The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How Serious Is The Threat to Our Politicians?

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

The RCMP is going to set up special units to protect politicians and senior civil servants. What has the country become that has led to this? Bruce and Chantal have their thoughts on that plus the latest on the David Johnston story and whether he can carry on with his job. Also what to believe about the latest poll showing the Conservatives may have reason to be concerned about their position in their fight for power.

Are you ready for good talk? Of course you're ready. I'm ready. Chantel's ready in Montreal. Bruce is ready in Scotland. We're ready with a whole list of little things that we want to talk about today. And I'm going to start, I don't know, I don't think this story got enough attention this week, quite frankly. I mean, it certainly surprised me. And it's another one of those stories where you go like, what the heck is going on in this country? And this is the story about the RCMP setting up new units to protect politicians and some senior bureaucrats, civil servants.

And I'm going like, really? This is like Canada. This isn't supposed to happen here. So I want to understand. I want to try and understand this. Try and make some sense for this, for me. Bruce, why don't you start on this week? Why is this happening?

How serious is this situation? And why did it suddenly, or why has it suddenly happened to the point where we're having to set up new units to protect people? Yeah, good questions, Peter. I don't think it's sudden. Let me say that as the first thing. I think we've seen a gradual deterioration in the level of stability in the conversation about politicians among the public and among some commentators. I think a lot of it has to do with the internet, with social media, with the addiction to clicks and the kind of what we talked about last week, I think, is the anger economy. So not a particularly new phenomena, but there have been people for some time, including the former clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, who'd been warning that this situation was deteriorating. And I think he was poo-pooed a little bit. Some people thought that his language was a bit over the top. I didn't really think so at the time. I think it was more a case of people wondered where his intervention was coming from and why it was kind of being processed the way that it was, as opposed to in the course of a conversation about public safety or democratic reform or political civility.

He's he almost seemed to kind of just bring it out of left field. And I don't think it caught a lot of traction in terms of the public policy conversation that it does warrant. I think that the whole question of adding policing to protect politicians and senior bureaucrats is looking at what to do about the symptoms rather than what to do about the cause. It's not a bad idea to do it. It's important to do it. And I'm glad that the government took the move that they took, but solving the problem that exists is going to take more than policing the worst behaviors of some people in society or the sense that you have that some people might do that. And I don't really know where those solutions start and end,

but I do know that one of the things, and I went back and looked at some public opinion data that I gathered a little while ago, and I'll kind of finish on this point because it really is quite revealing. When Justin Trudeau's critics call him a traitor, when they say Canada under him is a dictatorship, that language feels kind of inflammatory and over the

top to moderate people who are following politics. But it has another effect on people who are not particularly moderate and who maybe follow politics using a different media lens than most people do. The number of people who agree with the proposition that Justin Trudeau is a traitor to Canada in this poll that I did a little while ago is running at 27 percent. That's a very large number of people. conservatives who live in urban Canada versus rural Canada, the numbers that jump out for me is that urban conservatives, 38% of them think Justin Trudeau is a traitor. Rural conservatives, 55% think Justin Trudeau is a traitor. That word, and the three of us had this conversation a little while ago about the use of that word, traitor. And I remember Chantal saying that is a very loaded term. And I think that's absolutely right. I think it's only one example of the really

harsh things that political opponents and critics, not just the elected people, but the people who are kind of in the nooks and crannies of the media environment, let me put it that way, they use these harsh terms and a lot of mainstream voters might shrug them off and say, gee, politics is getting pretty wild. But then there are other people for whom it's almost an invitation or a legitimization of the idea of doing violence to people in politics because you're being told that they're doing violence to your country, that they're undermining the fabric of your society, and more needs to be done to stop them than just the normal democratic processes. So I'm worried about it. I think we

need to be more worried about it. I'm glad the government took this decision as it relates to the symptoms, but the causes are really where we need to focus to. Chantal? So on the physical side of this, i.e. police protection, let's be clear here. If somebody really, really wants to hurt someone, that is going to happen. They may be deterred just for a while or figure it out

differently, but in the same way that even if you protect Parliament Hill to the hilt, if someone really wants to go in there and do something, it's going to happen and all of us who know the area understand all that, so you can basically work on deterrence. I think what really triggered it is the pictures of Chrystia Freeland being hassled big time by someone who was twice her size and who actually looked threatening,

or Jagmeet Singh being stopped by someone who clearly had not good intentions towards him. It's happened to journalists in and around Parliament Hill. And you would be right, I suspect, if you were the RCMP, to conclude that one of the more risky areas for politicians to venture in is not some rural area where the numbers that Bruce talks about are totally real, but in and around the parliamentary precinct. Because if you're someone who wants to resort to violence towards a or some politicians, that's where you're going to find them. It's like going fishing. You're not going to pick a lake that's dried up or that maybe has one fish every 10 years.

You're going to go where all the fish is, and then you're going to basically be able to figure out what you're doing. Like Bruce, I think that's not a solution to the problem, but I do notice that the political conversation has become more loaded. The number of conservatives, and there are some leading conservatives, who have explained, for instance, that no, you cannot put Justin Trudeau in jail for treason and replace him they all got a lot of abuse for it. Make no mistake, conservatives who stand up to that kind of language get as much abuse as liberals who defend Justin Trudeau. So it's a widespread phenomenon. And I think the only people who can maybe help tone it down are people who set the tone. And on that score, and I know I'm not the only one to say this,

I have never covered the leader of the official opposition who sets the kind of tone that Pyapoliev sets in the House of Commons and outside. I have a very strong stomach for political shows. I watched the Meech Lake Accord unravel and grown men and women cry. I sat in the House of Commons the day after the 1995 referendum, and it felt like you were on a roller coaster. That's how tense and bad it was. But what I see watching Question Period these days is not that kind of heart-wrenching political conversation, which has its place

in politics. When there is a big political battle, someone always gets his or her heart broken. That's normal. But the insinuations, if people really want to, and I don't advise it because it's not a good way to spend the weekend, Go back and look at Wednesday's question period and the tone of it and the way that the leader of the opposition, since Mr. Poitier alone asked, I think, 90% of the Conservative questions, and where it went, which I'm not going to repeat, is it's a new low in setting the political discourse. And it does two things, I believe.

It enables extremists, and you can't walk away and say, I didn't do that. I never told them to do anything violent after having whipped up that kind of hatred on such a personal basis. But I also suspect that it will backfire on leaders who go down that road. Why? Because it turns off people who are not diehard conservatives who are into this kind of discourse. And I include in that many conservatives. I watched the Alberta election. I watched people I'd seen when Peter Lougheed was premier,

when Ralph Klein was premier. People who are conservatives, who were born conservative, go out and say, I support Rachel Notley. So there is a section of the right that is taking the discourse in that direction. And I think that the current leadership of the Federal Conservative Party needs to preach by example, by looking at the high road as something other than just the elites should be on because the word high goes with road. And that's not happening at this point. They're actually, I think, the brain trust around Mr. O'Flaherty. I'm quite proud of how much money they're raising by rage farming.

I do think it's going to come back to haunt them. Okay. I don't disagree with anything either one of you have said, but I am still puzzled as to how do we how do we get how did we get to this point where you hear those kind of numbers like bruce is talking about which are huge numbers uh in support of their use of the word traitor and one assumes in support of a lot of other words too um you know can't all be vaccines no it isn't all vaccines but vaccines uh was like throwing fertilizer on some shoots that were already uh pretty clearly emerging i think what happened in the u.s around trump uh was like a very big eye opener for the rest of the world and for some of America into what was actually happening in terms of what people were consuming online and how it had taken over the mindset of a very significant proportion of the most active and energized people in the body politic,

not necessarily the most enlightened, in fact, generally misinformed, disinformed, but highly, highly engaged. And if you want a little experiment, Peter, in how to answer your question. I just, before we, uh, we started, uh, the podcast today, I opened up my browser and I typed in Trudeau as traitor and you see what pops up then, and you see the sources of it and you see to your last point, it isn't only that that they're saying. It's a whole lot of other really awful things that are, and I know there are going to be people saying, well, you're just defending Trudeau. I don't really care that it's Trudeau in this case. It doesn't matter to me. It matters to me that this is how politics looks to an increasing number of people who use the Internet as the source of their guidance, the intelligence that they consume around politics. And it helps frame their views and it helps make them feel

that the system isn't doing enough to prevent the awful thing from happening caused by the awful person on the other side of the political aisle. And I agree with Chantal that it's hard to look at where Pierre Pauliev takes that conversation and not come to the conclusion that what he's trying to do is harvest the votes of those people who are not only susceptible to thinking really, really hard thoughts, but to sending a message out that says, you know, if you're this outraged, I'm your guy. Let me put it that way. And the more outraged you want to feel,

the more entitled to that outrage, I want you to know, you should feel. It's a very dangerous thing over the long term. And it really would be good if calmer voices who favor the Conservative Party or have been lifelong Conservatives continue to do what they started, what they've been doing a little bit lately, which is to counsel for moderation. I watched Chantal refer to the point on Wednesday, which we're not going to discuss the actual content of. But you can go back and look at it if you want in question period. It was pretty brutal. It was pretty ugly, bad.

But in the scene, as Chantel described it, and she's quite correct, there was a lot of cheering on the part of the conservative caucus, but one person wasn't cheering. One person wasn't standing. One person wasn't clapping. One person wasn't cheering one person wasn't standing one person wasn't clapping one person wasn't smiling the one name you could have guessed even if you didn't i think so know what happened on wednesday he's been in the news quite a bit in the last month or so and that's michael chong

and i mean in the news for good reason but he does not play that game he never has played that game um uh belittling and more than belittling, you know, disgracing other people. He wasn't, and that was telling. It was worth more than the images of all the stuff going on around him. Anyway, Chantal, last point on this before we move on. Okay, we should point out that what we see when we watch Question Period, as we do on screens, is not the entire Conservative bench.

So it is possible that others also didn't feel that Mr. Poiliev was doing, was on his best behavior. But that, and it is also useful to remind ourselves that Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, to name two previous conservative prime ministers, came in for a hell of a lot of abuse at about the same time in their tenure. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing terrible things

about Stephen Harper over the last two years. But they were less personal and violent, but they were heartfelt. But in the case of Brian Mulroney, does anyone remember that shameful contest about who would deflower his teenage daughter? That happened. But when that happened, the entire political class didn't sit back and say, well, he asked for it because he shows off his family. The entire political class said that is totally unacceptable and can't be happening. So bad things have happened in the past.

I think we're seeing more of them. It's social media, but it's also that there has been more empowerment. And I'll give you an example. It's not a federal example. During the debate on the Quebec Charter of Values, some years ago, when the Parti Québécois was in power, the minister in charge, Bernard Drinville, a former Radio-Canada journalist and colleague of mine, was doing an open line radio show and a woman called and she said answer was, you're right. Well, there was a time when the answer would have been, that is not the point. And we are not, we have no fears of that kind. But the you're right basically means you're building up support for something on the basis of divisions, hatred, and in this case, a form of racism and discrimination that cannot be good for the social fabric. And you see more and more politicians indulging in this. Why would we care about the social fabric? Because the people we are talking about, we would rather excise from the social fabric. That's why I think it may backfire,

because having been told again and again, you're not the kind of people with the kind of values that the conservative party wants, which is the implicit message. And you do not want to associate with the kinds of people that the conservative leader wants to court. Then you do not go to the conservative party tent because it's not your kind of venue. All right.

We're going to move on. We've got to take a break. Before I do, though, I do want to mention that in the first 20 minutes of Good Talk today, there was a moment. It passed fairly quickly, but there was a moment where I thought Chantel was going to make a pretty serious detour in terms of her raison d'etre, the reason why she loves these programs, why she loves talking politics. I thought, she's leaving.

I can tell she's going to leave political commentary, and instead she wants to start off a fishing show. She had that wonderful description of how you don't fish in a lake where there's no fish. Which is my lake at the cottage, by the way. I was thinking, I can see this new Saturday morning show. Fishing with Chantel or Chantel Nation on the lake. I can see it happening. I'm used to worms. I'd watch.

Good answer. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about something else that's certainly been on the agenda of late. Back in a moment. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk, the Friday episode of The Bridge. Bruce is in Scotland, Chantal is in Montreal.

I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario today. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform or on our YouTube channel. And welcome wherever you're listening on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform or on our YouTube channel and welcome wherever you're listening from. I would say it was probably three months ago if you'd asked the question of the average Canadian, what do you think of David Johnston? Those who would actually recognize the name would probably have pretty good things to say about him. As a public servant, as a former Governor General, as a well-known academic, and one who's been concerned about academic issues for decades. If you ask that question today, you don't get a good answer. I think there was a poll this week that showed 25 or 26% of Canadians kind of circled the word bias next to David Johnston as a result of this whole election interference inquiry

and the need for a public inquiry or not a need for a public inquiry. To the point this week where all the opposition parties voted together in saying David Johnston's got to go. He's got to resign. Now, I know both of you mentioned last week you thought he should really step down from this role. But that's quite something. And the NDP leader was kind of leading the charge on this,

baited at times by the conservative leader. But, yeah, I understand David Johnson's response, or I'm not sure I understand it, but his response was simple. My mandate is not from the Parliament of Canada, it's from the government of Canada. And so, I respect Parliament, but I'm not going to listen to what they want. I'm going to follow the government's desire. And so, as of this moment, he's still the special rapporteur on this case. But you look at that and you say,

seriously, this really can't go on the man has no mandate from parliament although he says he doesn't need it but no mandate implies no respect no belief in what he's doing and likely no belief in whatever report he ends up coming out with. So what is the path forward, or is there a path forward at all for David Johnston in this role? Chantal,

start us this time. Okay, so a word first on the vote that took place this week. Four parties represented in the House of Commons and forming a majority voted for Mr. Johnston to step aside. Not all of them voted and not all MPs voted that way because they believe he's been bought by Justin Trudeau, which is literally the conservative argument. I leave the conservatives to it. But for the reasons you explained, i.e. confidence in the end result has been shattered. The

appearance of proximity with the government and the prime minister is too strong. But set all that aside. When a majority of parties in the House of Commons vote non-confidence in the government,. That matters. It's not just an opinion. It's not a poll. It's the will of a majority of elected officials in our parliament hailing from four different parties. And the answer is, I work for the government, would be like Justin Trudeau losing a vote of confidence and saying, well, I don't have to pay attention

to your absence of confidence because I answer to the people. Well, yeah, well, then you go in an election. So I have a really hard time understanding how someone who was appointed to be at arm's length to restore confidence in a process and in the answers that he finds, could think that it makes sense to continue having been voted without confidence, having lost the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons. I know that's kind of old-fashioned, but I do think that it's not a joke when so many parties come to the same conclusion

on an exercise that is meant to restore trust and democracy. There is a logical fault in the reasoning of Mr. Johnston. I'm going to stick to it for your own good thing, because those parliamentarians are not children who do not understand and need daddy to tell them you don't understand what's good for you. Go back to your corner and let me do the adult thing. But that's how I feel. Bruce?

Well, I'm going to regret saying this probably, but I'll eat your hat, Peter, if David Johnson continues down this path. I won't eat it all, but I'll eat a morsel of it and I'll show proof that I've done it, if you're willing to give that hat up. It's a nice hat, but it's not that nice. So here's what I think. I don't think there's any chance that David Johnson's position on this will stand bludgeoning on the government side, they'll go, what will this feel like when we start these hearings? And every day, the surround sound is Trudeau's cottage buddy, all of this kind of stuff about bias and all of the parties other than the government saying they're not comfortable with what's going on.

In what way does that solve the problem that the Liberal government has on the China file? It does not. It makes it worse. And it promises to continue to make it sound bad for the government for weeks or months to come. So I think I said last week that virtually every step along the way of this story the Trudeau government at the center has mismanaged almost every choice that they could have made and they did it again this week they did it to the discredit or to the detriment of the interests of David Johnson. His comments suggested like he felt the same way, although it's hard to understand. To Chantal's point, it's hard to understand how somebody who could have been governor general, who was governor general, and understood the relationship with parliament and government that is implicit in that role,

can look at a vote in the House of Commons of the nature that happened this week and go, it doesn't matter. I'm here to be the sheriff of accountability on something else. It boggles the mind that anybody thought that that was a reasonable position to take. In a way, the vote in parliament, if the liberals were really determined that they were going to persist with David Johnson in this role, they had to do a better job on that vote. All of a sudden, it kind of landed on Twitter. And look at the latest thing that happened to the government's management of this issue. And the government was left to say something that sounds exactly like what people who criticize the Trudeau government for a lack of accountability wanted to hear. It fuels their narrative.

These guys don't care what anybody else thinks. They're just going to persist in the way that they have. So mismanage the vote, mismanage the response to the vote, put themselves again in a situation where they're probably going to have to change course. It's a mystery to me why people who had such good political judgment at different times in the life of this government could have such terrible political judgment as they do on this issue right now. It just can't stand and keep that hat ready because I may be wrong about this, but I don't think it will be. What is the exit strategy? How do you do it?

I hear what you're both saying, but if you're Trudeau, what do you say? How do you do it? We should be worried about saying anything, because what if the government tries it late in the game again and manages to screw up? Because the David Johnston thing came two weeks after it became obvious that it should have happened, and he's probably going to be leaving

if he does leave. He's already too late in leaving. As is Justin Trudeau, who sounds like he has given the keys to his office and his decisions to someone else. And now suddenly he cannot go back in the office to change anything. He's still the prime minister. Last time I looked. So a way out will involve paint on somebody's shoes because the government has painted itself in a corner. I suspect that if David Johnston in the next three hours said, listen, I have talked this over and I'm going, we would not be talking about David Johnston on Monday morning moving on.

That's right. The NDP motion was not only about David Johnston stepping aside. There was a second part to the motion, which was more of interest for people who are inside the bubble and into parliamentary stuff than to the larger headline-making public, reading public. And it involved tasking a committee with putting together terms of reference and putting forward the name that all parties agree on.

For a public inquiry. For a public inquiry. That may be difficult, but it is interesting in the sense that it delegates the task to the very people who are claiming that they want to have it. And on that committee, a majority will obviously not be liberal, is not liberal. Now, that part of the motion, the part about David Johnson does not bind the government.

That is totally true. It wasn't a confidence vote. But that second part does instruct the committee to do this. It's not just words on a piece of paper that have gone into handshakes. Me, if I were the government, I'm thankful every day for the government that I am not, because I would probably spend my days being told how much I've erred and not figured out the right solution. But I would please leave David Johnston to go do the other good things he was doing a month ago. And I would let that committee do whatever it is that it means to do and report to the House. And if they can come to a majority decision on terms of reference and some individual,

I would give it a serious look and probably implement it. Because I fail to see why we need to avoid at all costs an inquiry on this issue, which is certainly worth discussing and debating. Yeah, I think Chantal is right about that. I think that it would not be among the most difficult things, backtrack things that a government has done to exit the corner that it's painted itself into. I believe they will. I believe these things are always better done sooner rather than later.

I believe it being a Friday today would be as good a day as any I can think of to get on with it. And I think it probably would have to come from David Johnson himself saying that he reflected on the comments that he's been observing and the importance of the integrity of the topic is paramount to him. And some people would regret that, and they would regret the damage done to his reputation along the way here. Some people would feel, as I do, that a lot of that has been unfair.

But at the end of the day, for him to persist in that role would only be worse for him. It would be bad for the government. It would be bad in terms of building public confidence in the outcome of public hearings or an inquiry. And it would be smart of the government to get on to plan B about this or plan D or F or whatever it would be now

because this one isn't working. And if the government is so confident in David Johnson's early conclusions, then it has to have confidence that an inquiry would come to those same conclusions. I'm just saying, otherwise, how could it not? You either trust this and then you know that the process will lead you to the same place. Or you think you got away with whatever because David Johnston didn't look in the right places, and then you fear an inquiry. It's one or the other.

But, I mean, governments waste time holding consultations on a whole range of issues to delay decisions, and suddenly we're being told that it would be a waste of time, oh my God, and resources to have an inquiry, and an issue that is going to be troubling this country in all kinds of ways for years to come.

Well, if there's one thing that's clear at this point, on this Friday at, you know, late morning, it's that there are lots of voices suggesting at, you know, late morning. It's that there are lots of voices suggesting David Johnson should be stepping aside, including the two of you. But there are very few voices offering the opposite. You know, you get the Prime Minister, you get Dominic LeBlanc. That's about it. You know, like you don't hear, there's no sort of group standing up and saying,

this is outrageous. I mean, a lot of people are saying this is outrageous, the kind of things that have been said about him, but not that he should stay in the job. Okay, we're going to take our final break. We've got lots more, though, to talk about. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to Good Talk. Bruce and Sean Taylor here. Interesting, you know, it's funny. Every once in a while we talk about polls, and we ended up talking about them a little bit on the Alberta election because there were conflicting polls in those last couple of weeks. And we talk about the value of polls, etc., etc. But I want to talk about polls or a poll in particular because it does have some people going, hmm, I wonder what's really going on right now on the federal scene. And the poll is a Leger poll out of Quebec, but it's a national poll. And Leger has a good reputation across the country.

And this poll would seem to suggest that, you know what, we know the liberals have always got to be kind of worried about their position, but perhaps it's the Conservatives who should be really worried about their position right now. So walk us through the numbers, Chantal, first of all, and then we'll talk about the significance of it and how much time we should spend actually thinking about it, seeing as we're not in an election campaign and we're probably not likely to be in one for at least another year or two.

Dutch Wood, if you don't want an election campaign soon, having put it so distantly into our future, the first thing to say about this poll is that it's not very different from the outcome of the last election. It basically tells you that if those numbers held on an election held this week, we would have a minority liberal government with a strong Bloc Québécois NDP presence and a strong official opposition also. The narrative that you would intuitively expect at this point is that this government has been pummeled for months by the opposition.

The conservatives have a fresh leader that they seem to believe will work miracles for them. And yet, here are the numbers you get. 33% liberal, 31% conservative, 19% NDP, and in Quebec, 34% Bloc Québécois. What that means regionally basically is a tie

in Quebec between the Bloc and the liberals, a tie in Ontario between the conservatives and the liberals, and a tie in BC between the Bloc and the Liberals, a tie in Ontario between the Conservatives and the Liberals, and a tie in BC between the Conservatives and the Liberals. With numbers like that, Justin Trudeau can probably end up with the same government that he's got now. At this point in the cycle of the government, third term, the usual fatigue, you would think that a number of Canadians would be itching for change. And yet, the Liberals are not really bleeding to the NDP, their ally, which is the parking lot, usually, if you're unsatisfied and you're progressive with the Liberals. And they're not really bleeding massively to the Conservatives. Consider that the conservatives get huge majority in the rural areas where they do well in Ontario or BC.

And you look at those ties and they're not as great as they may look on the surface. So when you put all that together, you have to think something is holding people back from wanting change. I'll offer you one of my theories. Yes, Pierre Poilievre is working hard to keep his base totally mobilized. But in so doing, he is mobilizing people who vote for the liberals and the NDP, who would maybe at this point say, I'm disappointed, or they've been in power too long, and I'm going to sit on my hands. But instead, they have found a reason to live and support their party in the presence of Pierre Poilievre.

I'm not saying that's a good enough argument for the liberals to go in an election and say, I'm not Pierre Poilievre, so vote for me. But if I were the conservatives and Pierre Poilievre, I would look at myself in the mirror looking at these numbers, and I would say something's not working. My personal belief, if a leader like Aaron O'Toole were still around, the Conservatives might be at 40% by now because the edges are a lot softer when you look at the personnel like that. And basically, people who want change are looking for a comfortable choice. Mr. Poitier has been offering the opposite of that so far.

Aaron O'Toole stepping down from his seat in the Commons in the next little while. But I'm sure he'll love to hear that from you, Chantal. Bruce? I think that Leger is a very well-respected company for good reason. They've had a good track record of accuracy in their polling. At the same time, I think that any time you see a poll that looks a little bit different from the others that you've seen recently, it's just a good, it's a good caution to be careful about how much weight anybody attaches to any one poll. I think that the Liberals, if they're looking at this poll, the seasoned users of polls will immediately look at three numbers. Chantal mentioned all three.

They'll look at Ontario and they'll see a tie and they'll like the look of that. They'll look at Quebec and they'll see a tie and they'll really like the look of that. But more than anything else, they'll look at those BC numbers, which stand different from several recent polls, and position them as competitive with the Conservatives. They'll wonder whether or not they can trust the sample size in that province. They'll want to see more evidence before believing that it's true. But as you and I and Chantal were talking about a little bit before we went on air, sometimes the attitudes towards provincial parties can bleed into the way that people respond to polls about federal parties and the support that exists for the BCNDP

is significant and could have been influencing the previous numbers in a way that makes them a little bit less accurate than this. I don't know that that's true. I want to see more data. But I would also agree, though, with Chantal's point that if you're the Conservatives, whether you believe this set of numbers exactly or the others, you're not seeing the breakthrough. And the reason you're not seeing the breakthrough is that, well, I think that there are some days when Pierre Polyev talks about issues that people are really concerned about in ways that they can feel they can relate to whether it's housing or others there are other days when he seems to um into himself into the politics of himself into the politics of uh pierre poliev for prime minister into the uh destruction of his political rivals all things which generally don't increase your overall vote number, but generally kind of motivate your base.

Now, it's possible, I suppose, that if one wanted to look at it and say, well, maybe he's willing to put up with a ceiling on his support in the near term because he really wants to extinguish Max Bernier from the political landscape. And there's an opportunity coming up in a by-election to help with that. But I think that's probably giving him a little bit too much credit. I think his instincts naturally have proven over the years to be much more of a partisan pugilist than the average Canadian likes to see. And that's probably in part tempering the level of support that the Conservatives have, because I also agree with Chantal that the Liberals are quite vulnerable

to a sense of fatigue and drift. You know, there was an interesting point made the other night on the Alberta election by Janet Brown, who's the Calgary-based pollster who has also a very good reputation, seemed to be on the numbers in this election campaign. Excuse me. But she was asked by the questioner, why, you know, what is it about the conservative vote? What's the challenge in trying to gauge the conservative vote when you're a pollster?

And she had an interesting answer. She said, listen, for starters, she does all her polling by phone. She does telephone polling. And she said, to get through to the conservative vote, sometimes you have to be really persistent. You have to keep phoning because they don't answer. And she said, I've called conservative voters four or five times before I get somebody on the line.

And she said, and if you don't do that, you can't help but end up underestimating the conservative vote. And that was her theory as to why there were some differences between the polls. I'm just wondering, is that an Alberta thing, or is that sort of commonly known in the polling business, that you have to be a lot more persistent in trying to get to the conservative vote when you're polling? Bruce?

Well, it hasn't stopped Léger and other pollsters from calling the last few elections, right? So I'm not convinced. Just to bring you back to this, Paul, if I were the liberals, I would be concerned by the Quebec numbers and the tie with the Bloc in Quebec, because what that basically means is the Conservatives are leaking votes to the Bloc. And a stronger vote for the Bloc means that those splits that they need between the Conservatives and the Bloc to win seats in Francophone Quebec are disappearing.

And clear, the Bloc is working for Poilievre, even as Poilievre is doing poorly in Quebec, by taking that Conservative vote and coalescing it as an opposition vote behind the Bloc Quebecois. But the other concern that I've seen, you talked about the Alberta election this week, was I looked at how the Conservatives had fared provincially in Edmonton, which they completely lost, and Calgary, where they lost a lot of ground. And I started adding up big Canadian cities.

The Conservatives don't do well in Vancouver. They don't do well in Montreal. They don't do well in Winnipeg. They don't do well in Toronto. They don't do well in Montreal. They don't do well in Winnipeg. They don't do well in Toronto. They don't do well in Halifax. And provincially in Alberta, they don't do well in Edmonton, and they do increasingly poorly in Calgary. That is not a good trend and a good look for the federal party

because you – and they can always say, well, all the wokes live in those cities and we get the suburbs, but I don't think it's that simple. And certainly that's not what we saw in the Alberta election. And if I were them, instead of looking at Danielle Smith, one, despite the fact that she was a polarizing leader, they should look at receiving support in Canada's big cities because that does not bode well for the future of the party.

And that's why, by the way, I will not be watching Portage-Lisker where Maxime Bernier is running, but I will be watching Winnipeg South Centre and those by-elections because it's a riding that Stephen Harper won when he had a majority in 2011. And if, well, he's not going to win Quebec, he needs to win those non-Quebec ridings that Harper won. Yeah, I mean, it's the story of Canada, right? The urban-rural split.

It's been, you know, at varying degrees, that urban-rural split has been dominant for years, decades, in Canadian voting, with the odd exception when there's a blowout majority. Bruce, some thoughts on this? Yeah, so on the challenges of getting the right proportion of the different kinds of voters in polling, it's a big challenge. Janet Brown uses her phone. It's a big challenge. Janet Brown uses phone.

It isn't the only way to try to solve for it. Obviously, her solution worked out remarkably well this time and has generally. But with those who are using online polling, the other forms of adjusting your results to make sure that you don't underrepresent younger male conservative voters, for example, most firms are doing something along those lines. The second thing, maybe the bigger issue, is trying to anticipate whose votes are going to actually turn out. And this is the mystery meat of polling. And there's some science around it,

but there's always a measure of guesswork. And the guesswork is partly because the context for so many elections is different. And there are some elections where you will feel that the urban change sentiment is really super charged and the turnout is going to be really strong there. And there are others where you might feel young people should be motivated, but aren't going out in the same numbers. And 2015 is much remembered as an example of what happens when more younger people do go out, all of which is to say it's a bit of a soup and science can solve some of it. Um, and informed, uh, guesswork based on experience, I guess, uh, can help. But, um,

you know, I, I still look at those numbers and I kind of go, well, for all of the, the butt kicking that polling gets, sometimes there's a lot of pretty accurate polling that was done in Alberta. And people consume it because it's useful information. I know there's some who say, well, we should just stop doing it. And Peter, you've always had this kind of schizophrenic kind of relationship with polling. Every time you want to talk about polling, you have to say three or four times how gruesome it is. It's like alcohol. I don't drink too much, but where is that wine?

Give me a little bit right now. Okay, we've got a minute and a half left. Portage Lisker, Chantelle said she's going to take a pass on worrying about those results and focus more on the Winnipeg riding, and I understand that. But Polyev is actually out there tonight, Friday night, in Manitoba. So they must be confident that they will hold and improve their score on Bernier in the riding, is my reading of this visit by Capuany.

Yeah. Well, I don't think anybody ever thought that Bernier could win, but how many votes he tracks could make a difference, right? I think they want to spike the ball. I think Chantal's right. I think that it started out to me as why is Max Bernier doing this, except he needs the job or something like that, because the chances of him coming out

with a good story let alone a seat uh in the house of commons seems almost nil to me um and i say that in part because pierre poliev has been eating the people's party lunch uh since he became leader in fact since before that and max b Bernier has been almost invisible, except within that small cadre of people who are connected by the filament of the internet. But even in the story I was reading yesterday about this, the People's Party raised $300,000 in a quarter. The Conservative Party raised something300,000 in a quarter.

The Conservative Party raised something like $6 million. This is a battle of a giant saying more or less the same things to voters as the mouse is. And I don't like the mouse's chance. And I think if I was Polyev, I'm going there because I want people to on the other side of this say he won he helped claim the victory and Max Bernier is a name we don't need to talk about anymore

we're going to have to leave it at that for this week thanks to Chantel thanks to Bruce good luck with the fishing show Chantel we'll look forward to that and we'll look forward to talking to you on Monday, a special More Butts conversation, number nine. You're going to enjoy it.

We touched on some of the elements of it today, but we'll touch on a lot more on Monday. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again on Monday.