The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Will The Trump Verdict Leave the US Even More Divided?

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Thirty-four out of thirty-four. All counts against Donald Trump result in guilty verdicts. What now for the former president and his country? Bruce and Chantal on that plus the Senate, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and the latest survey results on the political race across the country.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with Bruce Anderson, Chantelle Hebert. It's Good Talk time for this Friday. We're going to start south of the border as a result of the events of yesterday. I mean, these things don't happen every week. In fact, it's never happened before. A former U.S. president convicted on 34 different counts. Every count that he was on trial for, he was found guilty. And the question becomes, what the heck happens now? So let me get that started. I don't expect either of you to be experts in American law. That's not why you're here.

But you do have a sense of how things play and kind of the mood in America. I mean, you study the surveys and the polls just like a lot of people do, and Bruce, you do especially, seeing as you're kind of in that business. After yesterday, is the United States more divided now than it was even 24 hours ago? I think it will be. I think a few things occurred to me as I watched what was happening yesterday. One is that, um, what the former president Trump said outside the courtroom was shocking to me anyway, just to my ears, even though I didn't think he could really

shock me anymore, the degree to which he talked about the country his country the country that he's running to be president of as a failed country the language that he used was so um derogatory that it felt to me like it was not just him kind of venting but him engendering more polarization i know a lot of um of people in America who will be happy that he was convicted and happy that he will face some accountability in terms of sentencing down the road and who don't want him to be president. But I also saw a lot of social media activity today, this morning, that revealed just how charged up Trump supporters are and how much they're not just looking at this as a law that Trump broke, as a trial that Trump lost, but as a kind of a test of whether or not they can believe in the judicial system and the laws and the Constitution of America. It's being conflated on the part of the people on Trump's side to a much bigger

set of questions about the future of the country. And I have a fear that while everybody's been looking at the polling and talking about if he gets convicted, how many votes will he lose? And the latest numbers I saw were like 4% of the, call it 46% that he has nationwide, which is really a pretty small number of people. And depending on where those votes would be located relative to the swing states might not matter at all. But I didn't see a lot of work done from a research standpoint on the question of how much more motivated would his supporters become if they felt that this was an unjust decision or an unfair case. And I do have that feeling that of all the indictments, and I'll kind of finish on this point, all of the indictments that Mr. Trump faces or has been facing.

This is the one around which most people might have priced in the behavior already. he did doesn't offend me to the same degree as challenging the election results or motivating people to storm the Capitol, that kind of thing. I'm not excusing the behavior or anything like that. I'm just saying I think that it doesn't have the same degree of, I don't think it will have the same impact on people to say, aha, he was he's guilty of this. And this is such an egregious crime. It completely changes my my calculation about him. But I do think that has the potential to further enrage the people who are diehard Trump people and some of the people in the party who support him, who are leaders in the Republican Party as well. You know, I know this trial had a lot more to do than just sex, but when sex is involved in something, certainly in the U.S. over the last 20 years, whether it was Bill Clinton, whether it was Trump himself in the 2016 campaign and the Access Hollywood tape, John Edwards.

When these things come up, it seems to be that the people end up usually siding with the guy who's accused of something. Now, I know, once again, this had a lot more involvement than just sex, but sex was the headline, the porn star, the this, the that. I don't know. Chantelle, where are you on this? I don't think it's the same as Bill Clinton lying about whatever happened in his office after hours. And it's up to the other side and legal authorities to make the point that this was not about sex, but it was about going out of your way to camouflage, lying, hiding money to impact the result of an election.

Now, that being said, I just want to point out, and I am not a US expert, that 24 hours ago, if I'd been listening to all the experts, I would have concluded that the odds of a verdict like the one we got yesterday afternoon were slim to none. And now, if you listen to all the experts, I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just pointing out, you will find that the odds that this will have any measurable impact on the outcome of the election are from slim to none. So I think that's a realistic take. But a lot of pessimism has kind of injected itself in the insights on the Trump issue. I agree with Bruce that it will make diehard Trump supporters more motivated. But as we all know, there is a difference between the base of a cause or a party and the people who are attracted or repelled by it.

And sometimes a base, especially if it's encouraged by someone who is clearly taken aback by this result, can repel more people than it attracts. I always am curious about not those who are screaming on the sidewalks on both sides or those on social media. And the same goes here. But by those who are not saying anything. I think the worst thing that happened to Donald Trump besides that verdict yesterday is that it was a jury trial. The 12 ordinary people in today's environment came to this decision, not within days, they did not agonize over it, but within a matter of hours. That is something that at the end of the day

kind of sticks in your mind. I understand it's New York, they're all Democrats. I get all these arguments, but still, 12 ordinary jurors, not a single one of them could be found to say, wait a minute, am I being manipulated into doing some political bidding for a rather unpopular incumbent? And I think that hurts. So I guess part of what I'm going to be watching from this distance is what it does to Donald Trump, whether it makes him even more, I'm looking for a polite word, more polarizing in his approach to politics.

And I'm also curious in a bad way about what's happening to the Republican Party in the United States and the rush to say, this guy is a martyr and the rallying around him. Because at the end of the day, the consequences of all of this extend beyond the US. I'm not talking international politics here. I'm talking about

setting a lower bar, an even lower bar than we've ever had on who can aspire to high office. And if it's okay to be a convicted felon and to become the president of the United States, then how does that ripple effect translate into what happens in this country in federal politics or in other democracies? And that is something, my curiosity on that is of the morbid kind politically. Yeah, it is a spectacle. As you and I were talking about earlier, Peter, It's quite a spectacle to see the Marco Rubios and the Ted Cruz's and the Nikki Haley's all deciding that no matter what they've said about him before, no matter what he said about them before, that the prospect of him as president is something that not only can they accept, but something that they're willing to publicly endorse.

I find that quite difficult to understand in the context of what historically would have been motivating factors. And I did see somebody today, and I don't know if this is true. Maybe you guys know, but is Trump prevented from voting in the next election? In which case he's not, eh? No, because the state of New York does not prevent you from voting. And Florida accepts the rules of the state where you were convicted.

I see. Okay. That's not me speaking, as you can tell. I did not overnight become a legal expert. But I read a couple of question and answer pieces pieces what happens next. And I read that. There was some prospect that neither Trump nor Pence would vote for the Republican ticket this year. And that seemed a nice way to kind of think about it, perhaps. But no. Anyway, the only one who stepped out and said there's no condition under which they would endorse Trump is pants.

Yes. The rest of them are playing the sycophantic, you know, rallying around the leader thing. And it is shocking, especially so after yesterday, that they were immediately out, you know, peddling the same line that Trump was about how everybody was corrupt, the jury was corrupt, the judge was corrupt. And I find that mind-boggling that he would say that. And his fate now sits in the hands of one person, one person only,

and that's the judge. You know, you'd think he'd be careful at this point because in another, whatever it is, four, five weeks, the judge will announce what the penalty is. And it could be as much as four years on each count. The odds are it's not going to be. His whole play always seems to be to try to, you know, somebody punches him him punch back to

intimidate right and i think that he'd been trying to do that with the judge and to some degree with the jury all the way through this trial and so like you i don't know how this judge is going to respond i thought there might have been more contempt fines uh through the course of this and then they stopped even though he kept on saying some pretty controversial things, I thought. The judge said that he has the option on sentencing to also sentence as a result of the things Trump said during the trial and violating the gag order.

So that option still sits. And there are some people who believe, you know, that he won't give him a prison sentence for the 34 counts. You know, he'll have some tough words for him and some tough conditions, but he won't give him a sentence. But he might give him a sentence, 30 days, whatever, on the gag order violation. So he, in fact, ends up going to prison.

Anyway, this will be the guessing game for the next, you know, four to six weeks about the penalty. Let me just make one other point about what I witnessed yesterday. Because like Bruce, I found his comments, you know, when he came out of the jail, or came out of the court. He had enough time to think it through, what he was going to say. And what I think often happens with him is he asks for advice from his favorite person, Steve Bannon, on what he should say so he can trigger his supporters in different ways.

And I think somewhere in there, either Bannon didn't get to him in time or he didn't follow Bannon's advice because he looked totally lost in trying to construct an understandable line in that little scrum. He seemed to be floundering around under, with the, you know, the different words of, you know, corrupt, rigged, all that stuff. He didn't seem to put it in a constructive way, which Bannon is always able to do. It's, you know, it's unapologetic Bannon.

It's, you know, it's Bannon that is most vociferous and, you know, it's unapologetic Bannon. It's, you know, it's Bannon at his most vociferous. And, you know, remember he did a lot of that speech, the inauguration speech in 2016 or 2017, I guess, by the time of the inauguration. But he just seemed totally lost. Whether he was lost because he'd just been found guilty on 34 counts, didn't quite know what to say, but it really looked like an unhinged moment on the part of Trump. Go ahead, Chantal.

You talk 2016. Are you saying that we should accept based on 2016 to 2020 that in 2024, this is a person who in the heat of a moment like that, is still able to take a brief. I'm not sure that, you know, when you watch rallies, those of the past six months, the Donald Trump who campaigned in 2016 is not the one on the campaign trail this year, which is not surprising in the sense that time takes a toll, especially if you've spent four years in the Oval Office. But I believe that whatever he was told, I suspect that like many, he believed the predictions that he was going to walk out of there in triumph.

And so the shock must have been even greater than if everyone had said, this guy can't walk away from these charges. He's going to end up with a guilty verdict. But I'm not convinced that this is a politician who can still take a brief and then articulate it in the heat of action. Yeah, he only can when he reads the prompter. As soon as he abandons the prompter, and that's in a way what I'm saying about yesterday. He didn't have a prompter there, but he could have had a script there.

And if he had one, he chose not to run with it and instead came off in that kind of unhinged way. Bruce, did you want to say something else before we move on? No, I'm good. I'm good with that. Okay, well, I'll only mention one thing. Chantel earlier in this conversation, she wasn't defending Bill Clinton, and I wouldn't want to suggest that, but she did leave the impression that the sex, such as it was, only happened after hours. That's not according to Monica Lewinsky in the story she's told her friends. I'm frankly totally indifferent as to when it happened.

I'm a very open-minded person on issues like that. Okay. I'm definitely not going to comment on any of that. Yes, steer well clear, you well-behaved Anglo-Saxon commentator. Now, now, now, you don't have to get, you know. Personal. I can see you're getting more embarrassed by the second you're actually blushing. I learned how to play that game in high school then to auto.

Very good. Is it time for our break now, Peter? It is time for our break. We'll be right back after this. Okay, we're back. You're listening to the Bridge Friday episode, Good Talk. Shantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson are 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. I'm glad to have you with us, whatever platform you are listening on. Okay, topic two. I know this has been discussed a little bit out there, but I got a letter on it from one of our viewers. In Bainesville, Ontario, Frank Hendrickson wrote this. It's very short, a couple of lines here.

Absent from the speculation about the changes that a Polyev-led government could bring to the country, is any insight into how our Senate would react to the legislation that is required to bring about some of Polyev's more radical proposals. Right now, the upper house is controlled by independent senators appointed by, during the time of Justin Trudeau, few of whom can be considered conservative supporters. Can we expect a power struggle about the notwithstanding clause or defunding the CBC or any of the particular controversial issues? I'd be curious to hear what Chantel and Bruce have to say about that. So that's been thrown at you.

Who wants to start this off? Don't both of you leap at the same time. Okay. We've been dying for a good Senate conversation for a while, so thank you for the letter. Chantal, please go ahead. I've been avoiding that conversation because one of my sons works in the government's office in the Senate and has been part of this experiment for almost a decade now. I will just say this, having covered the regime change in this country,

which usually happens every decade, the alternative to this independent-dominated Senate is a partisan-liberal-dominated Senate. The alternative is not a collection of free right of center spirits just waiting to welcome a savior in the shape of Pierre Poiliev. Routinely, after a decade, the government in place has appointed enough senators to have control in the Senate. The biggest difference this time is if we do have a change in government, the incoming conservative government, rather than be faced by a Senate

completely dominated by partisan liberals who attend caucus meetings every day and who would feel in their partisan heart often that they are now the official opposition because their party is so weakened that it can only find its strength in the Senate, will be faced by people who are separated in various groups and yes, who were appointed as independent, many of them from the progressive side. I'm not the pollster here, but last time I checked, a majority of Canadians, about almost two-thirds, identify as progressive. So it's somehow normal that the appointed House reflects that reality. So when I talk about thinking you're the official opposition from the Senate when a new government comes in, I am thinking in particular of what happened when Jean Chrétien was appointed, was elected prime minister, and there were up almost all of the caucus of the conservative party,

which really didn't reflect the reality in the House of Commons. And various governments, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper, when he arrived, have negotiated through this. I think in the end, this independent Senate is a less steep hill to climb for a new conservative government than the alternative of a liberal dominated Senate. What do you make of that, Bruce? Yeah, I think I agree with where Chantal went on that. I think the first thing that occurs to me is that since I started following politics a long, long time ago, this version of the Senate is the least heavily influenced by partisanship of any that I've seen. And I think it is to Justin Trudeau's credit that he did what his predecessors or some of his predecessors anyway undertook that they would do, which was to remove some of those partisan effects of appointing party workers and that kind of thing, but which his predecessors by and large didn't do.

He appointed people through a process that attracted people with qualifications and of high caliber in many instances, and who are doing in many instances thoughtful work on public policy. I still think at the end of the day, we've got an institution here, the use case for which is really not well embraced by Canadians or understood by Canadians. It is not easily apparent in terms of how public policy and government works. And so it's still going to struggle with that, even if there are better people and less partisanship. I agree with Chantal that the proportion of people who've been appointed and therefore fill the Senate now are disproportionately progressive oriented

people disproportionately by which I mean, not relative to the population. I agree with Chantal about that but relative to the number of more conservative style politicians and I think that that's you know probably has something to do with the preferences of the government but also something to do with the the way in which the broader population thinks about public policy issues. As to what will happen if there is a Polyev government next year and how vigorous the Senate will be in vetting, stress testing, trying to change his legislative priorities, I think there are really two questions that are unknowable at this point. One is, how big would his majority be? If it is the landslide that

it appears as it would be right now, if you were running against Justin Trudeau, then I don't think that we would see a Senate that felt like it had the, uh, the authority, um, from the public to, to routinely obstruct, uh, the legislation that, uh legislation that a duly elected government with a very big majority wanted to pass. But the second factor would be how radical would the policies be? And there are those who think that Pierre Pauli will campaign with a somewhat radical tone, but would govern, you know, with a more moderate approach. There are others who think it's the opposite. And I don't know what to make of that. I don't think that's a knowable thing right now. But I do think that if the initiatives that he took were so challenging to the sense of, you know, the

importance of certain institutions or norms, then we could be seeing a situation where there is a battle between the Senate and the cabinet or the government. It was interesting listening to Andrew Lawton the other day, who's written the new book on Pierre Poliev. And his theory is that if he wins with a big majority government, that he will have to deliver on all the promises that he's made that to some seem a bit outrageous. But that past governments that have had the opportunity, given the size of their majority,

and have backed away from controversial issues, he's convinced that Polyev wouldn't do that, that Polyev will deal the hand that he promised in a campaign and cites the CBC example as one thing. That it's too far, you know, the genie's too far out of the bottle now on that. If he wins and wins comfortably, he's going to have to deliver. We'll see. I think he well might, but I also don't, so I agree with that point, but I don't think I agree that he will really have an obligation to. I don't think that there's so many people who, as of current polls, would vote for Polyev, not because of specific things that he's promising, but because he's not the other guy.

And I think that whether that remains the case as we kind of get closer to the election, I think is a separate question. But as of right now, there'd be a lot of people who would be saying, I'm going to vote conservative without knowing any of the specifics really beyond maybe axe the tax and try to do something to have more houses built more quickly. And so the core that Lawton is speaking about, the core supporter group that he's referring to, yeah, they probably do have expectations that the mainstream conservative voter, if I can put it that way, might not have. But are they going to go anywhere, I guess, is the question. That's a different calculation. I think this conversation and the way that it's being presented, Poiliev wins a big majority, and the abstract then has to fulfill every promise.

It suggests that Pierre Poiliev would be the first person to become prime minister in decades, not to be hit by issues that he didn't see coming in the election campaign and that don't take over. And that is not going to happen. Stuff will happen. Remember, Jean Chrétien believed he could put the Quebec referendum and the unity issue behind him as early as October 1995.

Yeah, think again. And that deficit battle that they discovered upon seeing the books that they had to undertake so all the normal checks and balances would be in place a majority in the house of commons does not give you a chance to order the senate around for instance ask kim campbell who brought in an abortion bill that passed in the house of commons with significant majority. And then the bill was killed in the Senate. Or ask the provinces whether they want to go along with whatever Pierre Poiliev has in store for them. This week, Mr. Poiliev gave an interview in Quebec where he said that if he became prime minister,

he would take money away from the city of Montreal because its mayor is incompetent and not building enough houses. Oh yeah, run that past François Legault, the Quebec premier. So it's not as if we have any history of a majority government coming in and then having control of the agenda over and above its capacity to impose its will on one of the houses of parliament. That doesn't take care of the Supreme Court, doesn't take care of the Senate, doesn't take care of the provinces, go down the list. And yes, public opinion, which tends to shift. Remember Brian Mulroney's promise on tensions and his intentions and what happened to it early on? He had a big majority. It never even got to a Senate that was dominated by liberals. So it's kind of speculation. We're not electing the next prime minister as a more powerful one than all of those that came before him.

As I'm listening to Canada's arguably most esteemed journalist talk about how shit's going to happen. Pardon my expression. I know this is a family rated. I feel that there's a confidence that comes with the journalistic credentials that there will be news and it will be interesting and stimulating to cover and almost an optimism about it. Whereas people who would be involved in politics would be like, let's hope there's nothing like that. But it's not even a hopeful talk for a journalist. There is the prospect of a third world war. Donald Trump could be returning to the White House and taking, again, all the oxygen out of the room in Ottawa. 90%, I'm told by diplomatic sources, of the time spent by our diplomats in the U.S. is trying to game what would happen if Trump becomes president. I mean, you don't think that's going to derail?

No, I do agree with your point. I would just start with Mark. You don't need to be eagerly looking forward to a pandemic to know that these things have happened. All right. I wasn't saying you were wrong. I was just saying I found it interesting. You're also assuming I want to stick around at my older age

to cover every single day of whatever new government we elect in a year. Okay, let's see whether Chantal remembers the name of that pensioner who took on

Brian Mulroney, remember? I forgot. That's very impressive. Very impressive. And nobody saw me go for chat GPT or the interwebs or anything. That was really good. Now, what's your name again? That is very impressive.

Why do you remember that name? I mean, how many years ago was that? That's like 35 years ago? I was doing some polling for conservative finance ministers then on the GST and other things. So I was sort of pretty close to understanding the ebb and flow of public opinion around the Mulroney agenda. And I remember the specific conversation about if the government could get to a place where they had an operating surplus by which they meant the amount of money coming in every year versus the amount of money going out on programs and services separate and apart from the interest payments on the debt.

Could they claim a victory on the fiscal issue with Canadians? And they decided to try. And Canadians were, no, that doesn't work. It's a different world today on the deficit issue. But I do remember a lot of the cut and thrust of that debate very well. Yeah. Okay. Here's the next question. Resignations don't happen often in Ottawa and I'm not thinking about politicians but I'm thinking of the you know senior bureaucrats on the political side there was a talk this week

around the speaker and whether he should you know resign or not given some of the problems he's got into I find that whole speaker thing a bit inside baseball I'm sure some of you will disagree, but I do find the discussion about the parliamentary budget officer and the mistake that his unit made as it relates to the carbon tax,

and it took him, what, almost a year to apologize for that and kind of slid the slid the correction in. And there are now calls that he should resign the parliamentary budget officer. Who's kind of an independent watchdog, right? Of a parliamentary spending. Should he resign?

What do you think of that? Chantal? I think so. I think this office's purpose rests on its credibility and on an issue that is central to the political debate in this country. The parliamentary budget officer, not him in person, I'm sure, but his team, and the buck has to stop somewhere, misled Canadians by making errors that should have been double-checked and avoided, by making the decision to go down a path and evaluating whether the question was simple. Do you get if you live in one of the provinces where carbon pricing, the federal carbon pricing scheme is in effect a carbon tax and you are getting a rebate?

Are you at the end of the day worse off or better off? And the answer to that simplistic question is you're better off. But then if you're going to venture further down by saying, but overall, which is what they came up to, you are still worse off because in the larger scheme of things, you're forking out more money because of the carbon pricing scheme. Then you've got to make sure that you've got your numbers in order. And you've got to ask yourself, if I'm going to go down the road of pushing this envelope,

then should I not go down a bit further and ask how much poorer will you be and how much of your standard of living will you sacrifice if you don't do anything about carbon pricing that is effective in this country? Not just because climate will cost you. That's not something governments have a lot of control over, but also because as many have tried on the economic side of the equation to prove is that increasingly there will be tariffs on products that countries export if those countries are felt to be laggards on climate fighting and on carbon emission reductions. So if you're going to go there, go there the whole way.

If you're not going to go there the whole way, then just answer the question. And if you've made a mistake on top of that, do not take a year of watching politicians using your numbers to make contrary arguments before you raise your hand and say, whoops, and then say, well, I made a mistake and I left it right because I don't think in the end it's going to change the overall conclusion. That's kind of covering up your mistakes with a lot of smoke. And I don't believe that it serves the country well to have a parliamentary budget officer who doesn't own up to his responsibility by resigning. Bruce, you on this. I saw you fiddling with your headphones there. There's just a little bit of noise in the background.

I wanted to make sure that you weren't hearing it as well. But if you're okay, then... Yeah, we're fine. Okay. You know, I wasn't necessarily of the view that a resignation was required. But Chantel does make a persuasive point. But I also watched the interview that David Cochran did

with the parliamentary budget officer yesterday, and it made me feel that he did not materially accept how serious a mistake this was. And by serious, I mean, the importance of this office as an input into the political debate on the most highly charged issue of our time can't really be overstated. And he allowed, or his people and his team allowed this mistake to be part of the political mix in ways that I think one could make the case really change the political preferences of Canadians. I'm not saying that this was the

only thing that allowed Canadians to gravitate towards Mr. Poliev's tax idea, far from it. But I think it allowed the Conserv conservatives to maintain with a degree of enthusiasm that the liberals were lying about the impact of the carbon tax and that the independent parliamentary budget officer was telling the truth. So the degree to which he put the credibility of the office at risk was very, very high, the highest I've ever seen and and it's not the first time that there's been some politics around the pvo the degree of remorse or regret that was shown in that interview yesterday was extremely low and he kept on wanting to maintain

that when these revisions are done the differences will be marginal but we won't be able to tell you what those differences are for months yet to come. I felt that was an insufficient response to the situation that he was in. And so probably on balance, I do end up where Chantal is that his leadership of that office will never have the credibility that it had before this episode. It's funny, isn't it, how in politics and in life, it can be so hard simply to say, you know, I screwed up, and that was wrong, shouldn't have apologized, and it won't happen again. But you shouldn't take a year to say it.

Exactly. And then do cartwheels when you finally do say it, to make it not sound that way. I don't know. I mean, it's not just parliamentarians. You and I and all of us, we need to be able to take the conclusions of this officer to the bank in confidence.

They are supposed to be a fact, and that's that. For weeks, we've heard both sides in the House of Commons say the PBO says black, the PBO says white. I don't think I've seen something like that ever from a parliamentary officer. Although it's not unusual to have when the parliamentary officer, budget officer comes out, that the government ends up saying, that's not right. And the opposition says, we're taking it to the bank.

Yeah, but they both took it to the bank. That's impossible. Exactly. No one was saying he made a mistake. They both claimed that whatever was in there, and they both could, is the other problem. So I don't know. I guess it's up to him to decide how much credibility and moral authority he wants his office to have when it assesses the party platforms in a very vitriolic federal election. Which will come at some point.

Soon. Or not soon. That was wishful thinking, Bruce. Soon. Okay, we're going to take our final break when we come back, and we'll actually talk more about that. Not about when the election will be, but what the horse race numbers are suggesting these days. We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. We're into the final segment of Good Talk for this week, for this Friday. Chantel and Bruce are here.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. You know, there used to be a time when you go way back, there was really only one polling operation in the country, and that was Gallup. That's quite a long time ago. Now there are many, and you could be excused if you go, I don't know which this company is and what that company is and why the numbers are different. Well, different methodologies, different size samples,

et cetera, et cetera. But they're kind of all together, more or less, right now, in terms of a gap between the Conservatives and the Liberals on the federal scene. And it's usually in that kind of 15 to 20 point positioning in favor of the Conservatives. Leger, which is a polling operation and long-standing and good standing with most Canadians and including their competitors, is out this week with its, I guess it's about once a month they do a

fairly significant size poll and draw certain conclusions about what those numbers mean at the time they were taken. Not a predicting thing, sort of saying this is what our numbers suggest would have happened if the election was held at the time these questions were asked. What's the highlight to you each out of the latest legé in terms of where things stand? I mean, we know who's ahead, but what it all means. Are there conclusions that we should be drawing from these latest set of numbers? Bruce, why don't you start?

Well, look, I think that out of the Léger poll, the Quebec numbers were the ones that caught my attention. It has been the case for some time, I think, that people who believe that Justin Trudeau should remain the leader of the Liberal Party into the next election have been making the case that Quebec would not be as supportive of the Liberals if Trudeau left. I think the latest numbers indicate some conservative strength that still, depending on the splits, might not materially change the way that the seats get allocated at the end if they stay this way. But they sort of raise the question of whether or not the liberal brand is losing oil in Quebec as it

has been everywhere else. And if a change might be needed in Quebec as well. So I think it's one poll, but there has been some evidence that the Conservatives have been gathering a little bit of strength in Quebec, but the Quebec numbers are the ones that caught my eye in respect to the Leger poll. The only other question I think that is being debated in polling circles, if polling circles is a concept to take seriously, is whether or not the Liberals have made up any ground at all in recent weeks after their budget with young people. I think there's mixed evidence of that, and so I'm going to kind of withhold a point of view about that until I see a little bit more evidence, to be honest.

The Quebec numbers certainly got Yves-François Blanchet, the Bloc Québécois leader's attention. Those Quebec numbers were Conservatives 29%, which is a really high score for them historically since Brian Mulroney left. 29% BQ, so a tie, and 26% for the liberals. If you strip away just the numbers, what that tells you is in this province, the CPC and the BQ are basically and essentially fighting for francophone voters. And that battle is happening off the island of Montreal. So when Bruce says it might not materially change the outcome, what he means is that if they have a battle like that,

the Bloc and the Conservatives, the Liberals often are able to squeeze in between the two of them. But the sample is rather small, and apparently there is a larger sample coming possibly next week, which will either confirm this very tight three-way battle or not. But meanwhile, beyond the fact that it will certainly fuel the movement to say, can we convince Justin Trudeau to leave because he's not winning anywhere?

I'm curious as to, and this would make me even less of a friend of Yves-François Blanchet, he would totally dislike this, but this province is a microclimate politically. And one of the big things that has been happening here has been the Parti Québécois rise to first place and the insistence on its leader's part to push for a referendum if he is elected within his first term in office. lot of sovereignty rhetoric, including yesterday, I thought maybe Sheila Copps had invaded the PQ leaders body, a call to have Quebec flags in every classroom and everywhere. It's kind of the Chant de Saint Flag initiative, but with the Quebec flag. And I'm wondering, in the past, every time that the PQ has gone hard on referendums and sovereignty, the Bloc has suffered. And I'm kind of curious to see whether this tie, because other polls, previous polls, the latest Abacus, for instance, the Bloc was still pretty much in the lead. So I'm wondering, will the next numbers confirm this trend? And if so, is this a federal trend, a Puelia-related trend, or one that is related to the prospect that people are saying, well, you know, not interested in voting for the, when you're looking at polls like this and the election is not on, in Quebec in particular, you should probably not pay too much attention for not too long.

Why? Because of all the provinces over the past decade or more, the place where the campaign has most changed the outcome from the day of the call and the polls on that day to voting day has been Quebec. The orange wave is a case in point. But in 2015, if you started the campaign talking to people about how they were going to vote, you would never have surmised that they would prefer Justin Trudeau to Thomas Mulcair. And yet in the end, they did. So because possibly voters' attention here is very split between Quebec City and the federal government, campaigns matter more here than they probably matter in a lot of other places. Bruce?

Yeah, I just wanted to – I'm intrigued by a lot of what Chantel said. As she talked about the change that happens in Quebec during elections, it did make me feel that what I think I've seen more often than not in the past is that if somebody has momentum in other parts of the country, that sometimes does reverberate in Quebec. It may not explain the orange wave scenario, but it would tend to support the theory that if Pauliev and Trudeau are the two main combatants heading into the next election, and if Pauliev was gaining strength in the rest of Canada,

that might translate into some upside for him in Quebec. That's what I would assume might be the case. But I think it's too early to know whether or not that's the case. I agree with Chantal. Let's see some more surveys and see whether or not the conservative number does look more like 29 or more like 25 or 24 or 23. The other thing, though, on the question of a sovereignty referendum, I don't know how it plays to have a party growing in popularity provincially that's advocating for a referendum and what that does to the potential BQ vote in the 2024 environment. I think we do have evidence of what it's done in the past, but I can't help but think that if there is another referendum in Quebec, this is a separate question, it doesn't feel to me that the rest of the country will suit up in anywhere near the same way to argue for keeping the Federation united.

And so I'm quite worried about that as somebody who believes that Quebec should stay within Canada. But I'd be worried if there was another referendum that it would be harder to get the federalist answer that historically we've been looking for. I've got 30 seconds left, Chantal, for you to reply to that. Okay. In the past, the PQ has always done better when the PQ is not in government and there's not a referendum in the picture. Momentum in the rest of the country sometimes trigger the opposite, as in Stephen Harper's momentum in 2011 versus the Orange Wave, which was Quebec response to Harper's momentum everywhere else in Canada. And before you worry about suiting up for a referendum, maybe it's wise to wait to see what the lay of the land is like

because the polls show that in the Quebec City area, for instance, support for the PQ has been going softening since it's been pushing really hard on its referendum idea. So would sovereignists really want to take a chance? The numbers today show no correlation between the rise of the PQ and popularity and a rise in support for sovereignty. I regret leaving that 30 seconds.

Oh dear, I don't know whether I can deal with more than 30 seconds on that topic again. Oh, well, you lived with it. That's true. Listen, thank you both, as always. And listen, have a great weekend. We never got to whether there was any news on the hands, the hidden hands trying to push Justin Trudeau out of that seat.

But then, of course, we had the definitive answer last week when I said he's staying. That, of course, won't change. Anyway, thank you to Chantel. Thank you to Bruce. We'll talk to you next week, and we'll talk to you, our listeners, next week, D-Day week. A couple of big shows, Monday and Tuesday. Hope you join us. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks for listening. Have a great one.