers is also, frankly, not very surprising. Most of those premiers have, in the past, fought the carbon tax, be it if they were around in 2019, back then, or later on. And that includes the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, who's had issue with Justin Trudeau's climate change strategy for a long time. The missing province in there is Manitoba, whose NDP government has

not joined that chorus. I'll say something about some of the rhetoric that I've heard this week from some of the premiers. I'm not sure which premier it was that said that this tax makes the cost of living unbearable. Give me a break. There is absolutely no foundation for the notion that the federal carbon tax, which comes with rebates, that 80% of the people who receive those federal rebates in the provinces where there is the carbon time get money back for those prices, but that their behavior will shift, that they will say, well, you know, I'm going to tank up less, drive less, do less of this, and I'll have more spare cash to do other things with this rebate. So I think it was one of the many people who have looked at this, maybe the parliamentary budget officer, maybe some other organization calculated that it's with three tenths of 1% on the price of food. So we are not starving people with the carbon tax. But what I find most amazing is that in Quebec and BC, two provinces where the federal levy is not applied. It is not applied because both provinces have their own system of pricing carbon, which means that people in Quebec and BC are paying out of pocket for the carbon pricing scheme in their provinces and get no rebates. And yet, you do not hear those two provinces saying, we want the rebate too.

Why are Ontarians getting $1,800 a year for the carbon pricing scheme of Mr. Trudeau, and I'm not getting it for that of François Legault or the NDP government in BC? And I find that, frankly, amazing. What that tells me is that there is more ideology than logic to this. In both BC and Quebec, the difference is that there is no party in BC or mainstream party in BC or Quebec that is advocating standing down on carbon pricing. And in fact, the schemes in place were put in place by governments of a different stripe

than the governments that are currently pursuing them. So there's a lot of noise. I can't wait if Yav Belyaev does win the election. I can't wait to see how rich people will feel once he's axed the tax and the rebates. Okay, I know Bruce wants to get in because I've been watching him wind up here for the last two minutes on it, and he's going to. But first, we've got to take our first break. Be right back.

And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge here. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. By the way, next week, Good Talk will be in Ottawa. We're going to be talking with students from Carleton University. They're going to be challenging us with their questions,

and we'll put that forward as a program next Friday on both SiriusXM, on our podcast, and on our YouTube channel. So we're looking forward to doing that. All right, Bruce, you're ready to go on carbon tax. Yeah, carbon tax for me is an example of when bad things happen to good public policy. I know it's a little bit of the vogue in Ottawa anyway to say, well, it could have been communicated better. And I think that's probably true. I think the argument that a dollar in mostly equals a dollar out or a little bit more

is something that in retrospect, in hindsight, definitely could have been established more clearly. But I think context is important here. I think that carbon tax was brought in during a period of time when people were feeling differently about the economy and the cost of living than they are. It was before the pandemic. There was a mood that was economically pretty good and environmentally quite concerned. And now people are still concerned about climate change. But what's changed right now, what's different right now is how unhappy they are about the feeling that they have about their life economically. And it doesn't get solved by showing people evidence that they're not as bad off as they think, or other countries are not doing that well either, or

GDP is better than you think that it is, or inflation rates are falling, or the interest rates might be coming down soon. All of those things may be true and may be helpful, but down the road, right now, people are saying, groceries, heating, and fuel for my vehicle are too expensive and I'm mad about it. And that is what these opposition politicians and premiers are feeding off. And it's kind of a normal thing to see in politics. But I think that it wouldn't be so hard for the Liberals to defend carbon price if those conditions weren't in place, and also if they hadn't raised questions themselves about the absolute necessity of this measure, and the idea that it should be applied inflexibly. Once you say it can be applied flexibly, which is what happened in the case of the heating exemption, it's then really hard to say, but that's the only point of flexibility.

There will be no more. And if you try to then equate that as a, you know, the analogy I think people are using is it's like Thatcher saying the lady's not for turning or somebody saying about Margaret Thatcher, the lady's not for turning. Try to elevate the drawing the line and saying no more carve outs as though it's a measure of strength and leadership. Yeah, but it doesn't hold up as an example of that kind of stalwart leadership as well, given that it was only a few months ago that a different position was taken in the context, not of it will actually make your life more affordable, but in the context of, I don't like being beat up for the cost of living today. So interest rates come down, inflation comes down, people at some point feel a little bit better about their economic situation. The carbon price would probably do okay again, but that's not now, and this is a really tough one for the government.

Go ahead, Chantal. I don't believe that Justin Trudeau will back out between now and April 1st, because the reason why this has taken on new life to this degree is because the carbon tax is supposed, or the carbon pricing scheme, is supposed to go up from $65 to $80 a ton on April 1st. Now, my understanding is that this will be happening yearly, which basically means we should be seeing a replay of that next year, much closer possibly to an election. But from listening to the prime minister this week,

it's clear to me that he is not going to back down on this increase on April 1st. But I am curious, and I will never know, but one of the reasons, let's be serious, about the carve-out for heating oil was to improve liberal fortunes in Atlantic Canada, where the concentration of people who still heat their homes with oil is located. I don't know how this story would have played out if

instead of having zero impact on liberal fortunes, this carve-out had brought Atlantic Canada back in a big way in the liberal fold. I ask myself, if that had happened, would Justin Trudeau this week be saying times are tough, we're going to forego this hike in the carbon tax? Or would he still be saying, like Margaret Thatcher, I'm not going to back down, having backed down last fall? For sure, if he did back down, he would likely lose his environment minister, which apparently the premier of Alberta thinks would be great for national unity, except that that would really damage the Liberals in Quebec,

the last province where they're not doing so badly. Here's my question. And we all seem to agree that the liberals have totally booted this from a communication strategy. Everybody seems to say that's a slam-dunking assessment. How come those who are fighting it seem to get a free pass on their argument, which is that it's a tax and we're going to ax the tax, and you're going to save a lot of money because we're going to ax the tax, where in fact,

if I understand it correctly, most people will in fact lose money if the tax is axed. Or actually see no difference. Or see no difference. see no difference revenue neutral supposedly i don't know i i just find that part of the communications mess because like people go well you know i don't even understand this if that's at the end of the day but you covered it's you covered the gst debate the gst was replacing the manufacturer's tax how often did the conservatives make that argument back then

that it was revenue neutral, that they were replacing a tax with a tax, that it was going to be more visible, that it was fairer to do it that way, etc., etc. How far did they get with that argument? All of valid arguments, as it turns out, in hindsight, soon we will be building monuments to Brian Mulroney to thank him for the GST, apparently.

But back then, there was no way that this message was getting through to people because they had an invisible tax replaced by a tax that they saw every single time. getting those bills in restaurants where it said Malroney's tax and then whoever Borese's tax, because Robert Borese also had the QST added. So you'd get these with the names of the premier and the prime minister on your bill. So the word tax is unavoidable in the case of the carbon tax, but at the time in the life of this government, it's almost impossible to get a hearing on logic or facts. Yeah, I would just add a couple of things. I remember as we're talking about this that I did research on the GST at the time. So I did do work for government then. And one of the things that I measured

was whether I asked people in focus groups and that sort of thing, whether they thought that the tax should be visible, the new tax, the replacement tax should be visible or not. And people, they said, no, don't show it to us. But the government had already made a commitment to have it very visible. And they decided they were going to go ahead with it. But the public was kind of rational, which is don't make us irate.

Which brings me to my other point, which is that to answer your question, Peter, of why can't people look at the math of this and not be so frustrated with the carbon price, there's two parts to that. One is when people want to feel irate, they're going to feel irate. And the arguments, the logic and everything else, they just go, I don't want to hear it. My groceries are too expensive. My fuel is too expensive. My fuel is too expensive. My heating is too expensive. And I've got to pay my rent or my mortgage, which I can't renegotiate. And so I'm going to blame somebody and it's going to be incumbent governments. But the other thing that's different from the GST is we live in an era where the amount of misinformation and targeted communication that

tells people things that aren't true is overwhelming compared to what it was. Overwhelming. Back when you were describing the GST to people on the national news, that was a hugely important source, a reliable source of news coverage that says this is how this is going to work. People may still not have liked it, but at least they were getting that kind of commentary through a channel that they felt they could trust and wasn't surrounded by thousands of other channels that they might not be able to trust, but are now, push to today, dialed into. So it's a lot harder for governments to meet the test that we're describing as being the test that should have been met in the original kind of design of communications around

carbon pricing. I'm not saying everything was perfect, but every year that goes by, that's harder and harder as a test for government to solve. It's not to take anything away from you, Peter, or your credibility or the national, but I will note that having this safe, solid source of information certainly didn't help the debate on the GST. It didn't move the needle in the and poor Kim Campbell, who came after. And as for politicians saying just about anything about taxes, I think Jean Chrétien and Sheila Copps would deserve also a medal for their services on describing the GST as the worst thing that would have happened on the planet to this day. And I know he tends to call, so I'll prevent this. Jean Chrétien still calls me when I say that he promised to get rid of the GST.

And my answer is the same as it has always been. No need to call. Let's just agree to disagree. Peter didn't have his beard done. But that was also an example of when people want to feel irate, they're going to be irate, and they're just going to latch on to the argument that feels right. Let me tell you a little story about the GST and when it came in.

Because I think, once again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it came in officially on 1st of January, 89, that it had passed through the House of Commons. And so quite, you know, it should have been an election issue in 88, but it wasn't. Why? Because free trade was the dominant issue. And there was a point in the campaign where,

it was after the first debate, where Turner actually did really well against Mulroney that their numbers rocketed up and it looked like a race again. But what he didn't have and what he should have had, and I can remember talking to John Turner about this at lunch after the campaign, what he didn't have was a second issue and he should have had one because the gst was just sitting there he could have made it his second issue uh as well as free trade sort of the the extra punch uh in the fight against mulroney but that didn't happen uh and the and the gst went through but then you know once it came through when Chantal started getting her frequent dinner bills,

because she's just a dinner person. No, I had an expense account. The media was richer. Weren't we all? Anyway, that's my GST story. Well, just to add to your GST story, you're right about the 88 campaign and the fact that it was a non-issue. And yes, John Turner did come out of that debate leading. It was about 10 days to the vote.

I happened to switch to the Mulroney campaign the day after the debate. And boy, did he campaign hard over that week and a half. It's a textbook. We're coming back from behind big time. But it was the Liberal Senate that put the GST on the map as a controversial issue after the election. It had been campaigned on. The legislation went to the Senate. And then remember the gazoos and people standing on desks and even poor NDP Lord Nystrom losing his memory about the Senate not being an NDP thing and going to cheer them on. That's how the GST started to become a big negative for the conservatives. I don't think they'd seen it coming.

I'm not even sure that Jean Chrétien told the Senate to do that. My memory of it is that the Senate decided to go down that path, and Jean Chrétien, leader of the opposition, kind of went along with that. And I suspect that John Turner actually agreed with the GST, which is why he never tried to make it much of an issue. Last point on carbon tax. Is there any way the Liberals can get themselves out of this mess that they've created because of either bad communication strategy or just bad strategy overall on this issue? Is it too late? Is it a

done deal in terms of the public's mood set on this? Well, look, I think there's separate questions. I mean, if the question is, will they lose the election over this? I think the answer is no. I think they will lose the election unless they change what they're doing. But no, I wouldn't focus just on this. If the question is, should Trudeau cave to this pressure or hold the line? I don't think he has any choice. He has to hold the line, as awkward as it is. I don't think that if I were him, that I would try to elevate it to a test or a proof point of that Thatcherite character. I think I would probably be a little bit more in the context of I need to say over and over again to people that a dollar comes in and a dollar goes out or roughly, right? Because people are telling you something that's not true.

So you have to tackle that mistruth that's in the marketplace as hard as you can. And you also need to recognize and acknowledge that people are feeling the pain of fuel and groceries and heating. And it's not just a problem here. It's a problem in a lot of places, which doesn't make it feel less painful. But if you don't acknowledge that, if what you seem to be saying is, we designed this wonderful policy and we changed it a little bit, but we're not going to change it anymore. You're not talking about the issues that most people are feeling, at least those middle people who aren't sort of ideologically or

hyper partisan and opposed to you. And so that's probably what I would do if I were him. I still believe that the climate change is a shield issue at best for the conservatives and that any standing down on the part of the liberals will actually help the conservatives uh because at some point i still believe there is a strong section of of voters that do want a government that does uh want to act on climate change but if he stood down on on this carbon tax issue, he would, in the end, be just like the other guy. Why would you not sacrifice Justin Trudeau and the liberals if you believe in the fight on climate change, if they're not going to do more about it than the alternative?

So I think it would be strategically, not just because they're in a mess and they can't get out of it, strategically a major gift to Pierre Poiliev to make themselves more like him on this issue. All right. We're going to take our final break. When we come back, we're going to talk about somebody

who was just mentioned there in the last few minutes and get Chantal's thoughts on Brian Mulroney, because we've missed him over these last couple of weeks. Look forward to that coming right up after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Good Talk edition for this Friday. Peter Mansbridge with Bruce Anderson and Chantelle Hebert. And you're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

our podcast platform or our YouTube channel. Whichever choice you make on a platform, we're glad to have you with us. Okay. Brian Mulroney passed away just after Chantal had left Canada for her break, so we've missed her thoughts on Mulroney over the last couple of weeks, and a lot of people have weighed in on this story, and there's been a lot of good conversations about the impact he had on Canada, on the Conservative Party, on politics in general in Canada. But we've missed your voice and people have been wondering

what it has to say on Brian Mulroney, Chantal. Well, I'm going to talk to you about the impact he had on journalism, on me as a journalist. I've said in the past, a long time ago, when I was asked, Antoine Moulin-Parle, which of the prime ministers you covered did you find the most interesting? And I've never paused before saying Brian Mulroney. He was a much better story, not just because of the drama that attended the end of his tenure, but because of the kind of issues that we got to debate. Free trade, NAFTA, abortion rights, which fell on his government's lap as a result of the Morgan Taylor ruling.

The Constitution, obviously. Now, what people don't realize is that there is a generation of us, those of us who covered Meech to Charlottetown and eventually the Quebec referendum, who got to see the country in ways that you don't anymore because of all of those traveling commissions that went on the road after Meech failed. So, you know, how often will you have a chance to spend two years of your life listening to how people feel or how they see the country in Red Deer and Winnipeg and Pentington, places where you would not go necessarily otherwise, or if you did, it would be on holidays, so we wouldn't be talking politics. Those, you know, I was watching this week, and I know it sounds unrelated, but I was watching the Quebec deliver its budget after Ontario and other provinces have done so, and the federal budget coming only at the tail end of the process in mid-April. And I was thinking, this is the government that I cover now has launched what it presents as a major expansion in the social safety net, in the shape of pharmacare.

But it has never sat with the premiers to have a conversation about why or whether we should be doing pharmacare and have the different perspectives on the issue explained to Canadians or presented to Canadians. Brian Mulroney, for all of the things that happened to him, gave Canadians an opportunity to see all sides of those major issues through First Minister's conferences. They always involve the public part. I almost sound like I'm talking about a different era

that goes back hundreds of years. But when, and not just on the Constitution, when the free trade agreement, the initial one, was negotiated, there was such a First Minister's conference. And the premiers who opposed it, David Peterson leading the charge from Ontario, got their chance to give their perspective on why they had reservations about this idea.

And Canadians got to hear the discussion. These days, we have politicians, both in Ottawa and in the provinces, who talk to each other via their social media feed. And then we have conversations like the one we just had on the carbon tax, where anybody can say just about anything. A first minister's conference on carbon pricing would have been interesting. It would have been interesting to watch the premier who said

that put an unbearable burden on the cost of living, woes of Canadians, be rebutted by another premier. So for all of those reasons, I think there are many things that Brian Mulroney did from a journalism point of view, and you all share that. It's always interesting to watch what was politics become history over the time of your own tenure as watching events. It brings to you some perspective as to what people think today may not be what they think 20 or 30 years on. I'm sure Brian Mulroney would have been amused and happy at the notion that so many people suddenly think that he was one of the greater prime ministers, because that certainly wasn't how people felt.

By the time he was done in office, he was supposed to have wrecked the country, irremediably damaged. Nothing good would ever come out of that terrible time that he was in office. So it does remind one of the need for perspective. Yeah, it's funny because the mail I've received, and there's been quite a bit of it in the last couple of weeks, is running, I don't know, eight or nine to one in terms of whether it was good for the country or bad.

Whether they liked him or not was irrelevant, just in terms of his involvement with the country. I love your discussion about the First Minister's conferences and the impact they had on us as journalists and allowing us that opportunity to travel the country and listen to the different discussions and debates. I mean, First Minister's conferences ended up getting kind of a dirty word out there and people kind of turned off them.

And the First Ministers themselves would argue they couldn't do anything in public. They had to be behind closed doors. So they've disappeared ever since those days, which is unfortunate in many ways, I think, because they made personalities out of a lot of the premiers who may well not have had that personality without that platform. Bruce, we've got a couple of minutes left. We've, you've been doing a study on, you know, in the field with research on Canadians' attitudes towards Brian Mulroney. I have. And I think I mentioned that I would probably put those data out. But I do want to read next week.

Okay. So I want to reinforce that Chantal's point about Mulroney would have been amused and happy, but also unsurprised because he always had confidence that in the end people would judge him in a positive way. And certainly from the early results that I'm looking at, that's what I'm seeing. It makes sense given the commentary that we're all hearing. But the thing that I'm kind of perhaps most interested in is it, you know, we're talking about events that happened quite some time ago. And most people can't in our surveys describe things that happened five years ago, 10 years ago from a political standpoint. So I don't think the affection that I'm seeing for him or for his record is necessarily people recalling specific policy initiatives and saying, I like the way that was done or that was done. I do think to some degree

it is people looking back on policy change and saying, well, maybe it was controversial then. I wasn't there, but it seemed like a good idea. Free trade being one of those things, for sure. The pain of the GST has long since subsided for most people. It doesn't mean that people like any taxes. But for me, the bigger question is his personality was large. And he conducted himself after being in office, his post politics career. I know that people are going to say, well, don't forget about Caroline Schreiber and all that. But he made a lot of useful public statements in the last decade or two, at different points of inflection. He, you know, if he was called upon, he might not say anything, but he sometimes did. And I've always

found that his comments were measured and constructive and helpful in terms of the direction of the country. And so I think he took care about building his post-political reputation. Well, a week tomorrow, there will be the state funeral in Montreal, the Basilica, and many of us will be there because it's a moment. And I'm going to wonder who else is there. Who will be speaking? Will Lucien Bouchard be there? Yes, the answer is yes.

Yeah, he said some nice things about Mulroney in the last couple of weeks. Both he and Josh are expected to be there. Why do I know that? Because I'm working on the new special from Gatoo Canada. Right. Well, just, you know, it always reminds me, and I mentioned this the other day, that, you know, it was a Lovex funeral in Quebec City.

I'm sure you were there, Chantal, as well. And it was such a Canadian thing for this guy. I mean, they were all lined up behind the casket as it kind of wove its way through the streets of old Quebec City. You know, the prime minister, many of the premiers, those who had been his political foes, but it was a moment. You know, it was a moment that said something about, you know, us as a country, and it'll be interesting to see what this one is like as well.

Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this week. It's great to have you back, Chantal, and Bruce, as well. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this week. It's great to have you back, Chantel and Bruce, as always. A reminder that next week our program, Good Talk, will come from one of the ballrooms in the Shadow

Laurier where we're meeting students from Carleton and we'll hear their questions and look forward to that. Your edition of The Buzz will be available at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning delivered to your inbox. If you subscribe, it doesn't cost anything. Go to nationalnewswatch.com to subscribe. You just have to place your email.

You don't have to do anything else, no credit cards or anything like that. Just your email. So that'll all be available for you tomorrow. That's it for The Bridge for this week, another good week. And we look forward to seeing you as of Monday with the Monday edition. Thanks again to Chantel, to Bruce. Have a great weekend. And we'll talkel, to Bruce. Have a great weekend. And we'll talk to you next week.

Have a good weekend. You too.