The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - Will Texas Change The Canada-US Relationship?

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

National security experts say Canada should be re-examining its relationship with the United States -- will we? And Canada's airports are a mess -- why isn't the government doing anything about it?  Chantal and Bruce with their Good Talk thoughts.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto. The final Friday in May. I don't know, maybe it's getting older that makes time go faster, but this spring seems to have gone by in a bit of a flash. And to think that it'll be June next week. It's just, what can I say? It's gone fast. Well, today won't go fast because we've got lots to talk about. Or at least I hope it won't go too fast.

Chantel's in Vancouver today. She's out there in beautiful BC. Bruce is in Dornick, Scotland. And as I said, I'm in Toronto. I want to start on this subject. You know, we all grew up, at least I grew up with this, you know, the echoing in my ear always was the term about our relationship with the United States. You know, the longest undefended border in the world, the greatest of allies, the greatest of friends,

all those things. And I'm assuming all those things were true as we were saying them through many decades. Now, that made it interesting this week on Tuesday when a task force of national security experts came down with a number of conclusions about the state of relationships for Canada. Keep in mind, this was the day literally within hours of that gunman walking into a school in Texas and killing 20 kids and two teachers. And it was just a horrific scene. So not related, of course, but they just happened to happen at the same time.

One of the conclusions of this task force of national security experts was that Canada should re-examine its relationship with the United States. Now, we've kind of hinted at this discussion before, but this was like right there in black and white in the study report on a day when we, I'm sure many people were saying things about the differences between our two countries and wondering about what this actually means. So why don't we have a little chat about that? And Chantal, why don't you start us on this issue about the relationship with the United States and we should, and whether we should re-examine it, especially on these grounds of security. Okay. Well, I'm going to start with the, the larger picture,

the terms of engagement. I think most Canadians realize did change over the course of the Trump presidency for one, and we're not restored. So it wasn't just a one-off. We're not restored to the way things were before, much as Canada might have craved that return under the Biden administration. Why?

Because the political forces in the United States, any administration, including the Biden administration, do not go the way to a return to the old normal. The new normal is more complex, more complicated. At the same time, the gap is actually growing as a result of what is the norm now in the American political discourse. It's not just guns, which has been a longstanding issue. It's also abortion rights.

And those are issues that go beyond how we handle the Canada-U.S. relationship. I think what this report tells you is that while our trade interests have not changed, we're not going, for decades, the debate was over how we were too dependent on trade with the US and we were going to diversify. And part of Jean Chrétien's approach to China was part of that general idea that we can suddenly become a country that does not depend on its next door neighbor for

much of its trade and its economy. I don't think that's changed. And I think the work on that front is going to be always ongoing and always essential. We're not going to be going on our own and pretending both on defense and on trade that we can ignore our geography and what it does economically and militarily to our position in the world. There are risks to being neighbors to the United States, by the way, when people say we depend on the U.S. for defense. Yes, but maybe we wouldn't need as much defense if we were far away from one of the largest superpowers on the planet. When it comes to security, I'm going to tie it into events we saw this week in this province where I am this morning. And that is the event that Prime Minister Trudeau did not attend on the advice of security service forces because demonstrators were waiting for him,

and the demonstrators that were waiting for him are not the usual demonstrating type. I mean, you've covered prime ministers a lot. I have too. Prime ministers routinely attend events where there are demonstrators outside, and it's not a security concern. But these were much as part of the truckers, so-called truckers, convoy in Ottawa, people who clearly had signs and violent intentions that went after guests with racist taunts that wanted to hang the prime minister. And what the report points to is that there is a section of Canadian public opinion that

is being energized by the alt-right extremist discourse in the United States. And that now, after 9-11, the biggest security concern was jihadist terrorism. And it did manifest itself in all kinds of ways across the world. But at this point, the biggest security trap in the minds of security experts comes from alt-right extremists. And on that basis, there is a connection between the U.S. and Canada to the level of national security that wasn't there before. It's not just people are coming through the border to do things in Canada.

It's the connection between this movement, which has gained a lot of ground in the United States and has been encouraged by the Trump administration, frankly, and by Fox News, go down the list, that is building up to a fringe movement in Canada on the theory possibly that Canada is a softer target security-wise. What happened to Jack Mead saying and Peter Borrell? I mean, all these things stack up.

How, when the last federal election campaign, how the prime minister was felted with stuff, journalists felt threatened, really. All of this signals a shift, and you cannot divorce it from the way we look to the U.S. and how we organize our domestic security versus the way that the United States discourse is evolving in a certain sphere. I think that's the biggest change, not the geopolitical reality of Canada. Bruce?

Well, I don't think there's any doubt that compared to 15 or 20 years ago, the U.S. has to be seen as a more unstable and unpredictable player in the world context. And because of the size of the dimension of our relationship, you could make a case that we are more at risk of the vagaries of America's unpredictability. And certainly, we've seen a lot of evidence of that. So I think, you know, if we think about the way that the US presented itself to the world as I was growing up, and as you guys were growing up, there was a pretty clear relationship between the United States and Russia. And it was a difficult relationship. It was marked by Cold War tensions. And there was always this sense of these were the two great superpowers in the world, and they don't see eye to eye on the way that the world should work. And that military tension between them

was something that we were kind of enmeshed in and saw as being essential to our collective security. If you look at the American government today, it's hard to know who's going to define that relationship with Russia in the future. It's hard to know what kind of Russia there's going to be in the future. But it's far less clear where America stands on that. And the influence of right-wing opportunism and right-wing media like Fox News and people like Donald Trump in that context has been huge in the last several years, which really has served to reveal that there aren't any kind of anchors anymore underneath

the U.S. political system when it comes to the role of the United States in the world. And you don't have to just look at Russia, you could look at the relationship that Donald Trump tried to develop with North Korea. You can look at the relationship back and forth, up and down, hostile or friendly with China that didn't really have any sense of direction to it. And the China question for me, similar to the way in which the Trump administration and a lot of Republicans started talking about the relationship with NATO, it wasn't so much that you could think, okay, this one person is going to redefine America for the world, and that will be the course that America's on. What it really revealed,

I think, is that there's no certainty in terms of where the rudder of America will be, what kind of America we're going to see in the future. Obviously, those kinds of questions have tremendous implications for the economic relationship and the social issues that transcend our borders between our two countries. Chantal mentioned abortion rights, and we can see that the influence of the US debate on Canada is notable. So far, I think it's served to clarify how different we are in our approaches on things like abortion or guns, for example, very much in the news right now. But Chantal's point about the influence of right-wing actors looking to disrupt democracies,

looking to destroy policies that they've considered to be alien to their interests, that's a very powerful trend. And it is crossing the border. There's no question about it, and it is infecting the U.S. political system in a serious, serious way. And the last thing I would say is that when Trump attacked Canada, I think a lot of people on our side of the border expected that there would be some American voices that would defend Canada. You know, he was saying pretty aggressive and negative things about us, many of which were completely untrue, but nobody really did. And I think that if we look at the American body politic, you know, the safest conclusion

is that's not going to change. That progressive people in the United States are really worried about a lot of other things that are very close to home risks for them. Before they would ever get to worrying about, is America treating Canada okay, there's a long laundry list of other preoccupations. And conservatives in the United States are fighting a bigger, harder version of the civil war that we see going on in the conservative movement in Canada. You know, you used to be able to look at the Republican Party and say, well, it's going to be fiscally conservative, it's going to be trade oriented, it's going to be more globalist than not,

because that's where the business donations want it to be. But you can't rely on that version of the Republican Party anymore. And so that's another measure of uncertainty and also a question that hangs over our economic relationship and what we can expect going forward. So I'm with those for sure who say we need to be more vigilant about those risks. There's only so much we can do about them, but we need to recognize that they have grown a lot. Okay, well, let me pick up on that last point, because I think you both painted a pretty graphic description of the relationship and the challenges in the relationship. Right now, the question becomes, what can you do about it? And, you know, I'm not sure what the answer is.

We're not going to build a wall, real or imagined, you know, real or virtual. You know, there's things you can't change the proximity of our two nations is one the huge trade um relationship that exists uh between the two countries um i suppose you could block fox news if you if if you wanted to take those kind of actions but i'm not sure that's going to happen. So like, what do you do when, when they say re-examine the relationship? Okay. We can re-examine it and come to many of the same conclusions.

So the two of you just did, but is that, is that reason to do something in a concrete term to change the relationship? And if there is, what could you do? I think we've already changed the way we address the relationship? And if there is, what could you do? I think we've already changed the way we addressed the relationship in a number of ways. And that happened thanks to Donald Trump. We are less White House focused administration to PMO than we were in the past. And I think the first years of the Biden administration,

because they didn't bring this expected warmth, have actually been a good thing from that standpoint because they have probably convinced those who believe that Canada could stand down on keeping more channels open, that this was not a good idea, that it had to be done. I also, I don't think there's, and build a wall is the opposite of what you want to do. You actually want to keep talking. That is how you resolve issues.

So you, but possibly to do it from a less naive point of view. I watched the federal transport minister coming back from a visit to the U.S. saying that he was feeling a change in the tone and the tenor. And he sounded almost wistful that maybe we were coming back to the old days. I don't think that's on. And I don't think it's worth entertaining in any way, shape, or form. But I was struck this week, we talk in this country a lot about divisions, and we talk about movements or parties that cater to the alt-right speech. But on gun control, we are more split politically than we have been on abortion rights over the past

decade and a half. But I have not heard a single mainstream Canadian politician from whatever party stripe say this week that what happened in that school in Texas showed that we should review our stance to better defend our kids with guns. That doesn't happen. Every time these events take place in the U.S., we are reminded of how many of our differences are on the margin of larger debates and not on core principles. And if any mainstream politician had been saying the kind of things you heard from Republican politicians in the U.S., that person would be out, possibly housed by his or her own caucus in the process. I think it's important for us to actually take note of that. A final point, it is tempting, and it's very Canadian to say,

people who actually share some of those views that most of us find looking to the U.S. extreme or unacceptable have no place anywhere. But the last thing you want is to exclude people from the conversation. And I'll go back decades to what was happening in Quebec with the FLQ and terrorism before the Parti Québécois became a political force. One of the reasons the FLQ disappeared was not just that Quebecers abhorred violence or that the federal government sent in the army. It was because a lot of the people who felt that it was giving voice to their frustrations, found a political outlet to express it. You could say that on a different level about the advent of the Reform Party. So there was always this tendency to say, well, these people are unacceptable and they

should have no place in the system. A lot of people who are looking at these views actually feel excluded. They're not people who want to take up arms, really, but they're not hearing anyone saying, I'll at least listen to you and have a conversation with you on those terms. You're not going to convince them, but our political system fails when it fails to give voice democratically to people who have a point of view that the majority feel is unpolitically correct. Bruce? Yeah, I listened to what Chantal was saying, and I want to believe everything that she said as fervently as she said it. And I have some doubts about some of it.

And I'm probably wrong about it. And it feels more right to be optimistic was making earlier, which is that the influence of misinformation and disinformation has been creeping along and the tide is gathering a little bit of speed. And sometimes we don't notice how many completely nutty views there are because so many people have had their thoughts affected by this misinformation. And I think I mentioned to you the other day, Peter, that we've just completed a study, the bulk of which we're going to start to put out next week, where we tested a bunch of conspiracy theories. And I'm not going to scoop all of that today, but I will say there are 3 million Canadian adults, according to our our survey who believe it is

definitely or probably true that covet vaccines include chips to monitor or control our behavior now we can look at that and say that's 10 it's not you know everybody but it's not nobody. And when we're looking at maybe what is the most important dynamic in our was stolen from Trump, which is more than 3 million Canadians believe that that is definitely or probably true. We're in more trouble than we want to admit sometimes. So let me leave it there. I really want to believe our kind of knowledge defenses are sturdier and our value defenses are more profound. But I am worried that there's been a creep on those and that our ability to influence the level and nature of information that people consume, whether it's from the media or from governments, is not what it used to be all right before we leave it can i just ask this um did the texas story change the equation on this relationship question and bruce you first no i don't think that it did i think it if anything it just reinforced the vast majority of uh canadian opinions that america is is kind of messed up about guns and that that we're not when it comes to assault rifles and um you know i know the government is sort of talking the federal government is

talking about doing more in this area and that you know from what i can see there's not really any reason from a public opinion standpoint why they they couldn't or shouldn't um obviously there's been some degree of controversy in canada in the past about gun control measures but there's less of it now especially for a conservative party that wants to have more success in urban areas it knows that making gun control kind of a high profile issue is not a way to do that. I think the big, if it caused any change, it reinforces the fact and again, Chantal mentioned that what conservative or Republican politicians like Ted Cruz were saying in the wake of this would be shocking, even in the Canada that has more misinformed and disinformed people. As I said, it still would be shocking and appalling and it would be canceled. I agree with her about that. I think it's one of those things where if you try to say, well, the answer is to have only one door at schools and have armed guards there, that just sounds like the world upside down.

And from serious U.S. politicians, it's frightening to see. The fact that you were nodding your head in agreement, Chantal, with Bruce's initial point on that question, I assume means that you agree? Well, from where I sit, the debate over abortion in the US is more of a watershed moment than the events in Texas, which only leads one to say, and this isn't a Canadian reaction, it's a reaction in France and in the UK, which is, how can you have these things happen and nothing changes? But it doesn't make you say, I'm seeing the United States differently because they have been having this and not making changes for so long that up to a point, you just kind of feel sorry for parents of children who have to grow up in an environment that means you bring your kids to school and they don't come back. Didn't you two also watch Joe Biden and feel a certain sense of the impotence of the office of the president in this area?

I mean, they've all been impotent on it, but there was something about the emotion with which he presented his thoughts and the fact that he almost seemed to be acknowledging that he wasn't going to be able to do anything about it because the country wouldn't wouldn't go along with it um but it's not it's not to see but it's not the country uh and and on this i have my my share of criticism about with the way we move to political financing, but the notion that we have banned huge donations from pressure groups like

the NRA and others, and that there is not a politician in the House of Commons that owes his or her election to some big organization writing up a big check to send them there. And I feel that that makes a big difference. Because if you only have, you know, if people were elected on the same financing basis in the US, you could probably make changes. The reason changes are not being made is not so much that Americans don't want them, it's that they can't get to their elected officials because money and big money is actually calling the shots on this. And that is, you know, with our disclosure rules now,

it would be hard for anyone running for anything to have NRA-associated lobbies in a major way influencing outcomes. I'm not saying that there's no gun lobby in Canada that's sending money or its members are being asked to help someone. That's happening. But this is really different from the numbers we've seen this week. The person who came closest to calling it as it is, as you two just mentioned, was Steve Kerr, the basketball coach, who in a moment of outrage before a playoff game said,

I'm not talking about basketball, I'm talking about this. And he talked about it for three or four minutes and he was furious and passionate and emotional. And it was all about the power that's given by money to 50 senators in the u.s senate and you know that his outburst came just an hour or so before biden's speech and there was no comparison i mean if biden had done that you know that would have been biden's speech we'd be replaying it all the time not steve kerr but anyway the the sad truth before we move on the sad truth on the texas story is that while americans are focused on it right now and deeply upset by it and many canadians are too and many as chantelle says many people around the world for all the reasons she mentioned while that's happening you know you know that by early next week the middle of next week at the latest

you know the media tents will have been gone from that little town of 15,000 people all they'll have left is memories of their kids who were slaughtered. Beyond recognition, they had to do DNA tests to find out who was who. And the country will have moved on. We'll be on to watching the next either horrific episode in the U.S. I mean, I was so upset, and I know a lot of other people were, that I sort of gave up. Like, I give up on America.

I was a little more colorful in my language than that when this happened because we have just seen it so many times, and nothing happens, nothing changes, and they move on, and you get a speech from a president and all those speeches, when they run all the clips together now, going back to Clinton, they're all the same. Same phrases, same words, same message. Nothing happens. All right.

Let's take a quick break and we'll come back with uh our next topic back in a moment and welcome back you're listening to good talk, the Friday episode of The Bridge, right here on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. Chantelle is in Vancouver today and Bruce is in Dornick. And you two should be the ones to talk about it because you're either just got off a plane or just getting on a plane, both of you. And the odds are at some point you're going to be passing through a major airport in Canada, whether it's Pearson or Montreal or wherever. And man, the Canadian airport system has, in major cities anyway, has come to a thundering halt and that's you know this has been for the last month or six weeks i know when i i came back from europe six weeks ago four weeks ago it was that way and it's still that way in fact it's even worse and it's because uh there's a variety of reasons but it it seems to boil down in most cases certainly at pearson in toronto canada's busiest airport that they're understaffed they're understaffed on the in the

areas of security there's a huge backlog at security lines i mean it's just like crushing you got to get there hours not one or two hours but three or four hours early if you really think you're going to make your flight and the pressure now seems to be gathering around the federal government so why can't they do something why haven't they done something how long is this going to go on is it going to ruin everybody's summer at a time when so many people have looked forward to this summer thinking that COVID's over? It's not. But where's the blame lie here? Is it the airline's problem?

Is it the government's problem? Is it COVID's problem? And what is it, Bruce problem and what is it Bruce you start well look I think that there are lots of areas where of the economy where we're seeing labor shortages we're seeing people really struggling businesses really struggling to get back to where they were this is really high profile it's pretty painful to watch it's more painful to watch. It's more painful to watch, I think, because nobody really is talking about how it's being managed, how bad it is or not, where it's bad, where it's not so bad, when we're going to see an end to it, what measures are being taken. There's a

pretty comprehensive lack of information that can help people feel reassured about it from the federal government. So that's where I do think that the bulk of the responsibility lies. And I think it's one of those areas of pandemic management that, you know, should have been foreseeable. There should have been a plan to ramp up and communicate. If you knew that these problems were going to exist, having a system in place where there would be a bit of a dashboard online somewhere where you could go and say, how's Montreal's Trudeau Airport today? How's Pearson today? What's happening at Vancouver? And I haven't seen any effort on the part of the federal government in

terms of the political communication about this that matches the degree of frustration that you hear anecdotally from people who are experiencing these problems. And some of the media coverage would suggest that it's well on time for the government to get on with that, to do a better job of kind of managing the public understanding. And I would just add as well that I have a lot of empathy for people who've been in the hospitality and tourism industry for the last couple of years. It's been a really, really difficult time for them, for lots of businesses. But, you know, a lot in that business in particular really, really had to struggle to get through. And, you know, what a frustration it must be for them to see these snafus in our travel system at the moment where they have a chance to replenish their coffers a little bit, rebuild their businesses a little bit. So it's disappointing to see and hopefully it gets remedied quickly and at least that there's a better system for informing people

what uh what to know and what's being done to try to make it better okay i'm gonna give you some anecdotal evidence of what i saw this week since I traveled from Montreal to Vancouver. And I will be heading to the airport hours before my flight back because every echo I've heard about security at Vancouver Airport domestically is that I may be spending the morning in a Nexus line. And the Nexus line is the fast lane. For one, let me mention that Trudeau Airport in Montreal in mid-morning on a Wednesday was totally fluid domestically, and I got through security in 45 seconds. That's that. But things I saw. One passenger was coming home from an international flight and connecting to the flight to Vancouver and was stopped for a random COVID test, which took whatever time it took

that she almost lost or missed her connection. But upon coming on the plane, some of her travel mates said, so what was the result of the test? And the answer was, I'm going to get an email in three days. Now, you tell me what the point of that was, that this woman almost ended up having to spend a day and a night in Montreal before getting home from overseas for a random test whose results she will get in three days. So, meanwhile, she's flying acrossewan on WestJet this morning, came in on WestJet earlier in the week. Suddenly, WestJet has rejected the vaccine passport that she used coming in that was perfectly okay, but now the system will not accept it anymore. How could that be? You're okay on Tuesday, but you're not okay on Friday anymore?

So you look at all those examples. We know now that people who have been vaccinated can give you COVID if you're vaccinated. We know that. We know that you can catch it for a second time. What we do know also is that vaccines, for the most part, made the symptoms milder. But knowing all this, it is probably time when we review, for instance, this random testing thing that you get tested, get on a flight, and in three days we'll tell you if you made anybody else sick. I am not saying take away the masks on airplanes.

I'm saying if you combine a labor shortage in airports with all those new things that airport staff has to put up with, half my flight was called to the gate because their vaccine passport did not come through properly when they got their boarding pass. And then the people at the gate had to check every single one of them who all had vaccine passports. But at this point, I am not sure that it makes any sense to ban unvaccinated Canadians from traveling. The point of that was to convince more and more people to get vaccinated. If you're not vaccinated now, you probably never will be. But the other argument was you're going to feel safer because no unvaccinated person is going to be next to you. Well, we know that doesn't matter. It's a risk to them that they may catch COVID from me who has been vaccinated four

times. And it seems the federal government is sitting there and not thinking any of this through. And they have to. Every other jurisdiction in this country has reviewed its COVID protocols. But the federal government has maintained this random testing makes no sense thing. They have maintained the vaccine mandates to get on planes. And I understand the intent back then. But at this point, it's contributing to a problem that will get worse because we are not at the height of the tourist season. If you think today is bad, just wait for the end of June.

I just wanted to add something that, you know, I've been thinking about this vaccine mandate thing. And obviously I think we were all in the same place on the importance of vaccine mandates as a way to get the largest number of people vaccinated in the shortest time possible to end the pandemic and turn it into something more manageable as a health issue. And so the question of whether or not that means that you are always for the same mandate is a separate question.

It needs to be dealt with with the same rationality as went into the first calculation. And Chantal's point about there in our surveys, we see 10 percent of adults who are unvaccinated have no shots. Those people are not going to get shots. I think it's, you know, I'm an optimist. I'm a glass two thirds full kind of guy. And I want those people to get shots, but they're not going to get shots. So then the question is, what is the follow-on effect of continuing those mandates except to continue the conversation that has a divisive, fractious,

and kind of inefficient quality to it in terms of how it manifests itself in things like air travel and airports and that sort of thing. I don't think that if the government, the federal government moved away from that position, that anybody would say, well, they got scared by the anti-vaxxers or they didn't really believe in the science or anything like that. I think there's really no risk other than if you believed that another wave more dangerous is almost upon us and that doing anything differently would somehow make us more vulnerable. But I happen to believe that all of the people who got vaccinated, even those who stopped at two shots, if there was another wave of infection, another risk, they're the same people who are going to listen to the health advice. They're going to take the measures that they took before.

So I'm a little bit frustrated with where those kinds of things sit right now, as Chantal is, and Peter, I presume from what you said that you feel the same way about that yeah no I I do I find it we're so far behind other parts of the world not all parts but you know like Europe has moved on like none of this exists in Europe anymore and we and there is this sort of inconsistency about our approach while we're still got the mandates in place and to a degree and you have these crazy systems of you know random checks and three days before you get a result which is creating these you know huge super spreader events in our airports i mean when you're locked in on those security lines it's

unbelievable how many people are there when i came back from uh from europe in the customs area it was you couldn't move it was body on body with hundreds if not thousands of people crammed into the small space holding their like pass, waiting to get to their, allowed to go to one of those machines. I mean, it was crazy. It was like it was crazy. If one person had COVID there, everybody was going to have it in a small circle around them.

I mean, it just makes no sense. And it's just frozen the system. And I thought, I get it for the first few days, maybe a week. But this has been like more than a month, six weeks anyway. And it's no better today than it was at the beginning of this. And there's no seeming cure in sight. And the ministers of transport are going around with answers that don't make a lot of sense at this time it's it's the whole thing is nuts it's your fault peter you have forgotten

how it works to take away your liquids and show your computer at security that's you know you watch i did not see very many more clueless travelers than I used to see pre-COVID. So I don't think that excuse really works that we're all so rusty that we're causing this. But I've watched the exchanges in the House of Commons from the conservatives have been pushing on this for a number of weeks. And it seems that the government and its response from the prime minister on down still believes it's back in September in an election campaign. It looks like they don't hear themselves

or they don't see themselves as they are doing this because you watch and you think, give me a break here with this. We have your back, so we're going to make sure you're in a super spreader event with all your kids after a long, long flight this summer. Okay, we're going to take our last break and we come back. Good vent there. We had a good vent there. We did have a good vent.

We've only got a couple of minutes left to update on the conservative leadership uh race and the introduction of the debate surrounding a couple of uh quebec laws um and what it actually says about where some of these contenders are uh and whether it makes a difference uh we'll do that right after this are and whether it makes a difference. We'll do that right after this. And we're back. Peter Mansbridge in Toronto, Chantelle Iberi in Vancouver, Bruce Anderson in Dornick. All right. The conservative leadership race had its final debate.

It was the French language debate. So I'm not sure what kind of a national audience there might have been for that. But I imagine, as things often go, there was a heavy audience in Quebec. And some of the discussion, not all of it, but some of the discussion centered around a couple of controversial Quebec laws, one of them a language law, that has seen some of the,

or at least one of the leading contenders, have different positions at different times on this question. And so the, Polyev's opponents were trying to expose him on that. So at the end of the day, did what happened at that debate on that issue make any difference at all? Chantal. On the big picture, something did happen this week. It didn't just happen on the conservative leadership podium. It also happened on the larger national stage with Defense Minister Justice Lemaitre forming up, you know, or going through the door that the prime minister had left open

to become an intervener in the challenges to Bill 21 on secularism in Quebec, and eventually Bill 56, the new language law. What ties those two together, because they are two different topics, is the use of the notwithstanding clause preemptively, i.e. both bills do things that could be challenged in court based on the charter, you have to think that if that's the way the clause can be used, any provincial government or federal anywhere in this country on any issue can suspend charter rights to put in legislation that fits its own purpose. So the federal government had always said we would not exclude intervening and the ongoing court challenges.

Now they're saying we will be intervening. And at the same time, so that takes care of the liberals. And I would say that what was said this week by Justice Minister Lumethi was in response to internal caucus pressure from Quebec MPs who were telling Justin Trudeau, look at this language law. You know, our community is up in arms, the Anglo community in Quebec. And where are we on this? So by saying we will intervene on secularism, they are implicitly saying we will also be there for core challenges of the new language law. The Conservatives.

I would say what we saw this week on the debate podium is that the Conservative Party has now changed its position. The position of the Conservative Party under Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole was, if you elect me prime minister, I swear that I will never intervene in a challenge of Bill 21. Now, on the debate stage in Quebec, Jean Charest said what to me has always been the obvious, by the way, and it is that the government of Canada has a duty to defend Canadian legislation, including the Charter of Rights and Freedom. And so if and when the Supreme Court looks at the issue, he as prime minister would be an intervener in the case. And then went after Pierre Poiliev, who had mostly stuck with the usual position of the Conservative Party so far.

And Pierre Poiliev did shift on it and said, used the announcement from the federal government earlier in the day to say the federal position is now that Canada will intervene. And if I became prime minister, I would maintain that position. You do know that Patrick Brown has been on a crusade against Bill 21 for longer than he has been a candidate for the leadership.

So what that means is that whoever is elected leader of the Conservative Party will, on Bill 21, be joining challenges in court. And that also means that no one can score points of someone else in Quebec on it or of someone else outside Quebec on it, because they have now come around to the same position. I don't think it changes the nature of the campaign. I think Jean Charest, up to a point, was trying to score points off Pierre Poiliev, mostly outside Quebec, where opposition to Bill 21 is higher. And remember, Jean Charest used to be a liberal leader in Quebec, and the liberal base in Quebec is not a friend of Bill 21 or Bill 56. But on the language law, final point, there was a question that eventually revolved around Bill 56 and both Jean Chagall and Pierre Poiliev studiously avoided the two words Bill 56. So the focus is on notwithstanding clause and Bill 21. There are plenty of conservatives who actually like the notion that we would normalize the notwithstanding

clause. Social conservatives would like it. It could have been used to suspend rulings that allowed abortion to become a right or same-sex marriage. So if there is any impact to this, it might be among the social conservatives who actually liked the idea that Quebec was breaking new grounds that would make it easier for a prime minister to use it on social issues. All right, Bruce, you got two minutes.

Yeah, I think that there is an awkwardness to this position that effectively Jean Charest pushed Pierre Poliev to take. Awkwardness for Mr. Poliev because I think that his version and his theming of freedom is so imperfectly defined that the more he has to take positions like, that he probably would rather have avoided clarifying. That's not that's not great from his standpoint. By the way, we are putting some data out tomorrow that shows how many people in Canada think they lack freedom to live their lives the way that they that they wish. And it's I can tell you, it's a it it's a small number. And it's a small number among conservatives is only 20% among conservatives who feel like they lack the personal freedom that they would want to live their lives. And it's even smaller when you say this is Canada,

less free than other places in the world. But to get back to your question, I don't think that there are very many politicians who really relish taking the federalist, pro-charter, anti-Quebec language law position. I don't think it feels very much like a kind of a prominent public concern, the kind of thing that you really want to spend that much of your energy talking about. But I think Jean Charest took the position that was logical for him and defensible for somebody who wants to be prime minister. And so it's encouraging that others in that party decided that they had to take a similar position, even if it's a little bit late and sluggish for some of them. It's better than the position I think that they had before. And i don't think it's going to change the dynamic very much i i i really can't see how it would okay when we uh gather at this time next week it'll be the first friday in june at that

point it'll also be the first friday after the ontario election which is next thursday and it should be um well i don't know how interesting it's going to be to to talk about if you if you believe in in polls they all seem to be pretty much the same in the sense that uh the doug ford has the possibility of a second majority government uh in, in his grasp. The NDP yesterday was saying they've suddenly noticed that they have a wind at their back. Now, I've heard that before from all kinds of different parties who were trailing, that they got a wind at their back in the final week. But strange things can happen on the way to the ballot box.

You never know. So we'll have lots to talk about, I'm sure, next Friday as a result of whatever the result is on Thursday night. That wraps her up for this day. Another fascinating conversation. I thought it was really good, and it was great because nobody pounded on me this time, so I just sort of did my thing and listened to some great analysis.

Bruce in Scotland. We'll make up for it next week, I promise. Yeah, I'm sure you will. If you're hiding in a corner, we're not going to come at you. Chantel in BC today. So enjoy your flights. Enjoy your standing in the lines. I'll be thinking of you.

That's it for this day on Good Talk. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you again on Monday.