The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How Considering Erin O'Toole As PM, Changes The Campaign Narrative

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

The Insiders gather to talk about what's happening in the war rooms as we head into week three.  How does the fact people are considering Erin O'Toole as a prime minister impact the way the different parties run their campaigns? Also up for discussion:  how does momentum affect a campaign, and, what are the underlying factors than can impact the final vote.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of the Election Bridge. It's Monday. The Insiders are next. And welcome to another week. It's week three of the election campaign. Things tend to happen in week threes. We'll tell you about that during the insiders. But first of all, let me give you a snapshot of the week ahead because I've fully recovered from my Arctic swing, which was fantastic.

And I really, really appreciate all the emails that I've had at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Keep those cards and letters coming. Because it really seemed to have struck a chord with many of you as well in terms of understanding our north and the Arctic and the various issues that go with it. But now we're back full on to the election campaign from here on in right to the end and this is a big week

let me give you a sense of what you've got in store the insiders coming up shortly with uh who is a liberal tim powers a conservative kathleen monk from the NDP. We're going to take kind of the insider approach to the campaign to try and understand what's happening in the various war rooms and the strategy rooms that help support a leader at a time like this because there are interesting things going on and big decisions having to be made almost on a daily basis, certainly on a weekly basis. So that's today. Tomorrow is the reporters with Rob Russo and Althea Raj. And we got some,

you know, we had some questions from you after the last reporters, and we're going to try to deal with those, some good ones, and a couple of other issues, because there's some important things happening on the campaign at the back of the plane, at the back of the bus, and some of the debates that are going on by journalists about the way they are covering this story. So that's what The Reporters on Tuesdays is all about. Wednesday, of course, is Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson.

He'll be back in Ottawa this week after a little holiday on the East Coast, but he still managed to do our podcast broadcast through the last couple of weeks. This Thursday, because there's a debate going on, which we'll tell you about a little later in the Insiders, but because of that, Thursday we're going to have kind of the mailbag edition, your voice, what you have to say about what's going on.

There'll be a little bit from the Arctic, but mostly it'll be on the campaign. So if you have thoughts about the campaign, send them in to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. And, you know, a selection will be picked and will be the basis of our program on Thursday. There have already been a lot over the last couple of weeks, and I am sure there are going to be many more in the next couple of days. So don't be shy. Send along your thoughts. Not just a rant, but, you know, your thoughts,

constructive or otherwise, happy to listen to them. And as I said, we'll pick the, you'll pick a selection of them to go on Thursday. Friday this week will be Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce. We're waiting until Friday this week and next week as well because Thursdays is a debate night, and we'll want to react to that. So that's your lineup for this week. Lots of good stuff, right? But let's get into the insiders now,

because this is, as I said, this is a big week. Things can happen. And here we go, the insiders for this Monday. This is The Bridge with peter mansbridge all right let's get right out of supria is in toronto uh kathleen and tim are in ottawa uh you know two weeks ago when this whole thing started, nobody was really asking the question, what would Aaron O'Toole be like as prime minister? Now, two weeks in, they're kind of asking that question.

A lot of people are asking that question. What would he be like as prime minister? And what I want to get at, aside from the obvious, which would indicate they've had a good two weeks, aside from that, what impact does it have on the way different parties think and operate two weeks into the campaign? And Tim, I know you're sitting there all excited, given the good work of the vote tool so far. What impact does it actually have on your party? Well, interestingly, yesterday, that being Sunday, a note was circulated to people who speak about conservative issues to say, don't talk about the polls. Don't do that. Don't fall into the trap of getting too excited and gloating.

So that will tell you there is a little bit of excitement. I think people who are newer to this, so the younger staff that are often the hardworking Denzians who get stuff done are more likely to be enthused and pumped and want to share the joy. And you want to control that enthusiasm because it is only two weeks into this. But it's created an enthusiasm in the Conservative Party, Peter. I think it's created an enthusiasm among candidates and maybe most importantly, and it may mean nothing in three weeks. This may just be a blip, but there's a belief that you can win. And in any organization, political or otherwise, the moment that you believe that you can win

is the moment that you perhaps double down to try to win, regardless of the other factors that are there. And I don't believe and if people tell you they believe that they could win two or three weeks ago, I think they were not telling you the truth, Peter. But now that conservatives believe they can win, that has empowered them for the next three weeks. All right, Supriya, what's it done to the narrative inside the Liberal Party? Because I've heard different things over the last couple of days about the impact this could have. What's your sense? Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I think I've been hearing a couple of different things, too. The one that that I've been hearing is that, yeah, everyone's a little bit spooked, right? And they need to essentially get back down to controlling the narrative, make the message that's out there

a little bit more positive, remind voters, you know, why they fell in love with Trudeau and the Liberal Party to begin with, how they're going to move the country forward and, you know, finish the fight, so to say, against COVID-19. But if I'm being perfectly honest, I've heard from a few campaigns on the ground that are suggesting that the, you know, overall media narrative seems to be at least somewhat disconnected from the kinds of things that they're hearing at the door and from the enthusiasm that they are hearing. Now, to be fair, I am the three campaigns that I that I, that I have in mind right now are in Montreal. And two of them are in the GTA. So those are, you know, relatively,

I guess liberal ish strongholds, if you will. So that may impact it. But that to me was a little bit interesting because often, you know, the folks that are doing the opining in media and the folks that are, you know, creating or help build the narrative aren't actually the ones that are doing the door knocking right they're not actually the ones that are going out and talking to voters so that's also something that i would keep in mind you know one of the things i heard is that if you're if it's a close race one of the things the liberals actually want

to have happen is for people to think about well well, what would it be like if they were government? What would it be like if he was prime minister, given things he said in the past? I know they conflict with things he's saying in the present, but nevertheless, bringing all that up, that it's a good thing to have it this close. Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, for, I would just say this and this might sound a little cliche, but I think for democracy, it's good to have it a little bit close too, right? You want folks to actually think about their choices. You want folks to have in front of them, okay, these are my options. These are my options for who will be prime minister and who will form government. And that's why I think it's a little bit silly that a few weeks ago when we were talking about healthcare, everyone was like, wow, wow, we can't talk about healthcare. And it's like, well, why the F not? Why can't we

talk about healthcare? We're in the middle of a frigging pandemic. We have climate change, you know, knocking down our door. And if we're not going to talk about healthcare in the middle of a pandemic, when we know that we're going to end up in a climate change ravaged hellscape with an increase of mosquito borne diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and like, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Then when the heck are we going to talk about healthcare? Ask Kim Campbell. Okay. Kathleen, I know you're sitting there smiling because you're, you know, while the two top parties supposedly in these numbers are battling it out day

by day, thendp keeps kind of like creeping up a little bit every day and you know the uh the the leader jagmeet singh it seems to be having once again a really good campaign so what does this mean to your party that the conservatives are doing much better than thought of a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, let me just back up, if you'll let me for a second, Peter, and riff off something that Tim said. You know, to get into the psyche of the war room, when a party is experiencing a lift in the polls and a lift in their media narrative, that does something really specific to the staffers in there. And Tim touched on it, you know, some people squealing with glee, other people maybe having clammy hands and worrying.

But this is really when the warhorses or the older guiding forces of the campaign are really important to kind of throw that almost wet blanket on them, if you will. I mean, I can remember a story back from 2011 when I was in the war room where we started to, it was not week one, that's for sure. It was probably late in week two, if at all, but definitely by week three, the week that we're entering into now, where we started to get really great press, where we were on the cover of la press we started to be on on even um the door and we started to get we even got a cover in uh the rest of canada i think it was either the toronto star or or the globe and and the poll numbers started to lift for jack layton and they started to lift and lift and lift and i remember the mantra in our war room and this was

more so in week four and into week five was keep your head down no tweeting because we didn't tweet as much as people tweet in 2011 it wasn't as big and don't believe the polls that's just we had a mantra that's just another rogue poll don't believe it and and that was really important that discipline within the war room to to ensure that nobody went off message or got their head so big that that they couldn't fit back into the war room to do the work that they were supposed to be doing. So it is really like whatever's happening in the conservative war room is important. That discipline, that guiding hand, whoever those, you know, the wise elders are speaking to those groups. But also, conversely, what you see happening in the Liberal team. I mean, a good friend, I believe, of Supriya's, Rob Silver, was tweeting yesterday a very

important reminder to the Liberal team, which was, hold on, folks, as bad as you think this might be now, it ain't as bad as 2011. There are worse campaigns out there highlighting the ignatia of campaigns trying to to rally those troops but but back to quickly to your question about jagmeet he he is running a really good campaign it is as i've spoken about in the past his second time running as a national leader so he has that sure footing i do think that um the focus groups that we did you know six months out that i was doing for private clients, you know, tell the same tale today that people like him. You know, they liked him six months ago. They like him even more now that they're seeing more of him daily.

Will that translate into votes? That's the question. Will that that enthusiasm for the individual, Jagmeet Singh, the leader, translate into actually more votes um on election day i love your line sorry go ahead really quickly with respect to what rob had tweeted and he is my old boss and mentor and i thanks for the shout out kathleen he was not referring to the 2011 campaign liberals do not speak of the 2011 campaign he was talking yeah exactly he was talking about 2015 and 2019 but i think your point yes yes yes and 2004 2006 the other way uh compared with 2015 they had issues i love your toy your your little story about the rogue polls though the kathleen because right now you'd have to be saying well i know there have been like four or five rogue polls in a row here.

But that's what we said in 2011. And they're like, and I'm like, another rogue poll, head down. You know, and you just have to do that. You have to be disciplined. I know it's hard, though. I still think that for Jagmeet Singh, the test is going to be when there starts to be a little more push in terms of the media coverage on trying to understand how he's going to do certain things that he's saying. But let's see whether that comes. The media seems occupied enough with the other two parties at the moment.

Momentum plays a big role in any campaign. It can have an impact on the way things direct. The Conservatives seem to be running a couple of days in a row uh doing doing well and then you know the protest stuff on friday night happened and you can almost see it in the numbers that there is a blunting uh of some of that momentum they're still doing they're still doing well but the rise seems to have stopped at least for a couple of days as a result of that. And the Conservatives quite, you know, quite appropriately getting out in front of that story and saying, OK, we had some of our people were in there.

But that can this whole issue of momentum in a camp in a short campaign can have a real impact. Tim. Well, Peter, it's like your beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. You know, they play really well in the preseason. Marner scores a few goals. Matthew scores a few goals and they have a big lead. And lo and behold, by the third period comes, they've lost the game where they don't make it far in the playoffs.

Sorry, I had to give you a dig about that. But it's the same thing. Look, to use that hockey metaphor, and Kathleen will kill me, we're early in the second period. There's a lot of game left here. So if you're the conservatives, there are probably a couple of people who thought about how you win this now. But you have a lot of hockey slash politics to play.

And I like your 2004-2006 comparison. Is it 2004-2006? Harper took a lead. Harper looked like he was going to win, and the Liberals threw everything at him in the kitchen sink, and they won a minority to do that. Arguably, Stephen Harper hadn't gamed this out all the way. Aaron O'Toole was not Stephen Harper in many senses. I don't know if he's the political tactician that Stephen Harper is, but he certainly is less controversial than Stephen Harper. So does he jumpstart right to 2006 where a palatable option is seen with the conservatives? I don't know that yet. I think this week is going to be kind of telling to see where the liberals go on O'Toole, what happens in the TVA debate on

Thursday night, and does the coverage start to equal itself out and have the conservatives contemplated any of that. Easy to score goals in the first period, but you want to have the winning margin in the third. That's going to be the challenge. And just to explain the debate issue, Thursday night is the TVA debate, which in effect is the first french language debate and it could be critical for all everybody on that stage uh because the quebec votes and the way they split between the bloc quebecois and the liberals the conservatives to some degree um is and the ndp is really uh critical as to what the big picture may may be and it'll be the first time we'll see all four of

them on the stage together and you know certain conclusions will be drawn it's the week before the all the other debates and mainly the English language debate so Thursday night is a big preview on the issue of momentum Kathleen do you want to pick up on that? Yeah, I think that, you know, we have to remember that we always expected with an equalization of coverage that Mr. O'Toole was going to get a bounce in the polls early, you know, and over the past nine months of doing focus groups on O'Toole. Yes, people didn't know who he was, but once they saw the message that he was presenting, they often liked it. They found him relatable. I was raised in Ajax, Ontario, and he's from the Durham region. And he speaks in that vernacular. He seems like any guy you would meet at a grocery store. And he's relatable. And the policies that he's been dropping, he's been following definitely the Harper playbook of a policy nugget in the morning, and then some color event in the afternoon. that he's been dropping, he's been following definitely the Harper playbook of, you know, a policy nugget in the morning and then some color event in the afternoon.

And he's he's really been pushing. Someone's been someone has described it almost like insurgent warfare, where he's like on the left one one day and on the right the next day. And he's just been, you know, really smart at dropping policies that appeal to both sides. So I think that it's potentially possible that he peaked too early because we expected this lift in O'Toole and the Liberals haven't truly unloaded on him yet. And that's what I expect to see in the course of the next, maybe not in the next four days, but post-Labor Day, I expect that hole to be a total dump on o'toole and and to him really pound him to the ground and and the health care move that you saw last week was a part of that we know that the conservatives their weakest points are um on their cuts to health care the the the voters feel like they have a hidden agenda around cutting health care and that they generally

promote policies that that help bay Street, not Main Street. So while Toole's trying to counter that with some of his messaging, we know that that is their Achilles heel. So expect to see. I mean, that's why the liberals last week also went out on their on their tax on the banks and on the insurance companies. This was a direct throw trying to figure out how the Conservatives would respond to that. So they are trying to blunt his momentum

and they'll want to do that over the next 10 days so they can go into their post-labor day, the time when folks really, really start to focus on the campaign and run all the way to E-Day. You know, I love Kathleen. I love her because not only does she try to influence the NDP campaign, now she's sitting there trying to run the Liberal campaign as well.

They're going to do this. They're going to do that. I'll run the Conservatives too. Supriya, what do you make of this? Traditionally, the Liberals would, at this position in the campaign, given what we're seeing in the numbers, would to dump on the conservatives that's what they've done traditionally um do you expect to see that yeah i mean i i don't know if i'd call it necessarily a dump more than like a lot of this stuff has just been sort of sitting out in the open

and nobody has really poked around or brought attention to it and you know to kathleen's point about uh the oppo dump i i i guess if we want to call it that i, you know, to Kathleen's point about the oppo dump, I guess if we want to call it that, I think there's also to a degree a little bit more media scrutiny. I think there was a very low bar set at the beginning of this campaign when it came to Mr. O'Toole. And I agree with Kathleen that, you know, I don't think anyone was thinking that the polling numbers

were going to remain static. I think we all expected O'Toole to get a bit of a bump. And, you know, to be fair, I expected Jagmeet to get a bit of a bump as well. But, you know, you mentioned the protests a little bit earlier into this conversation. And I think that gets to a much more fundamental issue here, which is what does the Conservative Party actually support? And when you are seeing pictures of the prime minister, you know, about to be hung and people are holding signs that say Trudeau for treason, we have to ask ourselves, how the F did we get to this point in our country that a prime minister and a campaign cannot actually go about their, you know, regular campaigning because they're having events that are being foiled by protesters

to the point where the RCMP and the security detail is saying, you know what? It's not safe enough to be here. None of this happened overnight. None of this happened with solely Mr. O'Toole at the helm. And none of this is necessarily his sole responsibility or fault. But I can tell you when I was hosting, um, here in the, in, in, in the GTA,

a talk radio show, um, I was on the air for four years in those four years, my hate mill regularly featured, um, you know, these Trudeau for treason tropes. And it's something that has been used in conservative circles for quite some time. And I, I don't, I don't mean conservative, like capital C, you know, I there's a bunch of PPC years, right, that are into that mix as well. But I think, you know, this is going to become a real question for Canadians, because certainly nobody wants to go the route that the U.S. has gone. And if you see some of the imagery, you know, juxtaposed with what we saw in January six in terms of like angry faces and sign holding

a lot of there's a lot of parallels there. And that's very scary for a lot of people. Tim? Well, first of all, I think Supriya is related to me. She's done two how the F's. I just go all the way. Supriya just belt out that F word with power and authority. That's what we tend to do. On the more serious subject that Supriya's raised of the rage, you're referencing Cheryl Gallant, the conservative MP up along here in the Ottawa Valley who had that very stupid, wrong, awful image. I mean, surprisingly that's not uncommon with Cheryl Gallant, but the problem Cheryl Gallant creates for Erin O'Toole

when she does that is the same problem she's created for every other leader when she's done something that's too extreme. It raises those questions. It allows the hidden agenda, the racism, the not connected narrative of the liberals and others to come out. And then you have Maxine Bernier on the other side. I don't know if you saw that horrific tweet of yesterday calling the prime minister a narcissist and a psychopath. I mean, there's just real problems with a lot of dialogue. It's not just on the right, though. I've given you two examples on the right. The other real problem that is here and all the leaders need to be careful with it. And as you pointed out, Peter, I was glad to see when the event in Bolton was canceled,

Mr. Singh and Mr. O'Toole were quick to acknowledge Mr. Trudeau's right to speak and how this wasn't appropriate. But there's all manner of data out there about the impact COVID is having on people and has had on people. And that sense of dislocation, addictions challenge. We have a very vulnerable public that can be inflamed very easily. And all of these leaders need to be very responsible with that. I mean, some will argue, and I don't know if the argument's fair, because I have not been at the rallies, that Mr. Trudeau is also using the rally um while trying to quell the protesters to create a political sympathy for him which is going to create create a further inflammation it's it's it's serious stuff out there and we need to see a more collective serious approach

to its management um i've only got a couple of minutes left for this week but i i wanted to to take a run at a different topic. I mean, we tend to look at, if we look at polls at all, we tend to look at the top line number with sort of the party versus party numbers. But there's a whole below the line, below the top line area that breaks things down by region, by gender, by age. What's happening in those below-the-top-line numbers that you've seen so far that can have an impact over these next few weeks? Because there's some interesting movement that I'm looking at, at least in Nick Nanos' polling numbers, but they all do it. So below the top line, what what's important what do you look at

what are you and your war rooms and your back rooms what do you look at um supriya why don't you start yeah can i start one thing that i've noticed that's been quite interesting is that younger men uh particularly gen zetter and older millennial men seem to be quite attracted to the Conservative Party and Aaron O'Toole. And in Ontario's last election, the Ford, well, then Ford candidate, but now Premier Ford did very well with millennial men, and they did very well in terms of micro-targeting that demographic with their, you know, buck a beer ads being, like, blasted all over PlayStation and Xbox One so that, you know, buck a beer ads being like blasted

all over PlayStation and Xbox One so that, you know, when folks went in to log in right there, they saw their ads. And I think that's really interesting. And that's a group that I'll be very interested in seeing how they progress because I think the conventional wisdom

that we've heard thus far is that younger people don't necessarily vote conservative, right? It's like they're either voting NDP or they're voting liberal or maybe they're voting green, whatever. But if the conservatives manage to make inroads with that demographic, I think it'll make for A, interesting conversation, but B, it'll make campaigns going forward a lot more interesting if we know that that group is seriously up for grabs. Kathleen. I mean, you look at to answer your question,

you look at all the different segments and see what's interesting there. And and just highlighted a really interesting fact. I mean, one of the ones that consistently we look at, obviously, is gender, obviously age and education level education, increasingly being something that that does determine this looks like it determines kind of vote choice in some in some levels but the gender split i'll focus on quickly because we you know in past uh elections um we know that uh you know a 10-point gender split means that a progressive party will end up winning and obviously if we can if we can convince the

women to stay away in some ways from conservatives, we almost ring fence them to not even considering the conservative party. So, for instance, I ran a campaign earlier in the year that was just focused on women, women between the ages of 25 and 85. Yes, you know, in some were value shopper focus. These are some of the things you look for. But at the same time, we basically just want them to make sure that they didn't even consider the Conservative Party. So when you target them like that, because we know that in Ontario, for instance, that will make a difference overall in the vote. I mean, one other thing that, you know, i'm not in the field right now pulling with any for any clients or doing anything like that with um with researchers but one thing that i would like

to ask is is what is your mood right now because i think the one thing that's not being calculated into this election is just actually how angry folks are you know i think that everybody thought the two back summer and everyone was going to be so happy. But I think that maybe the liberals and others misjudged just how frustrated Canadians are. Maybe it's after the 26 to 29 weeks

of homeschooling or whatever, or the fact that it looks like we're going full throttle into this fourth wave and we're going to have potentially more shutdowns in the fall. That anger level, that brewing anger, I think is starting to bubble up. And I think if we don't end up seeing a reelection of this government, incumbent government,

it might be because of that anger level. So I don't know who can pull for that. And, you know, Tim owns a polling company. Put that on your agenda, Tim. I don't know. Just before I get to Tim, on the anger point, I got to say that, you know, I totally buy into what Tim had said earlier that, you know, COVID has put us into a different mindset as a people

and some of that has led to real anger. But there was, even before COVID, and I think the Liberals, you know, didn't see this certainly the way I saw it. The feeling about Trudeau, personally, by a not insignificant amount of the population, is not pretty. It's deep. I mean, I saw it with his father, you know, in the 70s, and that was ugly. But this is much worse i don't know what it's rooted in whether it's in you know disgust of of some of his policies or his actions or his

his manner or or just because he's a trudeau but it is deep and you add that to the mix of the anger that's the that's out there uh because of covid and and the situation that we're all living through, it's certainly not insignificant. Anyway, back to Tim on this whole idea of what you're looking at below the top line. Well, everybody here will remember in 2005 when Stephen Harper hired a guy by the name of Patrick Moutard, the whole concept of psychographic polling.

It sounds like a bad horror movie. Maybe it is if you were psychographically profiled, but you looked at your income, your educational interest, your age, your area code. So that is still what you bought and why you bought it. That is what people are looking at. So two other points off that area codes the 905 i mean how many election nights peter have you talked about the 905 and what's

going to happen in the 905 in and around toronto because it's vote rich and it's kathleen talked about earlier there are many female voting cohorts there that the conservatives want to get into and also regions but trends and regions so just one very quick example so the liberals in their worst election that very well-known 2011 election so sorry supriya it's left my lips again when they were knocked into third place they held on to atlantic canada they did very well in atlantic canada they're working assumption on for atlantic canada as they'd be leaving this election again with around 28 seats. Right now, they're probably down to 23, 24. That mightn't sound like a lot, but if they're starting to lose support in Atlantic Canada, their bedrock, it makes it real tough to get that majority, which seems to be evaporating right now by the day, that may all change. And it makes it

harder to get the plurality that you will need to be an effective minority government. So where we were a few moments ago, this is why this TBI debate coming up on Thursday is so important for the Prime Minister, too, because he's still been solid in Quebec. If Quebec starts to drip a little bit, along with Atlantic Canada, and Ontario's not going in his direction, those trends are not good. But again, we're only early in the second period, but that's what it looks like right now. Or conversely, if he knocks it out of the park, right? Yes, exactly. The one thing that, you know, if you do well in Quebec, and you can reflect that to the rest of Canada, Canada moves with you. So for instance, the Ruth Ellen Brousseau

announcement is actually as much about Quebec as it is about the rest of Canada, right? You want to show strength in that province. So if the liberals can show some strength there and picking up, it will reinforce things across the country, which I don't think is impossible for them to do. Which all leads to the conclusion, I think think that the third week can be really important and you've made that point, Kathleen. And I think everybody agrees. So this will be an interesting week to watch as was your conversation today. Thank you all. Thank you.

Thank you. You're listening to the bridge during the election campaign they'll be on every monday uh i have to talk to them about next Monday because it's a holiday, right? Labor Day. I'll have to see whether we're going to do the program that day. I think we probably should because there's so much happening.

So if they're not, you know, otherwise occupied on the last holiday day of the summer, we should probably do it. I want to close out today's The Bridge with what we in the business call a fun fact. You know, you like to have these things by to go to, sometimes to close a program, sometimes to open a program, sometimes just to fill time.

Well, I wanted to do this to close the program, especially after the discussion about various areas that the different parties would be looking at and trying to improve their vote. Well, here's one that all Canadians would like to see happen to improve Parliament. And it's the number of women who were elected. In the last election in 2019, 98 women were elected. Remember the 330 seats.

Now, 98 was the highest number ever and the highest percentage, 29%. A dissolution when Parliament ended, after all the different things that can happen during a parliamentary life. There were 100 women in the House because of two by-elections in October 2020. So that made it 29.5%. How's it break down? 55 Liberals, 22 Conservatives, 12 Bloc, 9 NDP, 1 Green, and 1 Independent. In the last election, BC and Quebec each elected

one-third women, 33.3%. Ontario was at 31.5% women. A group called Equal Voice wants a minimum of 40% of those elected this time to be women or gender diverse. Now, we'll be tracking once all the nominations are done. We'll let you know just how many women have been nominated across the country. Now, here's another note. It's actually a question to you,

and it's the way we'll close out today's edition of The Bridge. For all the political power that Ontario has in a federal election, and you've heard it countless times, especially if you don't live in Ontario, you're sick of hearing it, about, you know, if you do well in Ontario, you're probably going to do well in terms of the country, because there's so many seats at stake in Ontario.

So for all that power, all that clout that Ontario has, who was the last prime minister elected when that person ran for a seat in Ontario? Hands on the buzzers. Give you five seconds to carefully consider the answer. Who was the last prime minister elected from Ontario? Do, do, do, do, do.

I should have been the host, right? I should have been the host for Jeopardy. Absolutely. But you know what? I never even got a phone call. I know you find that hard to believe. But I didn't. Anyway.

The answer is, those of you who said, Lester Pearson, you're right. What year was he last elected? And what was the writing? That's a tougher question. Well, it's not a tougher, half of it's easy. There was an election in 1965, and he won his seat. And his seat was in Algoma East.

It's interesting because we've gone all that time, more than half a century since, it's interesting because we've gone all that time, more than half a century since, without a prime minister from Ontario. It's kind of like the Leafs never winning the Stanley Cup for more than half a century. So what about this time? Well, you've got two, you count them, two leaders running from Ontario.

Annamie Paul from Toronto Centre. She's not going to win the election. She's going to have enough trouble winning her own seat. And she's working hard at trying to do that. But this guy might win. Aaron O'Toole. He's from Durham, as Kathleen mentioned. So if he won, if he became prime minister,

he'd be the first prime minister from Ontario since Lester Pearson won in 1965. So add that to all the considerations you have. Do you want a prime minister from Ontario? Do you want the Leafs to win? I know you do. All right. Time to wrap her up.

Tomorrow, The Reporters. Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, your comments. It's your chance to say something about the election campaign and a few nice letters about the Arctic tour. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's where to write. And Friday, good talk with Chantelle Hebert

and Bruce Anderson. So we got a full week ahead. Lots to talk about. Looking forward to having you with us. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours