The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Justin Trudeau's Difficult Day

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

No go at the UN and questions about the country's finances made it a tough day for the Prime Minister. And you thought taking your shoes off at airport security was a pain -- there's more coming.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it's hump day wednesday of week 14 and we got a few things to cover. Starting off with, get ready for it, get excited, the United Nations. Now listen, if you're Canadian, and you're a fan of the UN, then today was not a good day for you. If you're Canadian and you're not a fan of the UN, then you probably figured, hey, today was a good day. If you're Justin Trudeau, it was not a good day. It'd be an unhappy camper. If you remember in the 2015 election, two elections ago, he said he was going to do all he could to get Canada back onto the UN Security Council, a place that used to occupy fairly regularly in the last century, second half of the last century when there was a UN, obviously, post-war.

Often we were on the UN Security Council, and we made a name for ourselves on there. We lost that seat when we tried to get it back in 2000, I think, 10. Stephen Harper was prime minister. He tried for it, didn't happen. And they basically said, well, it's no big deal. We don't need to be on the UN Security Council. And he was taken to task by the other parties, especially the

liberals, saying Canada is a leading force internationally in terms we are seen as a good country and one that speaks good and has friends all around the world. Well, we lost that position. Justin Trudeau said he was going to do all he could to get it back. Today was the vote on the seats that were available on the UN security. There were rotating seats. There are permanent members, five permanent members,

and the other seats are up for grabs every few years. And you've got to get support from the other countries, the other member countries. And so Canada has been, you know, out there looking for support all around the world. It's the basis for some of the Prime Minister's trips over the last year or two, trying to drum up support out there for Canada's position on the UN Security Council. Well, the vote came down today, and in the first ballot,

Canada lost, lost to Norway and Ireland, got the two seats that were up this time around. And Canada did not get in. So for those who believe in the UN as a force for international relations, believe that it does a good job, believe that it's worth the money that member countries pour into it, and it's important for those various assignments and roles that the UN plays around the world, then that's a blow, because Canada's not in one of the key positions, being on the UN Security Council. But there are a lot of people who feel, I mean, the UN has lost a lot of support over the years. That money's wasted, that there are aspects of it that are corrupt,

and we should, they're basically not getting our money's worth, and we're not playing the role that we'd hoped to play internationally through the UN. So those people are happy today. But for Justin Trudeau, it's not a good day. Now, it's not the only thing that happened to Justin Trudeau today. He got, he was criticized for the way he's handled a number of issues surrounding the amount of money that Canada is spending right now in dealing with COVID-19. And as you know, we are spending

billions and billions of dollars on support programs for people and for businesses. And that's received a lot of praise on the way that operation has been handled and how quickly money has got into the hands of those who need it and how many precautions are being taken to ensure that money doesn't get into the hands of those who don't need it. Questions being raised about how some of this money will be paid back, but most of the questions surround, man, how are we going to deal with this?

This has just made the debt load huge. It'll be over a trillion dollars in the next year, the overall national debt. But in terms of deficit numbers, I don't know. Take your pick. But there are those that are suggesting $150 billion deficit and more. Now, we've never had a number anything like that. I think the highest one was after the 2008 financial crisis

when the Harper government said the only way out of this crisis is to spend our way out of it. We're going to have infrastructure programs. We're going to pour money into the provinces. And they ran a deficit of over $50 billion. But they paid it down, most of it down over time, as they promised they would. I'll always remember interviewing Jim Flaherty,

the former finance minister, before the financial crisis hit. I think it was his last budget before the financial crisis, so it was early in 2008. And one of the questions I asked him, I think we were in surplus at that point. I'm sure we were in surplus at that point. I said to him, what would it take for Canada to go into deficit again? He said, it'll never happen.

Never happen under my watch. Less than a year later, we had a deficit of over $50 billion. Now, to Jim Flaherty, the late Jim Flaherty's credit, they began marching that number down fairly rapidly. So today, Justin Trudeau is asked, what are the numbers actually going to be? We need a financial statement, is what he said. So here is his answer.

Because it ought to be said that an economic... Wait a minute. I'm not ready for you yet. I've got to introduce this properly. So here was his answer. Remember, he's standing outside the door at Rideau Gate. And he was asked this question about, when are you going to give us an economic statement? When are you going to give us a budget? Give us something to tell us what the numbers are like. Here's his answer. It runs about a minute. Listen closely.

I've consistently said that an economic and fiscal update would be unrealistic right now because it automatically includes projections for a year, three years, five years ahead of time, which, quite frankly, we simply... any responsible predictions about. However, every two weeks over the past number of months, we have put forward all the information from finance to the Finance Committee, to parliamentarians, on the measures that we have moved forward on

to give a very precise accounting on what we've done. We've continued to do that, and in a a few weeks we will gather all that together along with a sense of where we are, comparisons to where we are compared to other countries and you know some estimates on where we could be in the coming months. But this will not be an economic and fiscal update. It will be more of a snapshot or a portrait of where we are right now. So we're going to get a snapshot of where we are right now. And you know what?

That may sound reasonable to some people, but it didn't sound reasonable to a lot of observers on Parliament Hill nor to some of the opposition MPs who want a more accurate reflection of where we are. Now, the Prime Minister outlined all the reasons why that's difficult. But let me tell you, you know, they weren't asking for a budget. They were asking for an economic statement, sort of the basics. And, you know, it was about 30 years ago,

I think it was during Paul Martin's role as the finance minister, which was seen by many to be the most successful role a finance minister's ever had in Canada. But it was during that time that they started adding these kind of forecasts, both in the budget and in the financial statement. Financial statement comes out once a year, budgets usually come out once a year. Some people argue that's the only time a finance minister has to actually do anything in public. A budget once a year, financial statement once a year. And the other times when they're asked questions, they can say,

you've got to wait for the financial statement, or you've got to wait for the budget, right? I'm not trying to say it's an easy job. I'm sure it isn't. I know it isn't. Anyway, it was in those Martin days that when these statements or budgets came out, they started giving, you know, a two, three, four, five-year estimate of where things might be given certain situations. You could bet on the fingers of one hand the number of times those numbers actually reflected what in fact happened.

That's not to say they were bad estimates. That's just to say that things change. But it gives you a sense of working from something to get an idea of the direction things are going. You know, barring some catastrophe. Well, we're in a catastrophe right now. There's no doubt about it. With COVID-19, they're spending money in ways they never ever imagined they would have to before the virus hit. Now that the virus is hitting, they're continually having to adjust to the amount of money they need

to spend to prop up programs. They just announced yesterday one of the programs to support businesses are extending for another four weeks or another eight weeks. Some of the programs to help workers who are out of work or have lost their job. Some of those

programs have been extended. So you can't, you know, you never know for sure what's going to happen. And if we, you know, if things go south on COVID-19 and we're into a rebound on the first wave or into a second wave this fall, who knows how much money is going to be spent. So that's, you know, in defense of the Prime Minister's remarks today, that's the defense.

On the criticism, I get that too, because you can always give some sense of the direction things are going and what you're expecting at this moment. I mean, they are basing some of their decisions on the projections they're getting. And the question is simply, can you share that with us? Well, the Prime Minister saying there's going to be some reflection on, some sense of where we are,

coming up from the Finance Minister, Bill Morneau, in the next little while, but it's not going to be as formal as an economic statement or a budget. Okay, so, you know, all in all, a difficult day for the Prime Minister. He loses his cherished UN Security Council seat, and he's having to fend off questions about money and the country's finances, which, no matter which way you look at it, when this is over, the country's finances are going to be in straits that we've never seen before.

They seem to think we can handle this, that we were in good shape going into it. Well, let's see. Let's see where we are a couple years down the road alright you know my fascination with airlines read a great piece in Slate magazine and I want to share some of it with you

because it's this whole issue about if and when we ever start flying again that's people like you and me are we we ever start flying again, that's people like you and me, are we going to start flying again? Can we get over the concerns about flying? The airline's desperately trying to get our attention

and saying, come fly with us. It's safe. You can do it. Let's go. So here's the headline. I'll give you some idea of what this article go. So here's the headline. I'll give you some idea of what this article is like. Here's the headline. It's late. Airport surveillance is about to reach a whole new level of ridiculousness.

Sub-headline. If you thought taking off your shoes at airport screening was bad, just wait for what's coming. This piece is by the Slate reporter, Natasha Frost. And there's some good stuff in here, and so I'm going to read bits and pieces of it, and occasionally I'll throw in my comments. But listen, you know, not only do, A, I need to fly to do my job, whether it's crossing the country or the continent or the world for speeches

or for documentaries, I need to fly. But I also love to fly. You know, it's been a thing for me since I was a kid, since the first flight I ever took in 1951 in Penang, Malaya on a DC-3. I've got a picture of it in my office and I think I've used it for cover art on this podcast a few months ago. You know, I love looking at that picture. I'm just this little guy in shorts. I love looking at the picture because I think that was the beginning of this journey that I'm still on today in terms of loving flying. I was on that flight. I've never looked back.

Anyway, on the Slate magazine, let me read you a little bit of it. Flying seems like just about the most dangerous thing you could possibly do right now. You're spending hours confined in a metal tube with hundreds of strangers from all over the world without any way of knowing where they've been or whom they've been with. Under those circumstances, you'd expect a few additional safety requirements. No one wants to get sick, so what's the loss of a little more privacy if it keeps you out of harm's way? That, at least, is the rationale behind a fleet of new measures either under consideration or are already in place at airports around the world. In the United States, the Transportation Security Administration

is reportedly preparing to begin checking passengers' temperatures before they board. More on temperatures later. New arrivals to the UK, to the United Kingdom, must, as of right now, provide an address where they will self-isolate for 14 days. And you figure, okay, fine, sure, we'll just give them an address when we land, and that'll be the last we hear of it. However, police will follow up with surprise in-person checks. More than 45 countries have rolled out digital ankle bracelet tracking apps,

which are likely to be either mandatory or strongly encouraged for air travelers. Meanwhile, biometric scanning to check people against their ID is being aggressively tested by airports from Munich in Germany to Sydney, Australia. So there's a lot there already, right? This ain't just your normal flight. Now here's the thing, as the Slate article continues. Between the hospital-grade air filters and extremely dry air, a plane in flight actually seems to be a

fairly inhospitable environment for the virus, at least compared with going out for dinner, attending a cocktail party, or even going to choir practice. There's some risk, especially in the terminal or during boarding, but it seems comparable to a bus, a train, or any other crowded environment, none of which are likely to have greater security measures. Take one very recent study. Here's the Canadian angle. Take one very recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. On a 15-hour flight between Guangzhou, China, and Toronto, more than 25 people sat within two meters of a symptomatic passenger. Okay, so this is a passenger who is showing the symptoms of COVID-19. They got 25 people sitting within seven meters,

sorry, within two meters, in other words, seven feet of that passenger. Not one of them later tested positive for COVID-19. That's after a 15-hour flight. Meanwhile, tracing of 1,100 infected air passengers who between them came into contact with 100,000 others revealed no secondary transmission, according to a statement from the International Air Transport Association,

that's IATA. Two crew members may have been infected by one of these passengers. That's interesting. That CMA study, the Canadian Medical Association study, is especially interesting. A 15-hour flight from China to Toronto, 25 people sitting within two meters of a patient who had, or a passenger who became clear did, in fact, have COVID-19. Not one of them later tested positive. Not one.

Now, you heard me earlier talk about the temperature. You know, checking temperatures of passengers. And we're apparently going to see a lot of that in airports in different parts of the world. So here's what the Slate article says on that. When it comes to COVID-19 detection, health experts say temperature checks alone simply are not sensitive enough to do the job, especially as many infectious passengers exhibit no symptoms.

An elevated temperature could be the result of cancer treatment, a urinary tract infection, or other unrelated factors, many of which could be hard to justify to a security agent. It's also extremely possible to trick these sensors, including taking ibuprofen

to lower a fever. Let's hope that's not what happens. People pop a couple of ibuprofens before they go through the security line and the temperature check at the airport. But clearly, if you do that, you have the possibility of beating the temperature meter. All right. That's just a part of the article and continues my fascination with the airline story. You know what was interesting in that? That takes for granted that people understand. Of all the other things they're going to have to do, one thing they absolutely have to do

on planes, in airports, is, you guessed it, wear a mask. You know, this morning, garbage day in our neighborhood. So I'm out early. I'm out like at 6 o'clock putting the garbage out. I go out the front door. I walk down to the front of the front lawn, and on the sidewalk, there's a mask, a used mask lying there. Now, I'm thinking, who would do that?

Who would take off their mask, either on the sidewalk or throw it out of their car, a mask used that you've been breathing into, and just throw it carelessly onto somebody's front lawn or the sidewalk in front of their house. I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, okay, what are you going to do with this? Can't leave it here. How are you going to pick it up?

Where are you going to put it? This is not the discussion I wanted to have about masks. But if you use masks or if you use gloves, throw them out properly when you're finished with them. Bag them and put the bag in a bag and get rid of them. You don't throw them on the ground. You don't throw them in the parking lot at the grocery store. You sure as hell don't throw them on my front lawn, please.

Right? Right? A lot of mail continues to come in on the question we asked two nights ago about the border. And it's still overwhelmingly about keep the border closed. Last night it was like 13 and 14 to 1. It's probably 20 to 1 now. People do not want that border open.

Not yet. And you know what? I got more than a few from the U.S., from our friends in the U.S., who listen to the podcast, who wrote as well. Not one of them saying, hey, open your border, let us in. All of them saying, don't let us in yet. We're not ready for you. You're not ready for us. You're not ready for us.

We're not doing things right here. We've got problems. Well, listen, we're wishing you the best on the problems you're having. And we're wishing safety for everybody, whether it's us or you. All right. That's us or you. All right. That's the Bridge Daily for this Wednesday. Thanks for listening.

If you want to write in, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. In the meantime, we'll be back in 24 hours.