The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - GOOD TALK -- "Wokism versus Brokenism"

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Chantal and Bruce analyze the pros and cons of Thursday night's major speech from Justin Trudeau to Liberal delegates in Ottawa.  Does he still have the royal jelly to lead. the liberals against Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives?  Plus does the Michael Chong story just keep the drip, drip, drip going against the government on the China election interference issue.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto, Chantel's in Montreal, and our coronation reporter, Bruce Anderson is in, well, he chose to find where could he go in the United Kingdom to get a real pulse of the nation, to get a sense of how things look for the crowning of Prince Charles to become King Charles. Well, he's already King Charles, but officially becomes King Charles III today with the coronation in Westminster Abbey. So Bruce is up in Northern Scotland, not just Scotland, but Northern Scotland. He's up in the Highlands. Peter, I've recreated the exact look of Peter Mansbridge's studio, his overseas studio for the bridge. Everything looks exactly as it does when you're, you're podcasting from

here and I'm happy to be doing it. It does. And I'm glad you took this picture because I, I, I want to keep this picture to make sure everything's still there when I get back. Um, any, uh, any, any, what can you tell us? I mean, uh, you know, we, you're not exactly a monarchist and you've been careful about what you've had to say about the new monarch. But here it is, 24 hours until the crowning. I think people here are going to pay a lot of attention to it. I think it's going to have a big audience. I think that people like the pomp and the ceremony and the spectacle of it,

and they'll tune in regardless of whether they are super monarchists or somewhere further along the spectrum towards Republicans. I sense that in this community in Northern Scotland, that there are a lot of people who had a lot of regard for the Queen um her uh the minister that used to be her um i don't know what you you probably know what the exact term is the uh but who ran the parish here was the queen's uh minister clergy let's not hire please do not give this guy a permanent contract as a journalist. This is not my beat. He's really bad.

It's not my beat, the royal. But there's a... And the British royal correspondent, Bruce Anderson. People are going to deliver decorations into the church yard tomorrow, and there's going to be some celebration. I don't know how big it's going to be. Maybe we can talk about it next week, but I suspect this will be my last invitation to be a correspondent on royal events. And that's

probably as it should be. It sounds to me, Chantal, like he's being bought off. I mean, he's talking about big audiences and people are excited. And I'm guessing there's some free food involved. I see no souvenirs, no evidence that he's partaking, although he's faking it. He's really a terrible reporter. Terrible reporter. Let's agree on that. My heart's not in it, I'm going to be honest. So, you know, take it as you will. But I do think people will pay attention to it because it is a thing in the life of the country.

And how they'll feel about it after, I don't know. I mean, the Stone of Destiny is going to do its job. We know that. You should tell us what that is for those who weren't on top of the situation. I'm not the person to usually carry on. This is the stone that's kept in Edinburgh Castle, right? And it goes down. It's beneath the crowning chair.

And it's sort of a tradition and history. And Scotland's part of what happens. And it's all very interesting. It's got its own history itself. And Bruce, next week, will have a short documentary on that, on the bridge and hill. Very short. It's like the sorting hat in Harry Potter for those more current generation.

Except it's heavier. That's my take. We're at two extremes of this celebration since I'm in the only province in Canada that has absolutely no official events planned by the lieutenant governor. And I can safely predict that, I think Abacus this week had a poll that said 4% of Canadians are planning to watch. So I can safely report that 99% of that 4% does not reside in Quebec. Which is unlike 52 or 53 when uh when elizabeth uh the coronation took place there were a hundred thousand in the streets in montreal

because i had this image that you'd be down there tomorrow morning with one of those little umbrella chairs sitting beside along the main street waiting for the parade to come by to cover it of course not to partake in it but to to cover it. But I guess that's not going to happen. I think I'll go cycling. It looks like a good cycling morning tomorrow. Okay, I think we've done that one. Probably. We've definitely covered the coronation,

and we can proudly say that we were part of King Charles' big moment. Okay, let's move to the major topic at hand, which is after a bit of a build-up in the last week that the speech last night by the Prime Minister was going to be a big deal in Ottawa at the Convention of Liberals, a big deal in the sense that the delegates would be looking at this guy and saying, really, has he still got it in the tank to go for another election? He certainly thinks so, and he certainly seemed to say so last night. But overall, in terms of the speech itself, how would you characterize what we witnessed last night? And for those who

didn't see it, you can still find it online, certainly bits of it if you so feel that you'd want to have a look yourself. But Chantel, why don't you start? You can actually watch the entire thing on CPAC as I did early this morning. Because as you know, if you know anything as a journalist about Justin Trudeau, it's that he is always late to everything. And so he was late beyond my bedtime last night. I figured someone else. So I woke up to a speech, a Justin Trudeau speech. I thought overall that he delivered the speech he needed. And he probably shut down any speculation that he would not be leading the party in the next election or that he didn't feel that's just as important he didn't feel like leading the party in the next election

now i did some an exercise in my mind as i was listening to the speech and i wasn't one of those just the sunny way speech it involved a fair amount of attacks on the conservatives, the Pierre Poiliev conservatives and on the leader himself. I tried just for the fun of it to change Pierre Poiliev's name in the speech for Jean Charest's name in the speech, Jean Charest being the main rival for the leadership of the Conservative Party last summer. And I've always thought as much, but even more so with this exercise, Justin Trudeau would possibly have delivered this farewell speech last night rather than a speech that was about the choices that he is going to be putting to Canadians and the contrast between his party and the party of the left party, if he had had to deliver the same speech using Jean Charest, it wouldn't have worked as well.

It would have sounded like scare tactics, because in many ways Jean Charest was not very far from the same page as the liberals on climate change, for instance, or even on social programs. Plus, a lot of people, I was looking at the room, a lot of the people in that room had actually, in the past, cheered Jean Chagall on or voted for him. So things would have been significantly different. Now, Mr. Poiliev is giving Justin Trudeau a cause in his gut to want to fight a fourth campaign. And I think that also works for the liberals who are attending this convention, that Pierre Poiliev is the best enemy they could hope for

if they're going to galvanize rank and file members into fighting that fight at a time when fatigue with the government and with justin trudeau including inside the party is a lot higher than it would have been even two or three years ago bruce uh i'm intrigued by chantal's um point about did he give the speech that he needed to. I think if the question is in order to protect his ability to be the liberal leader in the next election, for sure. But I also don't think that there was to in order to find five to 10% more support with the public? I didn't feel it was that speech. I didn't feel it was that speech in either one of two respects. I thought that it talked more about past accomplishments than

what's the big ideas for the future. The future vision was really characterized as we'll always look out for people, we'll always put people first, which is nice. And I think broadly would be supported by people as a sense of the right values. But it felt to me like it stopped short of describing some exciting new directions that the Liberal Party wanted to lead the country towards. And I think that it's time for him to start talking more about that. And it feels like that was an opportunity perhaps missed. this was, I think, intended to be either the first or the best-to-date version of him defining Pierre Pelliette and taking off the gloves and delivering a sense of, this is how I'm going to challenge Canadians to think about my main rival. And so I was looking for something that was perhaps even

sharper, perhaps even more crystallized, perhaps something that I felt would land with a little bit more impact. Which brings me to my last point, which is that the language and the phrasing for speeches by the prime minister and members of the government generally, there's a marbled quality to it. It doesn't have, the edges have been kind of taken off it. The language doesn't land with the same kind of breakthrough impact that, not to put too fine a point on it, that Pierre Polyev's language has. And so I think they need to define him. I think they started late and he's already kind of avoided, Polyev that is, has already kind of moved away from some of the behaviors

and some of the themes that made him more vulnerable. And so some of the criticisms of him now feel like they're a little bit dated in terms of the things that he's saying, but that's not necessarily a problem that can't be fixed. I think the challenge that the government has is that it doesn't speak like politicians anymore. It speaks like administrators. And I thought that there was a little too much of that in that speech last night in terms of what would happen if there was an election right now. Would it sound compelling enough, either in terms of

what the Liberals have on offer or in terms of what you need to be fearful of with Pierre Palliet? You know, I listened to it and read about it. And it seems to me that the Liberals and Trudeau himself are looking for a slogan that they can, you know, go after Polyev on. And, you know, last night the attempt at a slogan was sort of, they call us, you know, wokists, we call them brokenists. I don't know, I'm not sure that's going to travel too far. It doesn't have kind of the ring to it you like. I understand the motivation behind it,

and perhaps they've got some ground there to work with. It just sounded kind of clumsy in the delivery of it. But it is an interesting time, and you can have an argument over your theory, Bruce, about whether or not you need new stuff, or you could keep pounding away on the old stuff when you're attacking your enemy. But we'll see how that comes out.

Chantal, did you see a slogan in there that the party can rally around? But I wasn't looking for one, basically, in the sense that I don't believe that conventions matter to the larger public unless they provide. Well, yes, if they were dividing on the floor of the convention with people saying, Justin Trudeau is really, he's got to go, et cetera, people would probably focus on that. That's not happening. But I don't think people are sitting on a Friday night or a Thursday night or a Friday morning wanting to listen to the prime minister's speech at this national convention. I'm also reminded that conventions take place outside of reality a lot

of the time. And you guys were there. I remember walking away from the convention that picked Kim Campbell as the conservative leader. And the polls after that leadership vote were really good for the conservatives. But I remember walking away from there thinking that I had just spent the weekend outside in some surreal world, where everything was great and the future was bright for the conservatives, and that the second I stepped outside, the air was completely different, and it didn't seem like the people, it looked like they'd all been smoking some really good dope and lost touch with reality. And that actually went on for a number of months, which begs the question, is that also going to happen to the liberals? They obviously

feel that they don't want to get in the way of Pierre Poiliev defining himself. And at this point, Pierre Poiliev is doing a good job of not drawing on the Canadian voters that he needs if he's going to win an election. Whether that will be sustained for a year and a half is a question mark. But I do think it's a bit early in the game to be trying to use slogans for an election that, at least in my mind, is at least a year away. I'm not going to say two years because I'm not a 2025 person. I also, from the speech, got the clear confirmation that this, for the liberals, is going to be a shield election and not a sword election.

That is what happens after three terms. You're no longer moving forward with all kinds of new stuff. You are basically defending what you've done and defending what you own. And I'm not sure that it works for the liberals to go around saying we're looking for brand new fresh ideas, because I don't think fresh is going to be identified with the liberal brand. It's going to be safe rather than fresh. That is going to be their main card versus Pierre Poiliev. But that's just me, and that's this weekend.

Okay, just to clarify, when I was talking about a slogan, I was talking about a slogan for liberals as they leave that place to rally around. But I take your point. Bruce? Yeah, look, I agree that this convention or any of these conventions, typically not for a broader audience, but they do represent a bit of a dress rehearsal, an opportunity for the PM to kind of, or the leader of the party to ping some messages out to see what happens in a room full of, in this case, his most avid supporters, people who've kind of put in the time and effort and money to be at this event. And so I'm looking at it more from the standpoint of, does the language feel ready to move past the rehearsal stage in the economy with which it prosecutes either the problems

that Mr. Trudeau sees for Pierre Pauliev or the promise that it offers to Canadians as an alternative to the Conservatives. I think Chantal is right that the Liberals probably will end up running more of a shield campaign than a sword campaign, but I think Chantal is right that the liberals probably will end up running more of a shield campaign than a sword campaign. But I think that that could be the thing that causes them to lose if they're going to lose the next campaign, because I think that voters will probably need to be more frightened by the conservatives than they appear to be now, more frightened by Pierre Palliev than they appear to be now.

And I'm not sure that the efforts that have been made so far and the way that I heard it put last night gets the liberals to where they might need to be in order to win a shield campaign where their basic argument is the other guys are dangerous to your interests. But there's lots of time to improve upon that. All I'm really saying is it didn't look to me like the final cut of the film that will be the liberal campaign, and nor would I have expected it to. But I think that I'm observing, I guess, some of the things that I felt probably need to be tightened up. I did notice one thing that was interesting. I was happy to see on behalf of

people who believe in equal rights that Mr. Trudeau decided to tackle this woke issue. I think it's a fight that needs to be had. I think that the idea that woke is broke, which we hear from Ron DeSantis and Republicans and South of the Border and some conservatives here, is a really important question. It goes to, you know, I think from their standpoint, they like to make the case that it goes to the role of government interference in people's lives. From my standpoint, it is more a question of equal rights. And so I think it's a fight well worth having. And it was good for the prime minister to tackle it. The second thing is that

I believe that Pierre Polyev has been particularly effective at kind of allowing the liberals to say, you can own the idea of the middle class, which we're going to characterize as the wealthy. We're going to try to own the working class, the blue're going to characterize as the wealthy, we're going to try to own the working class, the blue collar worker. And I did think that the prime minister made a point of talking about blue collar workers as part of where the liberal party wants to attract support, why it cares for their interests, how it shows up for them. And so I saw that as a bit of a preview for an effort on the part of the liberals not to lose touch with those voters who don't identify so much with that middle class theming of the liberals and a little bit

more with the kind of the everyday working guy that Pierre-Paul Liev likes to talk about. And when you look at the, just as a last point on the question of the status of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party right now, when you look at the most recent polls, it's tightened up once again, you know, if you believe in polls. But it wasn't that long ago, a month, six weeks ago, where the Conservatives seemed to have a pretty healthy lead, you know, if you believe in polls. But it wasn't that long ago, a month, six weeks ago, where the Conservatives seemed to have a pretty healthy lead, you know, six, seven, in some cases, I think even eight points. Now it's back down to two. It's basically kind of where it was after the last election.

And I wonder if this addresses the point you were making, Chantel, that the opportunity for Polyev to move forward, given the landscape of politics these days, was there, but he hasn't seemed to grasp it. If these numbers are right, they would indicate that. Well, he certainly has not made any new friends that I see. And I am fascinated, and I will remain, I think, fascinated by the fact that there is so much more distance between premiers like Doug Ford and François Legault and this conservative leader versus his predecessors. It's real distance.

No one is pushing back on that notion. And I know Premier Ford likes to say that part of the reason why he gets along with Justin Trudeau is they share some of the same voters. That's certainly true. But the conservatives share voters with even more voters with François Legault and Premier Ford than the liberals. And you can tell that these two premiers are not about to go out and say, we really want to work with the Poitiers government. He has put in place issues that makes them not want to be next to him instead of mending fences. The Volkswagen subsidy is not an issue on which he can find grounds to agree with Doug Ford. The child care agreements that the provinces have signed on and the thousands of parents who now get cheaper child care

are not about to be excited if their provincial government sides with a conservative leader who would actually put an ax to it. He hasn't said that he would, by the way. François Legault is looking at the hydro tax rebates that are included in the last Freeland budget. Do you think that he wants to be spending time dancing with a conservative leader who wants to get rid of the CBC and has plans that make the future of Radio-Canada highly uncertain?

And that basically leaves Mr. Poiliev with only one main provincial ally called Daniel Smith in Alberta. And I think that's a problem. And that's kind of a sign of what's happened since September, that rather than expand the reach of the Conservative Party as a future federal government, he has made himself more isolated, while Justin Trudeau has stepped into those vacuums, and it helps to be in government so that you can do so. But I think it kind of defines what's been happening to the Conservatives so far and it explains their failure to thrive in the polls. Again, I do think that Pierre Poilievre is acting as if he's going to win the election

with people who don't vote normally and I think that's a huge gamble. I also think that in the process, he may be convincing a lot of people who might have stayed home because, you know, to the returns to go out to vote because they won't want that kind of government. So we are up to a point in different territory than anything we've seen under previous official opposition leaders. All right, Bruce, before we move on, you want to comment on that?

I'm a little bit more, I would be a little bit more open to the idea that Bolivar is watching his favorability numbers rise over the last six, seven months. His negatives have risen as well. And so I agree with Chantal that there's a certain portion of the population for sure that the more they see and hear him, the more they don't like what they're seeing. But the pace of that growing negativity is quite a bit higher for or faster for Andrew Scheer. And then once Aaron O'Toole was kind of in the throes of an election or in the run up to it, it was pretty fast there, too. So I'm probably a little bit more hesitant to say that Pierre Polyev is squandering the opportunity at this point or doesn't still have it. Instead, I'm kind of watching the messages

that he's using and they seem to be moving a little bit away from the culture war, which I think is a disastrous electoral scenario for the conservatives and more towards we're going to get some houses built and ideas like that, which I think will require, if they do land more successfully over time, something more than a shield response from the liberals on the policy side. I'm still curious to see how someone who goes to every press conference unable to handle pushback will handle a leaders debate, which will be all about pushback. That's a good point. Right. Yeah.

And he's got to be very careful about it. If he's moving away from the culture wars talk and moving into the more general economic talk, he runs the risk of losing some people, right? On the cultural war side. Look, if it sounds like I think he's doing fantastic, I don't. And today's numbers would replicate the result of the last election. I think that's pretty clear. I do feel like liberals might look at those numbers and decide that they're not as vulnerable as people might say, but their accessible voter pool has been trending down. And Pauliev's messages about jobs and waste and spending and houses are not culture war messages. And I think that he does deliver them with some effectiveness. I think when he stays focused on that.

But he's got to, all I was saying was he's got to watch his extreme, his far right wing that he, you know, he could lose some of that to the people's party. We've got to move. We've got to move on. We've got,

we've got a related topic in a way, and we'll come right back to it right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk with Sean Talley-Bear and Bruce Anderson. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, and also on your favorite podcast platform. And because it's Friday, like Wednesday, we're also on our YouTube channel.

So whichever platform you use, welcome to the program. Okay. There was an assumption, I think, certainly on the media's part, because they've been gung-ho on this story for the last you know six weeks anyway um loosely called the election interference story or china's involvement in trying to um impact the elections uh of the past two elections at least um the story seems each week well it's kind of run its course and it's probably over, but then the next week something new comes up. And this week it was the Michael Chong angle, which really upset a lot of people, not just inside the Conservative Party,

but elsewhere as well. So the question will be, what impact is that going to have, if any? Because, as you heard from those numbers we talked about in the last block, things are not moving away from the Liberals. They're kind of coming back to the Liberals a little bit, and that's why there's such a tight race. The Michael Chong story, does that elevate the election interference story back up to, you know, center stage? Chantal? Well, to center stage and question period, but the gap between center stage and question period and center stage in the real world remains significant.

I asked a few friends who are like me, spending time in the bubble, but time outside the bubble, how often people who are outside the bubble had mentioned China over the past two weeks, including this week, and the answer from all of them, and that's been my experience, is zero. And I am not saying this story is not potentially damaging to the liberals when I say that. I am just saying that I think the bigger danger comes from what we've seen this week,

which has been a moving narrative from the liberals, a failure to get on top of the issue, a forever reactive strategy rather than take the bull by the horns and say, this is what happened. And, you know, I watched, I was painful to watch because it's painful to watch stuff that makes no sense. I watched the public safety minister stand up 12 times in the house of commons to not answer the question of when he discovered

that Michael Chong's family in Hong Kong could be subject to pressures from the Chinese government over Michael Chong's actions in the House of Commons. 12 times, that's a lot of times. Only to then the next day say, oh, I found out in the House of Commons 12 times. That's a lot of times. Only to them the next day say, oh, I found out in the newspaper. Well, as one of my colleagues suggested on the CBC last night, the easy answer would be I personally did not find out until I read the newspaper, but I am looking to see if it fell between some cracks somewhere, rather than just evade the question, which makes you look like you're hiding something.

On Thursday, after the prime minister assured the House, Canadians and Michael Chong, that he too had only found out on Monday and that presumably CSIS had not felt that it was important enough to move it up the food chain. The IS National Security Advisor called Michael Chong to say, well, it turns out that wasn't quite right. It was moved up the chain to the National Security Advisor. Now, there are a number of points that the government could have clarified on that basis. And we only know of this because she called Michael Zhang, who told the House. One, Jody Thomas, the National Security Advisor, who called them, was not in the job at that point in the summer of 2021. Two, there were interim people, three of them sharing that chair between June and the fall. And three, the government should have had someone come and clarify

what it meant versus what the prime minister had said the day before. We are still waiting for that clarification. It's as if what happened in the House of Commons and that phone call is completely divorced from the government's narrative, which it is not, and which lends itself, I heard on Radio Canada this morning, from someone who is normally well-informed that Jodie Thomas would probably or would likely have her job in peril for not having told the prime minister in 2021. She wasn't even there in 2021. All of this points to apparently an incapacity to get messages right in a crisis, which is an election is a 40-day crisis, daily crisis.

That's what it is. If you can't get on top of a story over five days, when you're not even in an election campaign, what's going to happen to you in an election campaign? But also increasingly, I don't think people will ever talk to me about Jody Thomas and Michael Chong, frankly. But I do think that they're going to start asking me if the government is still competent enough to run the country, which is a more deadly question frankly bruce i agree with chantal that there's no evidence that this is becoming a issue where the public is going to say something about the china story makes me want to vote

conservative or less likely to vote liberal i don't think it has that kind of resonance or impact, at least not at this point. Second thing I would say is that, again, consistent with Chantal, the only thing that has been consistent about this is the poor issue of management at the center of the government on it. There's no kinder word to use. It's been shambolic from the get-go, repeatedly. And so when you have ministers saying things that sound evasive, in my experience, it's usually because they don't know what the strategy is because it hasn't been given to them yet. And everybody who should know what the details are haven't shared what the details are so that everybody can play a role that seems more appropriate. So, you know, and I take Chantal's point about how to answer a question, you know, could take a number of different ways. But to me, the root cause of this continues to be the same, which is that something happens and government takes too long to figure out what it is that happened and what it is that they're going to do about it and then to execute on what it is that they're going to do about it. And the latest

aspect of that, of course, is the conversation about whether or not Canada is going to expel the diplomat whose involvement in this intimidation process is on point. It sounds like the government is saying we're not ruling it out, but we're waiting to figure out whether or not China will be upset with us if we do that or how upset. It almost feels like that's not a conversation you want to have publicly. You want to make a decision about what you're going to do and you want to act on it. And from the time that people heard about this Michael Chong situation, which feels like it's two weeks now, but it's probably like three days. Three days is, to Chantal's point, it's 10% of an election. You can't have this thing be kind of rolling around

unguided for that long without it dispiriting your troops, without it making people confused about what it is that they're supposed to be representing. And it shakes confidence. And I suspect it's shaken some confidence of some of the people who are attending that convention. So the government needs to get its strategy in place and act with some agility, I think, on this now. I must say I was shocked listening to Melanie Jolie, the foreign affairs minister, basically make that argument that we're contemplating expelling that argument that, you know, we're contemplating, you know, expelling that diplomat,

but we've got to weigh all the different things that China could do to us if we do that. I thought, what? Really? You know, saying that out loud is bad enough, even thinking it to some degree. I mean, I recall the days where on a dime, we threw out a dozen or more Soviet diplomats in the old Cold War days, like bang, right, you know, within hours of something having happened. And here this has dragged on for weeks, and this particular example has dragged on for days now with no action. Tell me, does David Johnston factor into what's going to happen now, or does he just, or for the liberals,

does it just run the risk of extending the drip, drip, drip of the story? Who wants to run it, though? Well, you could make a construct that pressure on the government, which drips, drips, drips through leaks from the security services and others, is pressure on David Johnston to conclude that a public inquiry is in order. And on that basis, this drop by drop of acid on the government strategy is going to keep up until he reports. Whether Mr. Johnston is taking that into account or is just focusing on whatever his mandate is and saying, I'm going to make my decision free of the noise of the bubble and Parliament Hill is another issue. But for sure, I don't think that David Johnston's reputation, which is good, enough to withstand the storm and the credibility test of not recommending some kind of review, public inquiry, judicial review, et cetera, in this file. I don't think that in any way, shape or form, a long list of prescriptions of things the government is already doing that it

could do better is going to work politically. He's going to have to go further than that for his role and the exercise to be credible. Otherwise, he's just going to look like the latest person trying to put the lid on something that is already overboiling, and he's going to burn his hand in the process, not help the government cool down the debate. Bruce, do you have any thoughts on why this issue hasn't taken hold?

It's clearly taken hold in the media, but it doesn't appear to have taken hold in the public. It's not a non-issue. It's a pretty important issue. But is it a simple fact that people are more concerned about the cost of their groceries, the cost of housing, the cost of any number of different things at a time of battle against inflation, and so they're not interested in this?

I mean, why do you think it's not taken hold? Well, I think that there are a number of reasons for it. I mean, one is that there's probably about a third of the public that wouldn't pay any attention to any news stories about national politics on any given day. So that leaves the other two-thirds, I suppose, who would have paid some attention to this, and then the question is, would they be shocked

that China is trying to interfere in Canadian politics? No. If they're following the news more generally, they would assume that China is trying to do this not only in Canada, but in the United States and in many other countries as well. And so one of the ways in which this story could have become more trenchant with the public, I think, is if it looked like there was something to the thesis that the Trudeaus were somehow in collusion with the Chinese who are trying to influence us, either to help raise money in the foundation or through some other form of nefarious interaction. I find that over time, there seems less evidence that that's a thing. Not that the Chinese weren't trying to cultivate, you know, stronger ties and ultimately, perhaps out of that basis, some greater influence, but rather that there's probably nothing

that's worth a full-scale public inquiry if the only question is who gave the money to the Trudeau Foundation and what did they get, if anything, in return, or what were they promised, if anything, in return. But Chantal's right, I think, in saying the question of whether or not there needs to be more transparency over the range of things that government knew and did or did not do something about with respect to Chinese interference, I feel like the responsible thing to do is there has to be some more transparency. What form that takes, I think, is still open to a reasonable argument from David Johnson. And I don't think I'm more convinced this many weeks

after his appointment, that a public inquiry just about the Trudeau Foundation would be worthwhile. I think we need to be a little bit more forward-looking and with a good measure of transparency about these various things that we do know, or have been hearing about are all part of a syndrome of Chinese efforts to interfere or implicate themselves more in our democracy. All right, Chantal, just one minute, please, on the impact of Alexander Trudeau, you know, Justin Trudeau's brother appearing before the committee this week. What was the impact of that? And I'm going to link it to Maurice Rosenberg, the CEO of the foundation, who also testified the day before. I think they, and the fact that just that Alexandre Trudeau,

as he's known here, his name was never mentioned under either Sacha or Alexandre in question period the day after. It tells you all you need to know. I don't think there ever was a possibility that there would be a public inquiry into the sideshow, minor sideshow, that is the Trudeau Foundation. And I don't think that is what really the opposition parties, when they look at the larger picture, would really want this to be. But I think what Morris Rosenberg did that was the most useful

was take people back in time to 2015, 2016, and how Canadians and their main parties, I include the Conservatives, felt about China then. A donation from China, whatever its source back in 2015-16 was not a big issue. It was kind of par for the course. And he said something that we have all heard over the Crétien era and going forward, this belief, which I always thought was naive. I'm glad Mr. Rosenberg, who is much more experienced with Asia, came around to it this week, that we would contaminate them with the democratic virus by doing business with them. I always thought that was a self-serving rationalization for making money and overriding human rights issues. But that is what the elites of the time were saying.

Premiers, the prime minister, people in Mr. Harper's government, Hillary Clinton as vice president. And it is true that back in the days when the donation was accepted, that was the prevailing mindset, including among some of the pundits who are today writing how terribly naive and incompetent various governments have been towards China. So I thought that he did a useful service. that the Trudeau Foundation has a future, but I don't think that it's going to be the main piece of evidence in any kind of review or inquiry into this file going forward. Okay. It's rare to catch Chantel on something. Hillary Clinton was never vice president.

Yes, secretary of state. What am I saying? But she is the keynote speaker later today in Ottawa for the Liberal Convention, so I'm sure we'll be hearing more about that. Okay, we're going to take our final break. When we come back, Bruce is going to give us an insight into a new study about Canadians' attitudes

on the question of equality. It's quite interesting. Back in a moment. And welcome back. Our final segment of Good Talk for this day. Chantal and Bruce are with us. With us, Bruce has a new study done by Spark Advocacy, his company, on the question of equality in Canada and how Canadians feel about the old adage of we're all equal. That's something we signed on to at the end of the Second World War. We're all equal. No matter who we are, where we come from, what our past is, we're all equal.

Bruce, what does the study conclude? By the way, I'm sorry. Sorry to say we only have about five minutes. We only have about five minutes, so go for it. I wouldn't characterize it as a full-blown study or anything. I did write a piece based on two questions that I recently asked of a nationwide survey that are part of an effort I've been making lately to try to understand how much of the apparent disagreement that exists in our society around cultural issues

really has to do not with the policies in question, but a basic premise of do you believe that every individual should have the same rights as every other individual? And so I asked that question specifically. I actually did it in two successive nationwide surveys, 1,200 each, and the same number came back both times. 17% of Canadians who answered this survey, these surveys, said that they thought that some people should have fewer rights than other people. And then I wanted to know a little bit about, well, who do they have in mind when they say that? And so I asked specific questions about whether these, and I gave them categories, should have fewer rights than other people or the same rights as everybody else.

And immigrants, 19% say should have fewer rights. Muslims, 13%. Gay people, 12%. Jews, 8%. People of color, 7%. And women, 5%. So what's my takeaway of all of this? I mean, we can't look at a situation in Canada and say we don't seem to have as much racial tension or friction around equality as exists south of the border. Or we can say 17% is a pretty big number.

I tend to look at it as a pretty big number. And you asked me earlier in the week, do we know how it compares to 40, 50 years ago? And I think it's fair to ask that question. I don't know that we know the answer to that. But what I would say in my last point on this is watching politics develop in the UK in the last few years and in the US in the last few years, it feels like some political actors are enabling arguments that are based on inequality or that derive from that perception or that feeling that some people have that they should be more equal than others.

And those arguments take more prominence. They travel the internet more effectively. They form part of the political discourse in a way that perhaps hasn't been as obvious in a very, very long period of time. So that's why I'm watching them. That's why I put out the piece and hope to do a little bit more on that in the months ahead as well.

Do you have thoughts on that, Chantal? I think it calls for more and deeper questions because some of the answers, I'll give you just one example. Immigrants should have different rights. I live in a province where newcomers to the province or immigrants have to send their kids to French language schools. They don't have the same freedom of choice as a Canadian-born citizen from Ontario or from Quebec

who is English-speaking. That is a difference in right that you will find from Stéphane Zion and Justin Trudeau to go down the list will be seen as justified. So these issues are kind of meshed into all kinds of situations. You can come to that answer about immigrants without being someone who feels immigrants are inferior and not equal to you, but you feel that there are certain services, rights, schools in this case, that should be accessed by virtue of the policies of a government. On the other hand, how often have you guys heard that the gender parity cabinet was doing a disservice, was treating men as unequal because more women

were sitting in cabinet? And that has been true of the workplace. I remember being asked by a colleague when I went to work at Queen's Park as a correspondent, don't two of us were appointed to women? And I was asked, don't you two feel bad that you only got here because you were women? And the answer to that was obvious. Did you feel bad when they used to hire only men, even when women who were qualified were asking for the job. So it's easy to see how you get to 17% on the basis of perceptions like that. I think a lot of people have bought into the notion that equality means equality is okay, is a virtue, as long as we are all the same. And society and diversity is a lot more nuanced than everyone is treated the same because obviously when you treat everyone the same, dominant groups tend to

get dominant treatment. And that's been harder to explain than the concept of for all equal, then why would we have policies for gender parity in cabinet? That's just one example. Got 30 seconds to respond, Bruce, then we got to wrap it up. I think Chantal's right that there are different issues that can affect the way people would answer a question like this. Obviously, I did see higher incidents of agreement that some people should have fewer rights in Quebec. And I know that the linkages to the secularist discussions and issues and policies are an important part of that and understandable subtext there. Even though the question didn't

ask about religious symbols or anything like that, It asks basically a simple question about human rights. I'm a little bit more preoccupied, I think, with the fact that the putative second frontrunner in the Republican race is campaigning a lot on a don't say gay platform, and that there's quite a lot of that kind of prejudice that seems to be more enabled these days. And that's what I'm a little bit more focused on. All right. We're going to wrap it up at that. Appreciate thoughts from both of you this week.

Another good discussion. Happy Coronation weekend. I know you'll all be out there. I'm Peter Mansbridge for Chantel & Bruce. Have a great weekend. Talk to you again on Monday.