The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Who Did The Summer Benefit Most Politically - Poilievre or Trudeau?

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Chantal and Bruce drop by for a final summer. Good Talk and the topic is all politics.  After two months, did one leader get the political edge over the other?  What are the consequences of the debate over housing, inflation, and the mid-summer cabinet shuffle?  A classic who's up, who's down conversation. 

Are you ready for some summer good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. We are approaching the end of summer. Man, didn't that go quickly? Too quickly for some of us, but nevertheless, we're approaching the end of summer and this is the last summer good talk before we get back regular in a couple of weeks all right here's my first question for bruce anderson and chantelle there and why don't we start with bruce on this and the question is very simple have you already ordered your Trump indicted T-shirt, the mugshot T-shirt? I thought Bruce had just put his away.

He just took it off. He was wearing it. So I wouldn't be in the shot. I have a collection of them. I have the first indictment, second indictment. It's like buying hockey jerseys now. You want the game worn kind of day of issue and so you have to keep on buying them maybe there will be another one who knows you know we're we're not going to dwell on this for

for more than a couple of moments but it it has been a bizarre week watching this latest indictment unfold and then last night kind of took the cake and now he's going to grift off it on on the t-shirts i you know i i i am just kind of dumbfounded watching the republican debate the other night where he was not there but was there and then watching last night do you have any overwhelming thoughts you'd like to share on this scenario that's unfolding to in our neighbor to the south either one of you chantal that's uh surreal if any of us had uh a year ago or two years ago predicted something like this happening in the united states that we would have left a shred of credibility with a shred of credibility left having done this.

What's also mind-boggling, I guess, watching from a distance, not just from the distance of Canada, I'm guessing from the distance of basically most G7 and other countries, is that this person could still be elected president of the United States. I know. And when you put that, compound that with the kind of week that we've seen in Russia, it kind of makes you worry about how far or into surreal are we going to be living within the next couple of years. It did feel surreal last night.

We started with a little bit of levity about it, but I think that Chantal makes a really important point. To me, what we're watching is the fragility of democracy, and the democracy that we thought was the strongest one structurally and culturally in the world. And it isn't. Or if it is, woe betide us, because it's really, really fragile right now. The system of justice has lost tons of credibility at the hands of Donald Trump and his supporters.

There's so many people who don't believe that he's being treated fairly by their justice system. And more to the point, believe that it shouldn't really matter what the justice system thinks of him. That if they like him, that's good enough. So I'm very worried about that. The other thing that occurred to me watching the debate among the Republican candidates for the nomination the other night was it's like another reality show competition. Most of the people on that stage did not appear to be serious. There were a couple. But at the end of the day, when they asked the question, who is going to support Donald Trump if he's the nominee, a lot of hands went up.

And it reinforced for me the idea that this is not a party that's picking a leader. It's a party that looks like it's going to pick a follower. It's going to pick a candidate that's willing to roll with whatever the mood of the mob is that controls the base of the party. Also very worrying. There were six of the eight candidates put their hand up saying that even if he's convicted, if he's the nominee, they'll support him, which is, you know, really. If they're going to go that far in the first debate,

why are they bothering to run at all? They just take their chips off the table and move on. Anyway, it was surreal, as Chantal says, especially so last night, watching all that and listening to the commentary on the alleged progressive networks, CNN and MSNBC, where a lot of the conversation was about what happens when he becomes the next president,

if that's what happens. That even though we're having this conversation, it just sounds so bizarre that that conversation is taking place, given everything that's happening. Anyway, enough on Trump. Let's move on to more interesting things, which of course are what's happening in our own country. And I guess what I want to try and focus this conversation around is,

is after a summer of, you know, personal situations involving some of the leaders, professional situations, political situations, you kind of wonder where have things landed? Did any one side, and I'm thinking mainly in terms of personalities here, Polyev, Trudeau, did either one have the advantage politically over the other as the summer comes to an end in terms of what they did, what they talked about, how they acted, where they went, all of that stuff? Does somebody have the advantage at the end of the summer based on what we've witnessed in the summer. Chantal,

why don't you start? Well, I would definitely say that Poiliev comes out of the summer in better shape than when he entered it, along with his party. You can see it in voting intentions also, that the Conservatives have built a significant lead on the Liberals at this point. Not that it matters if we're going to go in an election in two years, or not that it should matter. But I believe that Pierre Pallievre and the Conservatives are coming out of the summer in part as a result of their own actions, i.e. a change of tone and an attempt to frame the leader in a less polarizing, And the hammering of the housing issue has been very effective on the part of the conservatives and on the part of their leader, much more effective than the attacks in the House of Commons on China, which certainly hurt the government, but not in the same way

or not in a way that connects to voters in the same way as housing. But I would also add that Mr. Poiliev has had a lot of help from the liberals over the summer. And the bigger assist came with this cabinet shuffle. Cabinet shuffle that to this day has yet to be explained in a rational, strategic way. And compounded with the fact that we've watched all of last year, the liberals playing catch up on the Chinese file. They were always one play behind and their play was never good enough because it was always coming too late. This is exactly the same pattern that we've witnessed on housing.

And look at this week, a cabinet retreat that is supposed to be focused on housing and that produces actually zero, except the fact that we now saw that the liberals are scrambling to try to put themselves in the housing pictures. And clearly, they're playing catch up again. So I would say not only is the Conservative Party and its leader reinforced their position this summer, but I would say that Justin Trudeau's position is much weakened, not only in the polls, but probably more significantly within his own caucus and his own party. This has been a summer that has led to, and you read the papers this week and whatever you see online, and you see prime ministers exit, resignation? Canadians want Justin Trudeau to leave. Mr. Trudeau has put that question in the frame this summer.

It wasn't Pierre Poiliev, who by now, I think, probably wants Justin Trudeau to stick around. You know, we should acknowledge that it was Chantal, as she often is, who was kind of first off the mark on one of the important stories of the summer, which was that there was a lot of unrest within the Liberal caucus after that shuffle, about the shuffle, about the leadership, about a lot of different things inside the Liberal Party. And that story has taken hold, especially so in the last month. Bruce, your general thoughts before we get into specifics on some of this stuff

in terms of how the summer played out for the last month. Bruce, your general thoughts before we get into specifics on some of this stuff in terms of how the summer played out for the two leaders. It was a washout for the Liberals. Really the worst political season that I can recall them having under Justin Trudeau's leadership. I think we've all become accustomed over the years

to following weather and looking at the information that apps provide us with. And to me, it couldn't be clearer that there are very serious storm warnings in public opinion for the liberals. At the same time, it doesn't look as though they're doing the things that they would need to do in order to prepare for the situation that's developing. Pardon me. I do think that Pierre Palliev has done a lot to rein in and soften and adapt his negatives. We can talk about some of those specific things if you like.

I think the Liberals have been on the back foot for a long time, always playing a defensive role relative to the attacks of their opponents. And that's always something that incumbents know can happen to them, but need to be able to do something very, very bold and creative in order to change that dynamic. And I don't see the evidence that that creativity and boldness is there, at least not at this moment. Obviously, one of the things that happens to incumbents is when they get far enough behind, it does tend to focus the mind. And it also creates a dynamic where people start to think about, well, what is it that we feel about Pierre Poliev as prime minister? And this is where I think that probably that I know we're going to get a lot of comments

about this. The most credit that should accrue to Pierre-Paul Lievre for what he's been doing, I think is around message. I think that when you hear him now, he's not talking about vaccination. He's not really talking much about conspiracy theories. He's talking about housing for people. He's talking about helping people. He's talking about getting more people into the healthcare system who can provide people with the health services. He's sounding like a progressive conservative leader. And for all of those people who don't know anything about his background, and that's a large number of people, their early introduction to him is happening now. I think the liberals need to be very concerned if they hope to win a fourth mandate under Justin Trudeau. And I think Chantel's right that that question is a much more open question now. Okay. Well, you've allowed us to get into one interesting part of the summer that has happened on the television airwaves and that has been, and I guess on other

airwaves as well, and that has been the introduction by the Conservative Party of their leader through promotion, through these ads showing him in everyday situations, family situations, work situations, play situations, narrated by his wife. There was a lot of discussion about this one when it was coming out as to how this would play. Is this going to be another kind of, you know, Stephen Harper in the blue sweater type thing, which kind of backfired to some degree on the Conservatives. But you've gone into the field on this, Bruce,

or you're in the field right now. What is the indication that you're finding in terms of how Canadians are reacting to these ads? Because I should say the very fact they're doing the ads or have done the ads was an indication that they felt they were needed to kind of soften that image that had been laid out about Pierre Polyev. You can debate whether it was an accurate image or not, but nevertheless, the fact they were doing these kind of ads, spending this kind of money, there was a reason to do it. So go ahead, sorry. Yeah, it's an extraordinarily effective ad. The research that I'm looking at is telling me that before seeing the ad, maybe 30% have a positive view of the conservative leader, which is very close to the Justin Trudeau number. So his numbers keep on getting better on the positive side. When we show people the ad, something like 53% say that it gives them a

positive feeling about Paul Liev and only like 12, a negative feelings. So that's the kind of signal that says the more people see this, the warmer they become towards him. I would add that another ad that I thought that I saw the other day, and I think that the conservatives are going to put some money behind in the next two or three days is one about housing, which I also think was one of the most effective partisan ads I've seen in a long time where they juxtapose quotes of Mr. Trudeau over the years talking about how he's going to address the housing issue. And alongside it, they run a scroll of what's been happening to housing

prices all the time that he's been saying that he's going to solve this problem. It's one of those ads that it's an attack ad for sure, but it's the kind of attack ad that people can look at and say, well, what's the counter argument? And I think that's a very, very difficult situation for the liberals. One of the reasons, no doubt, why they spent much of this summer retreat talking about housing. Chantal? Yes, they spent much of it talking about housing and then floated child balloons that were immediately pricked in their face. And why? Because they looked like they were improvising and going against. This week, I don't want to overstate it, but this week, the liberals, the cabinet messaging managed to do something that I mean, even if you tried to make them do it, they would have said we can't be doing this.

They managed to tie in housing issue, housing solution to having less immigrants. If the Conservatives had done that, the Liberals would have had a party at saying they're becoming anti-immigrant. The first people they point to when there is a social issue is newcomers. But here we have cabinet ministers freelancing issues like, oh, well, then maybe we should just put a ceiling on how many student visas we hand out. And where does that lead you? Foreign students, immigration, they tied themselves and they neutered

their future attacks on the Conservatives. Because one of the things Mr. Poiliev has achieved over the summer is talk about housing without talking about immigration, without joining these two and connecting these two dangerous dots that if you do connect, you're going to get a shock and you're not going to like it. But beyond advertising, that I still believe at this point reaches not as large an audience as you would in a normal election campaign. We're not there yet. It's also in the leaders' messaging.

When the prime minister was asked this week at this news conference, at the closing news conference of the cabinet meeting, what do you think, you know, the polls are bad, et cetera, et cetera. And he said, well, I understand that people or some people are angry. And the answer from Pierre Poilievre, which I thought was very effective, was people aren't angry, they're hurting. It's like you flipped the two characters from the 2015 election, the people who care or those who own this discourse over caring for people are becoming the conservatives, while the liberal leader is going around saying, well, you know, people are angry.

They're angry. Well, I don't think most Canadians at this point are looking at Justin Trudeau and are angry, but they are concerned, rattled, and certainly hurting economically. And to be told when you're in that situation that you're just pissed off, it's not great politics. Is the Polyev ad running en français in Quebec? I think, well, I don't watch television. I don't own one. I've seen online a number of ads, but I'm kind of language blind when I'm reading.

I would have to stop and ask myself, did I read this in French or English, or did I see this in French or English? So I couldn't tell you. And I could also not tell you whether those polls that showed a three-way battle in Quebec between the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the Bloc, whether they are based yet on facts or on samples in polls that are too small to really give you the real picture. But the fact is that I'm not picking up much anecdotal evidence of a blue wave in the making,

but I am also picking up a bit less Poiliev bashing. You've got to start somewhere. Look, Peter, I think we have to stop for a second and just acknowledge that it doesn't matter what else we say for the rest of the podcast the headline is doesn't watch tv i don't have one doesn't have one and of course chantal nation is not just a reader nation it's a viewer nation so they're going to be really surprised but anyway um kudos to you. I should break the habit a little bit more too sometimes, I think. I think that, you know, the liberals right now, if they're really being cold eyed about their situation, need to remind themselves that when they win, and when they win over a sustained period of time, It's usually because their values seem more aligned

with the values of mainstream Canadians, that their ambition is something that people find interesting and resonant, and if they're seen as really competent. And I think right now, that values question is fuzzy. It's not like their values are misaligned, but certainly the conservatives are looking maybe a little bit more aligned with voters on contemporary cost of living issues, that kind of thing. We haven't mentioned the carbon price and the way that it's landed in Atlantic Canada, for example. So on the values test, the conservatives who normally are at a big disadvantage to the Liberal Party in a country where 60 plus percent of voters characterize themselves as progressives are now pretty competitive. On the ambition side of things, the liberals have too many ambitions and too many of them sound like ambitions to discuss things that they've already done rather than things that are going to come

next. It's like there was a great first album in 2015 and people are waiting for the second album. What's the new music? What's the new songs? Why should we kind of reignite our passion for this party? And then the last piece is competence, where I think that if I look at the way that liberals have managed a bunch of issues, I actually think they've done a pretty competent job with a lot of important structural policies, whether it's child care, urban pricing, that sort of thing. But there are a lot of things that go bump in the night in government, things that look like they're questions that have to do with competence.

And I think they've been kind of leaking oil on that measure too. So I think they've got a lot of work to do between now and the next election. If Justin Trudeau is going to be the leader and if they're going to be successful again and, and who knows whether or not that's possible. Okay. We've got to take our first break here, but I,

it would be wrong of me not to weigh in on the major issue of the program so far, and that is... The TV. The TV issue. Must hurt. Must hurt you. It's been almost 10 years since I gave away that TV, by the way. Well, here's the way I look at it. Chantel's

dominance on the Canadian national scene is based on her journalism. It always has been. Journalism, no matter what venue you find it on, what platform you see it on. But it exploded. There's no question it exploded.

TV's been good for her. I think that's a reasonable fact. Do you want me to put flowers and pictures of you guys in front of a dead TV set so I can do that? Hey, listen, I watched it. I witnessed it. I saw it from one end of the country to the other. And there's no question that that had a huge impact.

And to listen to Chantal Berry TV forever here with her words, you know, it's hard. I mean, you know, you dance with the partner who brung you to a certain... I can still watch you on my computer. Here you are. You're doing a podcast. I mean, I don't need a TV to watch anything these days. Whatever. Did I mention the two iPads? Two iPads.

Two iPads. You have two iPads. I have two. Yes, well, I have grandchildren, so it cuts down on fights. I hand one to one and one to the other and have them do math on both. Very interesting. Okay, we're going to take that break. When we come back, there's lots more to talk about on this issue,

not on the TV issue, but on the politics issue. We'll be back with more on that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening and watching Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson are with us. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167, Canada Talks, or on the podcast on whatever various podcast platforms you watch it on,

or listen to it on, and you're also available. This is available. Spit the words out, Peter. You can also watch it on our YouTube channel, and happy to have you with us no matter what platform you are watching it on. Okay, I want to talk about two things in this segment, and one of them is the housing issue, which we have warned, and many others have, for the last year at least, that this was the incoming big issue, and incoming for some of us, present for many of us, who are troubled by the housing situation across the land.

Not too long ago, in fact, it was only a few weeks ago, maybe a month, the Prime Minister said, well, you know, it's not really a federal issue, that it's more of a provincial issue and a municipal issue. And then all of a sudden sudden he's scrambling to have a special cabinet meeting, which was based a lot around the housing issue. Does this become the issue for Canadians as we head into this one or two-year slide into an election, that if somebody doesn't grapple with this to the point of coming up with a solution,

it's going to be hanging over politicians as they're on the trail in the upcoming time. Is this the issue, Bruce? I don't think there will be just one. I think that this is obviously a very prominent concern right now. And I don't think it's going to become less prominent a concern between now and the next election. But I think it's always a bit of a mugs game to kind of imagine that we know what people are going to be talking about and thinking about. There's a lot of there's a lot of things that just kind of happen in politics that we know what people are going to be talking about and thinking about. There's a lot of things that just kind of happen in politics that we don't see coming. And so I kind of reserve my kind of vote for top issue to a later date,

maybe like day before the election is held. I do think, though, that the Liberals have had to think hard about the way that they've been dealing with the housing issue. I think the default setting over the last several years was to treat it primarily as an issue of housing for those who are low income or who are unhoused, almost a social and a redistribution issue. And that's certainly where a lot of their energy is as a political formation or as a cabinet is kind of how do we help um those who really need help uh those who are aspiring to get to the middle class as they often said but i think what's

changed about that and what had changed and maybe the liberals just didn't didn't do enough to kind of pay attention to this is that there is another whole category of concern around this which is a middle class issue it's an economic issue for people who uh find themselves in a situation where they're earning good incomes where they're doing the things that they were meant to do to kind of pay their own way build their their lives and and they have money, but they can't afford housing or housing that they want to live in. And so separating those two issues out of low-income housing versus that middle class, I've got a problem getting the thing that I thought I was going to see as my most important single investment in my life. Those are two different political issues.

And I think the Liberals made a mistake by treating them as though they were, A, maybe less important than other issues, and B, significantly more in the area of low-income housing. And it's not an argument not to solve that issue or work on that issue. The point I'm making is I think they really missed the headline issue among middle class voters who were seeing it developing and accelerating in the post-pandemic years. Chantal? So I'm going to start from political management, because I was listening to Bruce and I thought, have we not spent the past year saying the government missed, missed, missed, misread, miscalculated?

And to this day, and I'm going to go into the larger rousing issue, don't worry. But to this day, and increasingly when you talk to liberals, MPs or ministers, they will tell you that they increasingly feel that there is a disconnect between how people around Justin Trudeau's immediate palace guard, the PMO, and the rest of the world sees issues. That speaks to something that you guys have seen in previous governments at the same juncture, and that is the bunkerization of the prime minister's office and the fact that it has now become an echo chamber. One of the criticism of the shuffle was that it wasn't cabinet that needed 20 some changes.

It was the PMO that needed fresh eyes and new blood and people who have not been part and parcel of every decision of the past decade that Justin Trudeau has ended up announcing. But to go to the housing issue, some of the polling I saw showed that millennials were, that the liberals were well on the way of losing millennials, who, by the way, are the larger voting cohort now, not baby boomers. And for those who still see millennials as living in their parents' basement, millennials are 40 years old, they have mortgages and kids. And why they are angry with the government, and in this case angry and about to vote somewhere else, and that goes to Bruce's point, is because they are the with the government, and in this case, angry and about to vote somewhere else.

And that goes to Bruce's point is because they are the middle class, and they've been hit by interest rates. It's easy for us to say, oh, well, we saw those 15% mortgage rates. The millennial class, the young families that are being raised in houses have never seen those interest rates. They are within unexplored territory, and they got very little warning of it when they signed up for mortgages. And so their mortgaging culture is very different from that of those of us who started off with 15% mortgages and who played it safe probably for too long because we had lived through that experience. And I don't think the government has seen it in part because it didn't want to see it because it doesn't have an easy solution to this. Its own fiscal and monetary policy has brought this situation about. But the other

thing that is unprecedented is that it used to be, and I lived in Toronto when my kids were small and we were starting off with a mortgage. It used to be Vancouver, Toronto, large city flashpoints, and you moved a bit further away. Or in the case of Montreal, it's always been a bit less expensive. But now this housing issue, the lack of housing that is also driving up prices, is not limited to Canada's larger cities. It is a fact of life in places like Drummondville and other places where you wouldn't think that it would be an issue. You would say, well, now that you can work remotely, one solution is to move further away because you don't have to go to a city core all the time to show up at the office.

But that has also created a housing shortage in a lot of places that never really had housing issues. And it makes it a global Canadian issue. Now, Justin Trudeau was right. It's not necessarily a federal issue. It doesn't have a lot of levers. It is impossible to advance this issue without cooperation, not just from the provinces, but also the municipalities.

This week, there was talk about a housing summit that the prime minister should organize. Can you imagine a housing summit where he would only invite premiers and not mayors? But can you imagine what the premiers would say about the federal government treating mayors who are creatures of provincial governments as equal partners at a table at a housing summit. I mean, even getting to the table to have a productive conversation in the current political makeup of this country with, I'll name you three premiers, Mr. Ford, Ms. Smith, and Mr. Legault, by and large, do not get along very well with the mayors of their bigger cities. They're not on the same ideological page at all.

Have that summit, and guess where those mayors will point the finger for their housing votes? They are not going to point the finger at Justin Trudeau. They will point the finger at the premiers. Do you think the premiers are about to want to do something like this? So a prime minister in this eighth year down in the polls does not have a lot of moral authority to bring all these people together and worked to a consensus, especially knowing that he will be taking the hit in the ballot box because he's going to go to voters before most of the people I just talked about. And I just had one or two thoughts. I think the idea that the prime minister has been draining moral authority, I think, is right. I think that the challenges of creating a conversation that includes mayors are there. But I don't think there's another set of cards that Justin Trudeau starts with.

And so if he's intent on staying, he has to decide that I'm going to take some licks trying to get from here to where I want to get to on this housing issue. And so on balance, my own view is find the way to bring mayors of communities from, you know, small communities, 5000 people to large communities, to some sort of a national working summit, to talk about what the barriers are and how the solutions line up. You won't get all of the ideas that you need from that. You won't necessarily solve the housing problem right away, but at least there will be a path created that gives a sense of focus and persistence to come and that kind of thing. Because this issue, if it doesn't look like it has that effort from the federal liberals, I do think it plays more to the challengers who say, we're going to kind of break down the barriers. Because even if that's really difficult and not

credible upon closer scrutiny, it sounds better to voters. And we know how voters can be when they feel as though they've got a government that's sort of stuck a little bit, that's got this kind of almost feels like passivity, even though it uses language of activism that seems more interested in describing its past accomplishments than in leaving that unsaid and getting on with the what comes next. And that's the part that Justin Trudeau, if he really wants to win another election, if he wants to remain as prime minister, he has to look around him and say, what is it that's keeping us from doing this? Not just the housing thing, but that, that creative sense of energy that uh that you saw in 2015 uh but but hasn't been

as evident lately i want to circle back to something that chantelle said in the beginning of her latest remarks because i think it it also answers the question that you just asked what is asked bruce which is you know what is it that's restricting us from searching out those better answers? Well, part of the problem is they're not searching beyond their own offices, the PMO offices. And I can recall back in 2015 in the run-up to that campaign when they were the third party, right? And sitting in a park across from the Parliament buildings on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River with Justin Trudeau doing

sort of the pre-election campaign interview, which I did with each of the leaders. And one of the things that got around to was this issue of the the power of the PMO which we'd also witnessed through the Harper years but he wasn't shy he blamed it on his father that it really started in the late 60s early 70s with the the emergence of the Trudeau Pierre Trudeau um prime minister's office, and how they didn't, you know, backbenchers and ordinary MPs became, what was Trudeau's phrase? You know, nobody would know who they were, a block from Parliament Hill.

And so he wasn't listening to them. And that sort of kept going through the different administrations that followed. And Justin Trudeau sat there in that park and said, I'm not going to let that happen if I'm prime minister. Well, it seems to me what both of you are saying, and you're not alone, is that's exactly what's happened, which leads to some of the unrest within that caucus, the Liberal caucus, post-shuffle.

So here's my question, and it's sort of, in some ways, the elephant in the Liberal room, which is, can he survive, given the current situation? I know we've talked about this off and on over the last couple of years, but I don't think we've ever seen anything as difficult for him as things are right now. Can he survive? Who wants to take the first run at that? Well, put it this way, you guys lost the bet, I think it was a year ago when you said he would be gone by the end of that year. I would not be taking you on the similar bet. If you guys are inclined to wager that he'll be gone by the end of 2024, I'm not going to put money on the table on him staying. Not because I think he's going to leave, but I do

think that this position is weakened. It's not just, as Bruce explained really well, it's not just voters that are looking at Pierre Poilievre and being introduced to him under different terms that happened this summer. It's that many, including liberal MPs, have started to think, well, what would life be like without Justin Trudeau? And not all of them are coming back with the answer, which was the answer for most of them in the spring, we would be worse off. So, you know, Brian Mulroney, remember, had this caucus behind him, solidly behind him when he was way down in the polls,

when it clearly looked like he was going to take them to the slaughterhouse if they went into an election. And still that caucus was to a man and a woman behind Brian Mulroney. But what did Brian Mulroney do over his time in office besides great caucus management? He also changed, and someone from the conservative era reminded me of this this week, changed his PMO to suit the occasion. When free trade was the issue, he brought in people from foreign affairs and trade to be the PMO, including in comms, to be able to deal with journalists' questions. When it was unity, he brought in people who were deep into the unity file.

And that does tend to bring fresh eyes to a PMO. That's not been happening in any way, shape, or form. And we're now in a – it's funny that you talk about Pierre Trudeau and Justin Trudeau saying he wouldn't do what his father does because increasingly we're in a father knows best approach from the PMO to caucus and even to cabinet within the government. And if they were delivering great poll numbers and making their leader look good, it would be fine. But this week, I started hearing people saying, you know, I thought the election might come next spring after the next budget, which makes sense. Minority government at some point, there will be only a year to go to the term, etc. This week, I'm hearing, well, I think

we're going to go all the way to 2025. But what does that say? It also says we're going to give ourselves a lot of time. What if we can change leaders over that time? I'm not saying the liberals would be better off with a different leader. I'm just saying Mr. Trudeau has a big caucus management problem on his hands, big enough that it was discussed at the cabinet table. And in case they have not discovered the secret of politics, caucus management is not the cabinet's purview,

it's the prime minister's purview. And the last point on those Mulroney changes, often when he made those changes, he was kicking out some of his best friends, longest term allies, kicking them out may be too strong a word, but he was moving them out, which takes a certain degree of courage, I guess, in doing that. But he knew what the end game was, and he needed the help. Bruce, on this point? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We're kind of going back to that

earlier years for metaphors or analogies, I guess. And I was reading somebody that both of us have known as a great kind of columnist about Canadian politics for a very long period of time, Lawrence Martin, who wrote a piece earlier this week. And I agree with a lot of what Lawrence writes. And I love his writing style, but I didn't agree with this column. He said that this is Justin Trudeau's party, and he's going to get to decide. And I thought, you know, at least what I would do is to say it has been, but it's a question now. And he may end up getting to decide, probably will on balance, but I would not be anywhere near as convinced as Lawrence was in his piece that that's the safest bet. Why do I think that? I think that there are at least 50 liberal MPs in that caucus

who believe that on today's numbers, they would lose those seats. And that's a very real situation for those people. And they are looking at the PMO and the Prime Minister now, and they're asking the question, what are you going to do to help me not lose my seat? What is it that I'm supposed to do to help you campaign so that you're going to win this election against Pierre Polyev? There has been for months now kind of an abiding theme around the should Justin Trudeau stay, which is on the part of those who want him to stay, which is that nobody else has a chance of beating Pierre Polyev. I think that's very much in question. Not because there's any other contender that looks like they do have an advantage against Pierre Pogliev, but it looks like Pierre Pogliev might have an advantage against Justin Trudeau, which wasn't that apparent in the numbers a year ago. So I don't think that it's impossible for Justin Trudeau to mount a resurgence.

I do think that the two ingredients that are most essential to it are both absent right now. One is that next album. What is the agenda? What's the vision? What is he going to rally people around? And the second is, in this scenario, you have to be way more effectively critical of your challenger. He has to wage a war against the idea of the conservatives taking office. And I can hear people saying, oh, it's a bad idea for him to go negative because, you know, he's sunny ways and all that kind of thing. It's off brand for him. It is a reality that you need to paint that contrast

if you want people to vote for you. And it's an even more obvious reality if people are in there kind of, the only way I'm going to vote for you is a little bit of holding my nose. And that's where any incumbent government is at after eight years. Okay. I got to take a quick break. a final break, and we'll have a couple of minutes left to deal with the one leader we haven't talked about of the top three. That's right after this. And welcome back. Chantel, Bruce, and Peter here for our final segment of our summer good talk, the final summer good talk, before we go back regular in two weeks from today. Jagmeet Singh, has he been left in the dust by all the various things that have happened this summer?

And we only have a couple of minutes for this. Chantal, what would you say to that? Not necessarily, but still I am curious to see. The NDP has not had a convention since the last election, and more importantly, since it struck disagreement with the liberals to support them on confidence motions and basically ensure that they stay in office possibly for the full term. That's going to happen in mid-October. Now, the polls haven't shown any big boost for the NDP as a result of what's happening to the

liberals, which has to be troubling to both the NDP and progressive voters in general, but nor have they suffered tremendously from it. So I'm curious to see what the NDP members will make of, you know, where the party is at under Mr. Singh two years into this third term and under the auspices of this agreement. The buzz I hear from new Democrats is that they believe that they can still, they are in the best position that they can hope for, looking at the entire picture, that they have no interest. And that's certainly true. And creating the conditions for a winning conservative government,

especially not a majority government, that they will never have more leverage than they have now. Or that they may have, if there are discussions, after a weak liberal victory in the next election. But no one is seriously looking at Mr. Singh as someone who will become the next prime minister. And no polls has ever suggested that this was in the works. So it's kind of a wait and see position for them.

I think the polarization between and the more polarization that Poiliev brings to the scene, the worse it is for the NDP, because it makes the choices darker for voters. If you don't want the conservatives, you're not necessarily going to vote for the NDP. So I'm guessing that because the softening of the image of Pierre Poiliev has mostly worked over the summer, that probably makes it an OK summer for the NDP. Bruce? Look, I think that the ascendancy of Pierre Polyev is potentially a terrible thing for Jagmeet Singh, but it could also be a good thing for him. And the good things, so a little bit different take, I think. I mean, I think the terrible thing is the polarization creating that sense of, holy cow, if you're a progressive voter and you see Pierre Poliev becoming prime minister, you really feel like you better vote for the party that has the best chance of winning that election. act together in terms of political management and aspiration, ambition, communication, agenda,

their position as the second party to a Polyev government isn't guaranteed. In some circumstances, I can imagine a situation where people are saying, I'm just not hearing anything from the liberals. I think Pierre Polyev is probably going to win. The NDP says things that are more pertinent to me in language that is more persuasive to me. So I'm going to cast my vote for the orange candidate. I'm not predicting that that's going to happen, but I'm saying I don't consider that an impossible scenario that Jagmeet Singh ends up catching a lucky bounce out of the disaffection or disinterest in the Liberal Party if the Liberal Party doesn't burnish its credentials. The last factor, though, for them, and a lot of it has to

do with what happens in the U.S. election, but also the timing of the Canadian election relative to the U.S. election, is that if we do see the ascendancy of Donald Trump again, that's going to be a wake-up call for progressive voters here. And that could be a pretty bad thing for Jagmeet Singh, because most of those voters who'll be worried about that are mostly centrist voters and are not going to lurch for the NDP because their language on climate change or other issues is a little bit more edgy. Awesome. Can I just say about the notion of the NDP in second place that one, it sets aside the reality that the Bloc Québécois exists, and two, that the only time the NDP ever came to second place was because of an orange wave in Quebec. There are many things that I'm willing to waste money on,

but I'm not going to waste a dollar on an orange wave in Quebec in the next federal election. I need to, in case it sounded like I was predicting the NDP finishing second. I wasn't saying that. I was saying that there are scenarios where it could be better for Jagmeet Singh if people think there's futility to voting liberal because the conservatives are going to win, and that could be a bit of wind in their sails. Let me be fair. You said the second place for the Liberals is not guaranteed. You're right. But at this point, the Bloc is in a better position to then take that second place than the NDP.

And the Conservatives would then have a big majority at the expense without Quebec in it, which is kind of a weird result. I love it when you two argue. That's good. Okay, we're done. We're done for our summer good talks, two of them this year, one in July and this one here in August. We're back two weeks from today with the regular good talk. As the bridge goes back on air, the summer hiatus is over. As of Tuesday, September the 5th, day after Labor Day, we're back.

And probably on that day, Tuesday, Brian Stewart will be with us. And there's lots to catch up on the Russia-Ukraine story. And Brian will be here to do that. But for Chantel and Bruce, thanks so much for the summer appearances. And we'll talk to you again, both, very soon. Take care, you guys. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye.