The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk with Chantal and Bruce - Is It Open Warfare in the Conservative Caucus?

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

Three Topics for today -- is it already open warfare over leadership in the Conservative caucus? What's the impact of the NDP's surge in many upcoming provincial races? And Bruce offers one potential solution to the housing crisis.

Are you ready for good talk? And of course you're ready. You're always ready for good talk. And the talk doesn't get much gooder than Chantal Hébert in Montreal and Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. We had a number of things to talk about today, but I'm going to start with a nod to Meatloaf. I mean, this was not the kind of news I was wanting to wake up to today. You never want to hear about anybody leaving, especially somebody who's had some kind of impact on your life. I mean, I remember Meatloaf when Meatloaf came out in the, you know, became a dominant figure in this kind of mid to late 1970s

and Bat Out of Hell was the big song and it kind of changed everything. And he became not just a rock star, but a rock icon, you know, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. I mean, there's a whole string of great songs from Meatloaf that made him an icon, that allowed him to sell more than 100 million albums. Now, there are not a lot of rock stars who can claim that kind of number.

And he was not just a rock star, he was a theater star. You know, he performed on Broadway. I mean, he was quite the guy. Dies overnight at the age of 74. One of my favorite broadcasting moments, I've mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again today, was with our old friend and colleague, Craig Oliver. And it was back in the 1970s when Meatloaf was just taking off. And

Meatloaf was being interviewed on Canada AM and Craig was filling in for whoever, I think Norm Perry was the anchor and Craig was filling in for him and they gave him the assignment, okay, you got to interview Meatloaf and Craig was like, I don't know anything about this. And they said, no, no, here it is. Here's the background notes. So he starts off. His first question was, what do I call you, meat or Mr. Loaf? And I thought that was great.

It was just a great start to the interview. And it was a fabulous, typical Craig Oliver moment. It was great. And Meat Loaf handled it, you know, as one might expect. He handled it really well. Anyway, so that's my little bit. I know it's taking time away from you, Chantal, and from you, Bruce. And I'm sorry if I did that.

But I know Bruce. Bruce is a huge music guy. I just wanted to hear Chantal sing a little bit of a Meatloaf song. I thought that's what we were going to do this morning. Well, I will do that if you sing a little bit of Ken Mouallet's songs because he died this week in his mid-30s in Quebec and

Francophone Planet were in shock. So, I'll trade you. Another show another day. That is not fair. Mid-30s. My gosh. Okay, well, enough said on those two. That is not fair. Mid-30s. My gosh. Okay. Well, enough said on those two moments.

Thank you, Peter. I can't believe. Rest in peace. Rest in peace to both. All right. Moving on to politics. Chantal, we'll let you start on this one. We have a couple of tweets this week from Mark Strahl, conservative MP.

And if you don't know Mark Strahl, you probably remember his father, Chuck Strahl, who was a longtime reform MP and conservative MP for almost 20 years, I think. Mark Strahl has been in the House of Commons since 2015. And he has some influence within that party. And it was interesting to see this week that he came up with a couple of tweets

that have got people talking. And it's all around, obviously, the leadership issue. So Mark Strahl tweets this, first of all, two days ago. Thank you, Pierre Polyev, for your clear and decisive leadership. That's it. That's all the tweet says. And it's attached to a Pierre Polyev tweet about the trucking issue and about vaccinated and unvaccinated truckers.

So that got a bit of action um as a result and so yesterday straw tweeted again but this time about another potential leadership contender in the conservative party leslie lewis and he says exactly word for word the same thing thank you leslie lewis for your strong and principled leadership a little little different in the wording but the point is the same so what do we make of that what's the headline out of that chantal some context uh before the headline uh mark straw is one of the MPs who was not included or lost his shadow cabinet post after the election for questioning vaccine mandates. He was closer to Andrew Scheer than he has been to Aaron O'Toole. He is identified to the religious right and social conservatives, as was his father, which did not.

I covered the era when Chuck Strahl was in the House of Commons. He was a very effective MP on both sides of the House and played a key role in precipitating the fall of Stockwell Day and the reunification of the conservative movement. What I found most significant was the Poilievre tweet, because the signal from it is that battle lines are being drawn. And that's, I guess, the headline. And that those who would like to replace Erin O'Toole have now, not all of them obviously, but many of them have now set their sights on Pierre Poilievre as the finance critic, as their horse to go to battle to dispose of Erin O'Toole's leadership.

That's important in the context of a confidence vote in Aaron O'Toole because social conservatives do command a serious amount of votes in any vote in the conservative party, the current conservative party. And Aaron O'Toole himself only beat Peter McKay because at the end of the day and at the end of every ballot, social conservatives ended up supporting him and not Peter McKee. What I also found interesting, and this goes to Mr. Poiliev's own involvement, because he can't stop people from tweeting about his great leadership, is that Poiliev did jump in front of the parade in the place of his leader on the issue of the Quebec anti-vax tax. He was out of the gate saying this is a terrible thing and we must oppose it

before Erin O'Toole had even said anything about it and basically forced Erin O'Toole into saying I'm against the notion that this Quebec tax and I believe it's an affront to the Canada Health Act. And I think Justin Trudeau should disapprove of it publicly. So, lots happening. This is not a direct challenge to the leadership, but as you know, this is as close as it can come when one of your leading critics at finance takes the lead on an issue that is not finance that involves the delicate balance that aaron o'toole is trying to keep between his quebec caucus that has been really silent on all of this by the way and the need to hang

on to his leadership sounds like open warfare to me. Bruce, where are you on it? Well, I think there's a stage beyond that that I would call open warfare. I think this is still kind of minor skirmishing that looks like something is brewing, but when it will turn into something more, or if it will, I think is still a bit of an open question. I don't think that, I'm reminded, by the way, Chantal made reference to Chuck Strahl,

I agree with her completely. One of the best people I've met in the years that I've been around politicians, I got to know him and a number of others a little bit when there was this late lamented, I don't know if it's lamented by everybody, but it was by me. There was a thing called the PCDR Coalition, Peter. I don't know if you remember this, but for a brief moment in time, there were a group of Alliance MPs under Stockwell Day's leadership who decided they didn't want to be under his leadership anymore. And they formed a common cause with a small group of MPs led by Joe Clark. And one day, if anybody's interested, we can get into the details of why that didn't work out. But it was quite an interesting discussion. And I got to know Chuck Strahl a little bit,

a great admiration for him. His son, Mark, is not quite cut from the same cloth in terms of how he's comporting himself, but I don't have anything negative to say about him personally. I think a couple of things come to mind for me. For Aaron O'Toole, this is a kind of a classic internal conversation that he's probably having with his key advisors, some of whom will be saying, fight back hard and aggressively. Others will be saying something that sounds more like never let them see you sweat.

Don't look like this stuff bothers you. You've got a, you know, kind of a bigger role to play and you need to look like you're in charge and you're not being constantly distracted or unnerved or stressed by a tweet from an MP who you already decided isn't going to be close to you and central to your shadow cabinet, that sort of thing. frankly at this point without knowing really the math of the caucus i don't know whether the right answer is fight back hard because this if you don't uh just continues to grow or whether it's a never let them see you sweat moment um but the last thing i would say is this uh i remember when joe clark's leadership was under duress from inside uh And partly because people inside his caucus saw people outside of the caucus as being potentially more successful leaders. Brian Mulroney being one of them. But there were other names at that time.

And I don't know if Leslyn Lewis and Pierre Pauliev looked like the kind of candidates to replace Aaron O'Toole that would create that forward momentum that the Conservative Party is looking for. Well, I guess I think they wouldn't. I think they're appealing figures to some faith-based conservatives, social conservatives, but I don't think that they would have the same catalytic positive effect on the leadership as having a Brian Mulroney become the leader would. And that's not intended in any way to slight Joe Clark, who I have very high regard for. I'm just saying at that point, the lineup of alternatives didn't look like pierre poliev um and and i don't know

the makeup of this conservative party today whether that will matter i mean they may look at poliev and leslie lewis and say that's exactly what we need i may look at the polls and say it's hard for me to see that becoming a more successful political formation than the one that that exists now well the one thing you can say for sure that at the moment the landscape uh has polyev positioned as a potential um you know uh you know replacement let's use that word uh for aaron o'toole certainly a contender if there was a race. If he chooses to be in one, let's not forget, he seemed to be doing extremely well in the last race until he dropped out of it before it really got underway

for reasons that are still somewhat murky, to say the least. But he's not doing anything to take his name out of the running here now if there is such a thing as a running right now, he's kind of evident in that race, you know, especially when you point out Chantel about how, you know, he got out front on the vaccination issue in Quebec without waiting for his leader and his leader not responding necessarily in any way to sort of either slap him down

or back him up or what have you. I find that surprising. He made his leader look like he was a puppet and Pierre Poilievre was the puppet master. And in applying the principle that you should keep your enemies close, Aaron O'Toole has placed Pierre Poilievre in the spotlight of finance critics who legitimately can call news conferences at the moment's notice to talk about the economic issues of the day, and what are you supposed to say. In the previous parliament, Aaron O'Toole had

stripped Poilievre of the finance critic role, for reasons that always also seemed a bit obscure. He did not get more of a performance from Ed Fast who was appointed in his place, for reasons that always also seemed a bit obscure. He did not get more of a performance from Ed Fast who was appointed in his place. Now he has replaced Bolivar's finance critic, which basically means he can't do the I'm going to strip him of his portfolio again. There are only so many times you can do this. My impression from the outside looking at all this,

but also listening to some noise from people who are not going to rush to cameras and microphones to say what they really think, O'Toole's leadership is growing increasingly weaker. His caucus support may still be there, but it is softer in the sense that at some point there are people who would rather keep Aaron O'Toole as leader, few weeks. That video we talked about last week, the doomsday, you're all going to freeze in your houses because Justin Trudeau will cut off your heating within 18 months. That makes it hard to defend the leader. And I see trouble coming for O'Toole within the Quebec ranks also in the sense that if you look at the Quebec polls these days, the Quebec Conservative Party, no link to the federal liberals, closer to Maxime Bernier, is on the rise. It doesn't look in the provincial polls at 9%, 10%, 11%. Who cares? But in Quebec City, in the Quebec City region, that Conservative Party provincially is

at 22%. And what is the Quebec City region in Quebec? It is ground zero of whatever Conservative support federally lies. So the pulling away, the Quebec Conservative Party is the anti-restrictions, public health restrictions party, the anti-mandatory vaccines faction, go down the list. So you are going to now have Quebec MPs who won't be too sure, should the party get closer to the Conservative Party in Quebec? I'm guessing some of those MPs from Quebec do not want to go on a stage with the current leader of the Conservative Party, a former advisor of Stockwell Day, by the way, Eric Duhem. But there will be internal pressures on those MPs to decide where they go. If they get closer to a rising force with their voters in the Quebec City region, they will be going against François Legault.

So I let you imagine how happy times are not around the corner for the Conservative Party federally. And those who are willing, it seems now, to speak out or say things that are taken as speaking out against Aaron O'Toole seem to be emboldened by what they're watching across the pond, as we talked about last week with the Johnson situation. Although the tools that are available to a caucus are much different here than they are there.

But clearly the troubles that Johnson's having, conservatives here seem to be trying to learn from what they're watching overseas. You got any thought on that, Bruce? Well, I think that they're, I don't know, I'm watching the show in the UK and it looks way more combustible and out there than this kind of quiet, mostly behind the scenes version.

And they have a mechanism by which Johnson could no longer be prime minister within days if his caucus decided that. And we don't really have that. I mean, technically, it's possible, but I don't find the similarities there. But what I did want to mention, Peter, is I think the thread that can be drawn between Mark Strahl's pleasure with Pierre Poliev's tweet and the one by Lesley Lewis is that tagged as the climate indifferent anti-vax candidate leading a party that's, you know, that doesn't really have anything to say about human rights in Canada as it relates to Bill C-20 and does have some things to say, but they're not particularly coherent with respect to China. That's the biggest problem I see for the conservatives is they could take out Aaron O'Toole. But what would they be campaigning for? Because everything right now looks like they've kind of got an idea that they think will be popular for the next 10 minutes.

And nobody's really sort of laying out something that could be popular for 10 months or 10 years. And I get that that's the life of the opposition politician. But I think it's taken to an extreme, especially when I see Pierre Polyev talking about inflation every day. At least you could give him credit for being consistent and on point about that. Every once in a while, he drifts into connecting inflation to anti-vax. But it's not an economic plan that people can look at and say, well, that would be better for me than this one, especially those people who are selling their homes

and making huge amounts of money, which is part of the housing dynamic that doesn't get talked about that much. A couple of points uh i think poitier is using his critics role to talk about something other than anti-vax politics and he has been well positioned by aaron o'toole for that but i think there's another game in play here. Don't forget that the Conservative caucus voted itself the power to call for a leadership and trigger a leadership review. That happened at the first caucus meeting in this parliament. So yes, they do have the power.

If enough of them call for a caucus vote and that caucus vote goes against Aaron O'Toole, they do have the power to trigger a leadership review. That's new and different. And as far as I know, they're the only federal party that voted itself that power, the liberals and the NDP declined. It's not a, and next day they have a leadership choice. No, but it's before August 2023. And if you are looking at Erun O'Toole and thinking he's killing time to get to the next election, which could happen before the summer of 2023, the fastest way to get an earlier leadership review is through caucus.

Now, I would assume, having watched what Bruce talked about when those reform MPs, including Deborah Gray, who was the first elected reform MP, walked away from Stockwell Dace caucus to join forces with Joe Clark's rather tiny caucus at the time. That didn't happen over weeks. And the reason that worked is it happened all of a sudden. It was a strike that was meant to succeed or not, but it was surgical. I wouldn't put it past the people who want to have this leadership review and to push O2L out to be slowly but surely trying to build the caucus support they need for a strike of that nature. And that would happen in theory if that were to succeed. Most of us never saw the reform MPs leaving caucus until suddenly they were leaving caucus.

I suspect that if they were going to be doing that, they wouldn't be publicizing it on every rooftop weeks before they actually move on O2. But I think some people are exploring whether they could move on O2. All right. Okay. Liberals must love this stuff because, you know, it's not like they don't have issues, starting with inflation and housing. See, the prime minister is doing some stuff on housing today. We might actually get Bruce to say something about housing a little later on in this. But another thing that's happening on the landscape right now is for the NDP,

and we're going to talk about that when we come back. You're listening to Good Talk on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. We want to talk a little bit about the NDP here because kind of sneaking along for the NDP nationally are some kind of good numbers.

And when I say nationally, I mean everything, you know, provincial parties, not so much the federal party. But nevertheless, the big picture for the NDP shows we had a lot of polls this week. And they indicate they're not all uniform. I mean, there's some disagreement, especially on the Ontario numbers. But overall, the picture for the NDP is pretty good. They're doing really well in Manitoba. They're doing well in Alberta. They're doing well in BC.

Ontario, some polls actually show them ahead of Doug Ford. Most show them kind of in second or a very tight race between second and third. But well positioned in all of those places. Federally, as we said, not so much. But nevertheless, it's an interesting story for the NDP. Chantal, your thoughts on it? And it does link to what we've just talked about, which is the conservative movement and the branding of the Conservative Party, because the NDP is doing well in large part because conservative premiers are doing really poorly. There was an Angus Reid publishes every three months kind of a report card on how

well premiers are standing in the midst of this pandemic. And the five last spots, people, the premiers whose appreciation numbers are well below 50%, The five spots were occupied by the people who used to be seen as the gauntlet of conservative premiers who would call the shots after 2019. So, you know, New Brunswick, Blaine Iggs was there, the new premier of Manitoba, not getting much of a honeymoon, she's last in the list, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, and Scott Moe. And west of Ontario, as you know, the Liberal Party provincially is not a force, although there is a Liberal Party called Liberal in BC, it's more of a coalition of conservative and blue liberals. So it is totally possible that within a year and a half, we could have NDP governments in place in three of the four Western provinces. And that would, I think, do two things.

It would change the national conversation around a lot of issues, including climate change and the place of government and social policy. It would probably make Justin Trudeau's life or a liberal government's life federally easier when it comes to talking about health care arrangements and more input from the federal government in those arrangements. It could also be good news for the federal conservatives, because they tend to do better when they can recruit the best and brightest that are available provincially, because the party is out of power. That is also true in Ontario. Remember Stephen Harper bringing on Jim Flaherty, Tony Clement, and John Baird.

So it does not bode really well for the federal NDP, though, because whenever there are governments, and we saw it when the NDP was in power in Alberta, provincially, they tend to run, to be on a collision course on some issues with their federal counterparts. Pharmacare is interesting for a number of years now. Jagmeet Singh has been talking about how we need to have a national pharmacare system. But John Horgan, the NDP premier in British Columbia, has not been really out and about to say exactly the same thing on the issue. He has other ideas. If the NDP comes back to power in Alberta, Premier Notley would have a different take on the future

and the transition from fossil fuels than the NDP base. But it is interesting that at a time when the federal conservatives are faltering federally, some of the people we used to talk about as potential leadership candidates for that party, Doug Ford and Jason Kenney, not to name them, are not on anyone's list anymore. True. Yeah.

It's been quite two years for them and their placement on the landscape. Bruce? I think it's an interesting thing to watch. I agree with Chantal that if we separate out the performance of the brand NDP from the question of whether there's a larger phenomena of people sort of heading for the edges of the spectrum, you know, some more right, some more left? I think those are both interesting questions. I happen to believe, like Chantal, that if we look at BC and Alberta, really the support levels being elevated for the NDP is more a function of people not wanting the conservative option there. And so it remains to be seen if there's any evidence whatsoever that it's more of a drift towards a radical left or a more aggressive left policy mix.

I don't see that. I don't see Oregon operating that way. And I don't see Notley pitching that to Alberta voters. So and then I look at Ontario and I don't really see a compelling story developing for Andrea Horwath or the NDP and what it has on offer here. I see a continued kind of not much enthusiasm for Doug Ford,

not much knowledge or enthusiasm for the alternatives. And I subscribe more to the thesis that we don't know how that election's going to turn out until we're into it. And Doug Ford probably shouldn't be taking too much comfort from the way the polling numbers are looking now because he's accumulated some scar tissue and maybe not the same negatives as he had going into his first election but definitely some important ones having said all of that so i don't know that i think that the ndp brand is in the ascendancy i do wonder whether or not in the age that we live that the instinct for the safer more centrist more compromising kind of politics that have typically been the domain of the federal liberals.

And, you know, when there was a progressive conservative party, more that party as well, whether those are falling a little bit out of favor as people look for edgier politics that align with their values or their self-interests. And there are days when you can look at the Liberal Party federally and say, well, it's great to have always occupied this kind of Goldilocks position, not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft. Other times you can look at it and say, is that really the valuable position that it used to be in terms of voters gravitating towards that kind of safer, more secure choice. And the final thing for me is, I think that for the liberals, talking about the middle class the way they did in the last couple of elections, I think it was

kind of effective as a counterpoint to how people felt about the Harper conservatives, perhaps. But I think it's a bit of a rhetorical trap because I think there are a lot of people who don't know that they, you know, they might call themselves middle class, but they don't feel that the economy and the capitalist system as it's working now is really doing much for them. And in that kind of a market, NDP rhetoric and policy ideas might find more traction and liberals may need to think about whether or not that language is as kind of penetrating and rallying as it would have been in the past. So it's very interesting to watch. And obviously, south of the border, we're seeing that polarization play itself out in a much more aggressive way i hope we don't see that here because i do believe that compromise and consensus and ideas that are more towards the center of the spectrum are more likely to keep the country united and going in a positive direction but

uh that's what i'm a little bit anxious about for sure. No, I do the, the, to, to, to call John Horgan or Rachel Notley, an embodiment of a move to a more radical left,

but kind of be to overstate the case. I think the experience of premiers West of Ontario, or even in Ontario that came from the NDP is that they tended to be federal liberals. Look at Bob Ray. You wouldn't call Gary Doerr a die-hard socialist in any way, shape or form. Former premier, longstanding former premier of Manitoba who ended up taking on a diplomatic post from Stephen Harper, of all people. So let's not forget our old friend. And I was going to mention Bob Ray.

So I think the danger I see is for the federal NDP that they go the far left or the further left option and divorce themselves from the people who are actually willing to vote for the NDP brand west of Ontario or even in Ontario. where they will be narrowing their options and going back to being a movement or a protest party rather than a party that is in line for power. One could argue that since Thomas Mulcair has left, the NDP has slowly but surely scaled down its ambitions to ever be a government and waiting again, and that a lot of its base federally is happy about that. But that is not what is going to be happening in the provinces. So overall, I find that new NDP governments, I believe, would be welcomed by Justin Trudeau's inner circle going forward, especially if this is going to be the last legacy-defining term

of this prime minister. Certainly, I think they were able to do some interesting policy work with Horgan in the run-up to the last election, and I think the expectation is that with Notley, they'd have an easier time

of pursuing that climate agenda, and I generally would think that for the Liberals, if you could only wish for one thing you would want a more radical anti-vax pierre pauliev led conservative party because rallying the left to the center has always been an effective strategy and and you need a a kind of a leader that's scary to the center and the left in order to be able to do that let me ask you a question about the the liberals i know there's a danger in in going too deeply on some of these polling results especially when you start breaking it down in province by province and the

and the number of those being asked the question gets fewer and fewer and the margin of error gets higher and higher. Having said that, if you're a liberal, and the liberals are used to not performing that well in much of Western Canada, not all of Western Canada, do okay in Manitoba, do okay in BC at times, but certainly on the main part of the prairies in Saskatchewan, Alberta, disaster zone. But look at these numbers in Alberta from the Angus Reid poll this week. I mean, this is like it doesn't get, well, it can get one point worse than this.

Their numbers, according to Angus Reid in Alberta, on this latest poll, show the NDP, as we've mentioned, ahead, actually quite well ahead at 43%, the Conservatives or the United Conservative Party, Jason Kenney's party, 31%. Then you have the Wild Rose Independence Party at around 15%, 16%. Then you have the Alberta Party at 7%. The Liberal Party is at one percent one percent this provincially do we do we say anything about that though pardon me why would you vote for it i mean

it's not a competitive political force. So it's almost a mystery. It hasn't been for a long time in Alberta. But 1%? I'm kind of wondering what's wrong with the 1% that they haven't figured out that there's another option. That's not a completely wasted ballot. So these names don't necessarily mean that much. And if they did, the United Conservative Party would have to give back the United to whoever hands out the names. That's my takeaway from it, I guess.

Okay. The absence of the Liberals from the prairies at the provincial level is a chronic absence. It's been for almost as long as I can remember. I think Sharon Carstairs, liberal leader in Manitoba in the late 80s, is the one that came the closest to bringing the Liberal Party really on the map of a province, of one of the prairie provinces. And that lasted for as long as it lasted. But in the end, it was NDP leader Gary Dewar who became the premier. And Manitoba, over the time I've covered politics, has had NDP governments on a number of occasions. It's still Saskatchewan and now Alberta. But I think the NDP in those provinces fills the gap on the left of center, moderate left of center.

And that's why I think that it's easy enough for the federal liberals with Justin Trudeau as its leader, at least, to get along with governments of that stripe. And they are? Or they could be? They could. Well, Bruce is right. If we're going to accomplish the climate change agenda that a plurality or a majority of voters supported in the last federal election, you're going to need to have a more constructive federal provincial conversation. And it would be easier to have a constructive conversation from the standpoint of the federal liberals with NDP governments in Manitoba, Alberta, B.C., and even Ontario. But the difference is that in Ontario, the difference between the NDP and the liberals or the rivalry runs a lot deeper than in almost any province in the country. I remember when Bob Ray ran for the federal leadership of the Liberal Party after Paul Martin,

that his problem was in Ontario, that even MPs who would have liked to support him, Liberal MPs, were being told by their writing associations, you want us to support the guy who took Queen's Park away from us and became the NDP Premier, and we just don't want to do that. While from Ottawa, Parliament Hill, or even from Montreal, that would look like it's not an issue, When you went on the ground in Ontario during that leadership campaign and you talked about this with Liberal members, it kept coming back. We're not going to support Bob Ri because he led the NDP to rout us out of power with Queen's Park. So I'm going to be watching that Ontario election with some interest. I hear totally what Bruce is saying about Andrea Arvath and not necessarily going anywhere.

But this is as close as the NDP has been to be in contention as the alternative for a long, long time, for one. And two, I remember covering Bob Rhee's last NDP campaign in Ontario, which was supposed to be his last dance before he vanished into the night. Instead, he suddenly became the premier with a majority government when that election was called. That is not

where things were expected to go in any way, shape, or form. Including by him. I think that's a good point point i also think that this is a real um challenging moment for steve del duca the liberal leader in ontario if he doesn't start to establish more visibility and traction for his message um it may not matter whether or not he would be a better premier than andreavath. Her name is known. The NDP brand is intoxic in Ontario.

If people are sort of looking for a change, they may well gravitate towards the NDP in that scenario. So time is running out for him to have a bigger impact than he's been having so far. He sure doesn't have that impact yet. I mean, I'm out in the hinterland here in Stratford, and if you went out on the street and asked 10 people who the leader of the liberal party in montario was you'd probably be lucky to get one of them tell you who it was right right it's a big a mystery

though is why the ndp seems unable to look at a leader who has not had much success in the case of andrea horwath and say shouldn't we try something else but maybe that's i heard chantelle say something about this several years ago which i've never forgotten maybe she remembers it and wants to repeat it today i'm not sure i remember so i'm gonna take a path there but but was it that sometimes new Democrats are more comfortable with losers? Losers was the word. Yes, I know. Well, I am and I continue to be struck by the fact that the NDP fired Thomas Mulcair, who gave them one of the best results the party ever had,

and is hanging on to Jagmeet Singh, whose ceiling seems to be awfully close to where they are now. Nice rocking chair, though. Pricey. When I raised my kids, you could get the secondhand rocking chair for 20 bucks. I'm glad you mentioned the rocking chair because I want to know briefly and this is a story about how a company gave after the birth of their new child Jagmeet Singh and his wife gave a rocking chair to the sings and in you know and in return they got an endorsement kind kind of an endorsement from Mrs. Singh on her Instagram post of the company that gave them the chair. Now, since they have decided they're going to pay for, or they already have paid for the chair, and it's being investigated by the ethics commissioner, etc., etc.

And it kind of blew over in a few hours. That's the story until today when we bring it up. But I bring it up because if this had happened to Aaron O'Toole in the midst of all these weekly crises that he's facing or Justin Trudeau, I'm assuming this would have been a much bigger story and would have had legs for days, if not weeks, and have become one of those things that you always remembered about that particular leader. Am I wrong about that? No, you're not. And by the way, Chuck Neitzing also tagged the furniture company in one of his posts.

So it wasn't just his partner who did that. And it is a major judgment issue because that's a no-brainer. If you're a party leader and you get a gift and in exchange you tag the company, a pricey gift in the case of this rocking chair, $1,800 is not cheap. How could you not know that this is not a good idea is basically the question. The fact that it does not raise more controversy, I don't think that's a great sign because it basically means that people aren't paying a lot of attention to the NDP and its leader and not looking at the NDP and its leader as a, the leader of a government in waiting. None includes obviously the media.

They're not going to push it. Okay. We're going to, we're going to take our last break here. As I mentioned earlier, the prime minister is talking a little bit about housing today. We don't know what the details are, but we have our own housing minister here on the panel.

Bruce Anderson has spent time looking at the housing story, and we're going to hear what his potential solution might be, or at least something that's up for consideration. But first, we're going to take this quick break. All right, back with the final moments, the final five or six minutes of good talk for this Friday. Chantelle Hebert is in Montreal. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. Okay. Housing. You know, we've had letters. I had a really good one yesterday that was representative of a number of letters that I've received here at the bridge. About the, you know, like the lost generation of homeowners. Unless you've got, you know, wealthy parents who are willing to buy a house for you or give you a substantial

amount of money to do a down payment, have a certain block of Canadians forever lost the possibility of owning their own house. It's an issue. There's no question it's an issue. It's a generational issue out there for a lot of people. And they look to, you know, it's a generational issue uh out there for a lot of people and they look to you know

it's at times like this they look to government to help solve the situation and and the question is are the solutions that have been coming out and we'll see another one today i guess at least in some level uh whether they're any good now bruce has spent time on housing in terms of research and polling and listening to people and he has some thoughts on this bruce well let's not oversell my credentials in this area period but i have been looking at it because i think it's a political conundrum of sorts that that politicians can see polls that say housing affordability is a big problem. And then the question is, what actually can you do about it? And I think we have to think about it as having at least two parts. The one part is housing for people who otherwise would be homeless. So really, public housing, creating spaces that can allow people who are experiencing homelessness to find their feet, to deal with some of the other issues

that often contribute to homelessness. And that's a very particular kind of social policy that's needed. And I think that the federal liberals anyway, have been doing a fair bit more in that space in the last couple of years and trying to address some of that concern. The second issue, though, is the one that has maybe more political kind of risk associated with it for governments that don't seem to be able to find that solution. And that is younger people who are looking to enter the housing market. They have a job, sometimes they have a degree, sometimes they have two degrees, sometimes they have two incomes. And in our biggest cities, they just look at the prices rising by such enormous sums every year that they feel like this dream of homeownership is slipping further and further away. Why is that happening? Well, I think there's a couple of

things that have been going on. One is very low interest rates make it easier to imagine that you can afford a home that's $200,000 more than you thought you could ever afford. But we've also over the last 25 years or more watched as a lot of small towns kind of emptied of young people as they move to jobs in the big cities. And so the biggest part of this housing affordability problem for that younger generation is in the big cities. And, you know, add 400,000 immigrants to the mix, which is a number that we did in Canada last year. And you're creating a huge demand for a really limited supply. It's hard to get land opened up to build new housing in those large areas because the price of the land is so high. Step back from that, though, and look at Canada, and all you see is space. Almost all you see is uninhabited space. And so I've been looking at initiatives like the one in Tulsa, there's another one in West Virginia, another one in Northern Arkansas, where pools of funds have been assembled,

offering young people, particularly, $10,000 in the case of the Tulsa one, $20,000, I think it is, in the case of the Arkansas one, to come and live there. And they're able to use that money for whatever they want. They just have to stay in that place for a period of time. They can use it as a down payment for a house. And the Tulsa experiment is really an interesting one. And some of our listeners might want to go and check it out because on the site, it basically says,

if you want to come here, here's a link to the houses that are for sale right now. Here's some affordable apartments. Here's the social activities that we're building into the community. And you can have free space at what is effectively a collective working environment. Why are they doing all this? In part, because they've seen the opportunity that remote work provides. And that kind of brings me to the pandemic being a potential catalyst here. The Tulsa program is called Tulsa Remote.

It is basically saying to young people, if you can work from anywhere in your job, why don't you come and live here? Because a house is pretty affordable and the lifestyle is something that you might like. So I think in Canada, there's lots of potential to do things like that. And I hope we get inventive in that space as well. Federal government may be working with municipalities. For that, you're going to have to change the culture of many employers who can't wait for the pandemic to be over. It's a require everyone to show up at the office again. The other issue is we have not been building a lot of housing.

And so you're going to say, let's just build more. The other issue is we have not been building a lot of housing. And so you're going to say, let's just build more. But before you go one of them, to be driving 60, 70, 80 kilometers to work. That has been happening in and around Montreal too, where you're at the very limit of where you can assume that you can drive morning and evening, pick up the kids at daycare, et cetera, and making people harder. Then the other issue is, if you want to build in the cities, then people are going to have to accept higher densities of population. Maybe the dream of homeownership is no longer a white picket fence in front of a house with a nice backyard, but it's a large condo that is well insulated for sound where you can raise a couple of kids.

And that's a major cultural change, I would argue, in many Canadian provinces, possibly Montreal being the exception because in this city, density is something that is a bit different from Toronto or Vancouver, for instance. All right. It's a great discussion and a great debate, and it's forefront on the minds of a lot of, I guess, under 40s mainly,

who will determine how this country is going to play out over the next few decades. So this issue is critical for them. So I thank you both for the input on that, and hopefully they're not all going to move to Tulsa or Arkansas or wherever to take advantage of those different programs. I'm sure we'll have ones of our own, hopefully.

All right, that's it for Good Talk for this week. Chantelle's in Montreal. Bruce was in Ottawa. Thank you both. The Bridge will be back on Monday. Have a great weekend. Have a safe weekend. We'll talk to you soon.