The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - "Lock Your Doors!" - Good Talk on the Convoy

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

As the so-called "Freedom Convoy" approaches Ottawa Chantal and Bruce offer their thoughts on a protest that has authorities more than a little worried.  And through it all Erin O'Toole does his weekly struggle looking for the middle ground.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Chantal Hebert is in Montreal, Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa, I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario, and this is Good talk for this Friday. So, lock your doors. Don't go outside. Leave your house if you have an opportunity to. These are the actual pieces of advice that the Sergeant-at-Arms for the House of Commons has given to members of Parliament

if things start to sound like maybe they're going to be unruly this weekend in ottawa with the convoy heading to town well there's good reason to be concerned it looks ugly in some of the ways we're looking at these protesters who are converging on the nation's capital they're not just coming from west to east they're're coming through Ontario on the Highway 401, and they're meeting up with protesters, truckers, convoy, from the east coast as well. So just how many there are going to be,

and how anxious they're going to be, and how unruly they may be. We don't know at this hour. But those were the warnings given by the Sergeant-at-Arms for the House of Commons to MPs. Lock your doors. What do we make of this, Chantal? I don't disagree that there is a potential for ugliness on Parliament Hill over the weekend and in Ottawa in the days going forward.

I think the convoy's initial cause, which was why do we absolutely have to be vaccinated to get across the border. And we can discuss the merits of that, which I think are not all that interesting. But it was overtaken by the anti-vax movement and by elements who have other agendas and who have dominated the discourse, in part because some of the anti-vax movement is represented within the truckers that are coming to town. And the kind of things that have been said by spokespeople of that convoy or by organizers of that convoy do not speak to a peaceful demonstration. Journalists have been badly treated. Some were greeted with requests for interviews from spokespeople. I'm not talking about individuals speaking out of turn here.

We're greeted with racist comments. A number of the people who are coming to Ottawa on the weekend say that they are coming with a plan to ask the Governor General and the Senate to dissolve Parliament and appoint a committee to run the country until all the health measures are done with. This apparently based on the advice of constitutional lawyers who have remained unnamed so far. I guess for their future in the legal profession, that's probably the safer way to go, to remain anonymous. Others have issued death threats against the prime minister. The entire tone of the exercise has been unpleasant, aggressive and probably

as self-defeating for those who are coming to Parliament Hill in good faith. Now, just two facts that seem to disappear whenever even politicians discuss this. 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated. Those are numbers that come from their own association that does not back this protest. And suppose Erin O'Toole were prime minister tomorrow and said, I'm doing away with the vaccine mandate for truckers. None of the truckers who are coming to Parliament Hill on Saturday would be able to actually cross into the US and do what it is that they do without getting vaccinated because the United States government has proclaimed the exact same rule as Canada. So Jason Kenney is trying to find allies in the U.S. to change that.

I was interested this week to not hear all the conservatives who came out in support of this demonstration not say we're going to use all our levers in Washington to try to overturn the U.S. ban on unvaccinated truckers because it seems to me that this theater that they are indulging in is going nowhere unless you achieve a similar result in the U.S. Now, the thing, I know Bruce is anxious to get in on this too now, but the thing that does bother me a little bit is that there are clearly some people who were at the front end of this protest

or came aboard in the early stages have what they feel are legitimate concerns and they want to make those protests peacefully. The fear is that they're going to get pushed aside by, you know, voices that are more, well, ugly in some cases. Now, you need to look no further than January 6th in the last year to see that same kind of thing that happened. And I'm being careful here about equating these two things. But on January 6th, the initial stages of that demonstration were joined by a lot of, well, not a lot of people,

but people with, you know, families pushing strollers with babies in them. That's what started along the process, the march from the White House to the Capitol building. And then they got quickly overtaken by a much different kind of group of people. And those, you know, those families disappeared, fortunately, it seems, without any injuries. I think we have to recognize that at the initial stages of this, there were those who felt they had a legitimate voice to enter into the protest, and they wanted to make it. And maybe they still will.

But every indication in these past few days, as it's gotten more and more vociferous from those who are arguing or trying to make the case of a much different kind of thing. I'd love to know, like Chantal, where these lawyers came from. They're probably the same lawyers that gave, it appears,

as we're finding out, we're giving advice to Donald Trump in the United States, a pretty bizarre legal advice, to say the least. whether there were even any lawyers involved in the Canadian side, we don't know. Anyway, I'm rambling. Bruce, go ahead. Well, Peter, I think that you've put your finger on something that has kind of been perplexing me quite a bit. I mean, I hear Pierre Polyev say, you know, there are some really good

people who are kind of part of this, who've got, you know, a legitimate point of view, and we should hear them and we should not mischaracterize their views based on the kind of the strident and objectionable comments of some of the people in this. and I don't know if that's just us as Canadians being nice like I really do want to know if you if you kind of started let's say you live somewhere out west and you didn't believe that vaccines were such a good idea and you certainly didn't believe that vaccine mandates were a good idea and you definitely didn't like this idea of a cross-border vaccine mandate and you thought okay well if there's going to be a protest on this maybe i should join it now first of all to cross that line to i don't like this idea to i should join a convoy uh to ottawa that requires a certain amount of kind of energy and commitment to that idea but let's's say that you were still that well-intentioned Canadian, that believer in democracy. You just have a different point of view on a policy and

you want to express it. So you get in that convoy and then you watch as the leaders and the organizers of this convoy say the things that they're saying. Don't you turn around at some point? Don't you take an off ramp? Don't you go home? Don't you speak out against it? So I have a little bit of trouble with the idea that most of this convoy is just well-intentioned people who are kind of being outshouted by people with anti-Semitic views, people with racist views, people with anti-democratic views, people who don't believe in law and order, people who think that they can come to Ottawa, meet with the governor general and somehow make a case to dissolve the government in quotation

marks. So and then I read a story that says there's $6.4 million that's been raised as of this morning or last night? A third of that money contributed by anonymous donors. Lots of that money contributed by people who say that their name is Sophie Trudeau or Justin Trudeau or Teresa Tabb. It's not hard. And some of it coming from outside the country, too. A lot of it's coming from outside the country, too. And then to watch the spectacle yesterday of the conservatives contorting themselves so that they didn't sound like they didn't like the convoy, but trying not to sound like they liked it too much. And meanwhile, I think regular people will look at this and go, I don't know what to make of this convoy. But to Chantal's point, there's nowhere for them to go.

If they could go to Washington and protest the Biden administration policy, maybe that would have some effect. But going to Ottawa to get Ottawa to change the policy wouldn't have any effect, even if Ottawa went along with that. So, honestly, I hope that they put up a stage and microphones and lights, and they let these people talk so that everybody can take the measure of them. And Aaron O'Toole says, I'm going to meet with the good ones. Well, I don't know how he's going to figure that out. I really don't. It feels to me like if he's going to try to meet with the good ones, he's going to stand there and he's going to go, you, I don't think so. You, I don't think so. You probably not. You maybe. What about you? Are you feeling like a good one? Like this is a horrible story for the conservative. I'm going to stop right there. Okay. Just to add, I'm not going to go into the foreign money and the foreign forces trying to unsettle Canada because it's a rabbit hole that I worry about. And we have enough of those at this point. But just from the standpoint of a cause. So, one, you are a trucker that wants the government to overturn its decision on vaccine mandates. Your first problem is 90% of your colleagues do not agree with you and say, no, you know, we have regulations.

This is a regulation that the government has put in place with a lot of advance notice. I'm basically quoting truckers here. And that is that. Second, if you're going to be doing that, and you're serious, that is your message, despite the fact that nine out of 10 of your colleagues are not on board, then you would want your trucking association to say, as some unions have done in the case of other workers who are under vaccine mandates, well, we're your association and we're going to speak for you because you represent maybe five or 10% of our members. That's not happening. Trucker associations are not on board with the

convoy. Then you say, well, Canadians should be on board because they're not going to get their groceries, except that Canadian grocers are not on board. And they're saying, no, we're going to do OK. I mean, it may be that you won't find your favorite thing tomorrow, but you will find it the day after tomorrow. And the reasons why you may not find it are usually not related to the fact that truckers need to be vaccinated, but they can also be related to the fact that there's a labor shortage, that a lot of our staff is sick or in self-isolating because of COVID, chain of supplies issue in some plants. So you've got all these things that are not happening. And in that void of a cause that could have there had been a possibility to get support from all these groups that I mentioned, that's gone. It's not that they're going to be overtaken by other

interests. They have been. It has happened. Now, to the conservative point, I'm not the pollster here, but I would be really curious to see a poll of the people who are participating and supporting this movement. And I'm willing to predict, since I'm not the pollster, I have no credibility on this, that we will find that the critical mass of the people who support this or are in this are people who vote either for Maximilien's party or the Conservative Party of Canada. That's great for Maximilien, and that's a bad thing for the Conservative Party of Canada. You've got stories here today in the Quebec media where people are starting to ask prominent Quebec MPs, Alain Reyes, Gerard Deltel, how long can you put up with a party of

crazies? You're good guys, you're solid MPs. Do you really feel you want to continue with this party? That is where the Conservative Party is driving itself at this point. Okay, I want to move to the Conservatives in a minute. But I just want to throw a couple of facts in here as well that are important to know about in terms of this. In terms of, you know, as you mentioned, 90% of truckers are vaccinated according to their own numbers. Here's something else according to their own numbers. Quite apart from government mandates,

a third of trucking companies in canada had already mandated their drivers had to be vaccinated they'd already said that that had nothing to do with the government and most of the mandates by the way aren't federal or provincial right in terms of this stuff but the other you know important fact to recognize is that some of these holdups in the supply chain have got also nothing to do with vaccine mandates they've got a lot to do with the lack of drivers you know the whole the trucking industry has been facing this for a number of years now, where their drivers have been dropping out. They're mostly older. They're retiring or they've had enough for whatever number of different reasons.

And there's a drastic shortage of truck drivers, not just in Canada, but in the United States, where they're down thousands and thousands of truck drivers, which is adding to this issue. And once again, nothing to do with vaccines or vaccine mandates. So there are a number of things at play here that aren't getting the kind of contextual coverage that they should get in terms of the telling of this story. And the only other thing I wanted to mention is that in terms of those people who feel they have a right to protest, they're not all truckers. In fact, most of them have got nothing to do with trucking.

But you see them lined up. You've seen them in overpasses over the 401, and there are families there, you know, they're waving flags and they're doing this, that, and the other thing, and they think they're there for a good cause, and I'm sure in some cases they strongly believe they're there for different causes. It's not all to do with vaccine mandates,

but they feel that they've, you know, lost some of their freedom through the last two years. So I do think there is a certain value in saying these are not all wildly crazy people who are saying outrageous things, that there are some people who actually firmly believe that they have a right to protest these actions so you know we'll see how these next couple of days unfold but I think it's important to keep some of that in mind and Bruce you want to make a point before we take a break well first of all for sure they have the right to protest. Everybody has the right to protest. I'm glad that this protest is happening. I think that this simmering rage that is being expressed by some of the effects that a lot of the speech is having on people. But we live in a democracy, and it's a good thing that we do.

And so I'm not against freedom of speech at all on this. I want to pick up a point that Chantal made about who the anti-vax voter is. And we have a little bit of data on that from our latest study. Anti-vaxxers in our work is 6%. That's people who say, I will never take this vax. 49% of them say if there was an election tomorrow, they'd vote for the People's Party. Another 26% say that they'd vote Conservative.

So the lion's share, the vast majority of the anti-vax 6% are either People's Party or Conservative Party voters. That still leaves some who, as you say, Peter, don't harbor views that are uniformly far right. But it is also reasonable to say that a lot of the energy behind this is not really just about vaccines. It's people saying, I don't like the outcome of the election, so I want a different outcome. There's a lawlessness to it. There's an anti-law and order aspect to it. There's a kind of a rage against, well, a rage against minorities, too. So it's not everybody in the convoy, at least we should suspend our disbelief. But I'm not quite where you are, which is that if you're still in that convoy, are you really one of the reasonable ones? I want to see more evidence before I say this is a convoy that is mostly reasonable people

or even 50% reasonable people. But that having been said, even unreasonable people should come to Ottawa and say what they have to say and we should hear it and remember it. Okay. I never said, and I don't think you said that I said, but Pierre Palliev said most of them were reasonable people. I didn't say that. I also didn't say that they were in the convoy. There's support for the convoy, obviously, without being in the convoy.

And you see it at the sides of the roads. You see it in some, you know, the basic donations that are being made to this, you know, the $6 million, how it's accounted for, where it came from, how it'll be spent. All those things are big are, are big questions that hang over this whole episode and, and have not been answered yet.

CBC did an investigation into what names have been released by the GoFundMe organization and try to track some of this stuff down. And it, and it has raised questions just from the basic facts that are known. Anyway, okay, let's take a quick pause. And when we come back, guess what? We'll talk about Aaron O'Toole's latest position

as he searches for that middle ground, his weekly quest. Where is the middle ground? Which seems to be his raison d'etre for the last, you know, well, ever since the election campaign. We'll see where that is as of now when we come back. And we're back with Good Talk for this Friday. Chantel's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Stratford, Ontario.

And you're listening on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. All right. Aaron O'Toole and the latest attempt by aaron o'toole to have a position that not only he can live with but his party can live with his caucus can live with and it's a desperate search and i you know and most of the criticism on this is not coming from the media it's coming from conservatives or or those who support conservatives i'm sure you both saw conrad black's column last weekend in the national post and it you know it ripped a new one as they say

for uh aaron o'toole and it was this this fact that he's like a weather vane, it seems, that his position keeps changing. Even, you know, Bruce mentioned how he was going to go out and talk to some of these protesters. Well, two days ago, he said he'd never go out and talk to those protesters. Now he's going out to talk to those protesters. Where he's going to do that, who he's going to talk to, we don't know, but it's another flip. And this comes just, you know, literally moments after he's been meeting with a restless caucus. Now, this meeting, which took place over the last couple of days,

has been much hyped as this was going to be the moment where O'Toole may be confronted by a caucus who wants him gone. What do we know about what happened inside that room? And what is the immediate future for Aaron O'Toole? Chantal? Well, there is no doubt that Aaron O'Toole is on a lose-lose roll at this point. And it's not so much the middle ground that he has been seeking, and that's been a trademark of his leadership.

He seems to always be seeking for a fence to sit on, and the pickets are getting a bit sharp here. But even before he walked into that caucus room this week, his deputy leader, his predecessor, Andrew Scheer, and his finance critic had all taken seriously pro-convoy positions. Andrew Scheer going as far as pouring oil on that fire that has been overtaking the convoy by describing Justin Trudeau as the greatest threat to liberty in this country. That's something you might hear from some person who is trying to agitate truckers or

has an agenda, but from someone who aspired to be prime minister and was the leader of one of Canada's main parties. It's an extraordinary statement. All this happens while Erin O'Toole is trying to find this fence and sit as comfortably as possible on it. What has been happening now, there were always MPs who wanted Erin O'Toole to leave. Their ranks have mostly grown over the past few months. But what has happened over the past month with the video about Justin Trudeau and the Minister of the Environment wanting to make sure you freeze in winter in a year and a half by shutting down the oil and gas industry. And now with what has been happening this week is that the MPs who wanted Erin O'Toole to stay

are running out of arguments to salvage his leadership. So he's now losing the support of his supporters. They're not going to come out and say, I've changed my mind and he has to go. But they are going to become increasingly silent about this leadership and hope that this gets resolved one way or the other. But I think that by and large, the people who have been loyal to Rayar and Noutour, many of them in the Quebec caucus, have now lost faith in his capacity to right that ship and be the leader in the next election. Bruce? I feel like a lonely voice as well, saying that the Conservatives would be better off with Erin O'Toole as leader.

I still barely hold that position this morning. But I agree with a lot of what Chantal said. I think the problem is that, you know, it almost, it's a problem that goes back, as far as I can tell, it maybe goes back earlier than this, but I remember in 1993, I think is when Preston manning was first elected to parliament and preston manning as the leader of the reform party basically broke the conservative party the federal conservative party by presenting this idea that there's a good way to be a conservative and a

bad way to be a conservative and a bad way is a progressive conservative it's a central canadian kind of orientation towards uh kind of a softer version of the Liberal Party. And ever since then, at least that's the period of time where I've really been kind of involved or close to politics, the Conservative Party has really been struggling with a different version of that movie. Different people come and go, but the same conversation really persists, which is, do you want a party that is expansive enough, diverse enough, inclusive enough, forward-looking enough that it could win an election in places other than two of the prairie provinces?

Or do you want one that is kind of a table-thumping, kind of anti-establishment view? And I don't think that the Conservative Party has been able to have clear air on that, except for the period of time when Stephen Harper was the leader of the party. And he wasn't everybody's cup of tea, but he basically said there is a way to go. And I'm telling you how it's going to be. I remember watching that movie Get Shorty the other night and that famous line where somebody asked John Travolta's character, who are you? And he says, I'm the one who's telling you how it is. And I can't help but think that is what the role of a leader is in a party that otherwise wants to be fractured, otherwise feels more comfortable pursuing its its fratricide. And I do feel like Aaron O'Toole needed to take that kind of role. And he has not done that. And so every time he says, I'm trying to pull my party towards a more diverse, expansive,

inclusive, forward-looking, I don't want to say progressive, but I think that is where, you know, the kind of word that needs to be inserted in there a little bit. There's blowback in his party and he capitulates to it. And so if you say that this is what I want to do, but then you get criticized and you go, okay, well, maybe it's not what Iulates to it. And so if you say that this is what I want to do, but then you get criticized and you go, okay, well, maybe it's not what I want to do. Well, what is going to happen as a consequence of that is obvious. And it's really, it starts to become only a matter of time. And the last thing I want to say is that Chantal, I think touched on this too. What you don't hear, what you do see is plenty of evidence that the most senior people

in his party, some premiers, the most senior people in his caucus, people who he appointed to critical roles, like deputy leader, like finance critic, they're doing things that any reasonable person in politics would say, well, that's undermining the leader. What you don't hear is kind of full-throated defense of Aaron O'Toole, as near as I can tell from anybody. I mean, I just haven't seen that person standing up and saying, no, no, no, no, no.

This guy is our guy. He's the right guy. He's the right guy. He's got the right ideas. He's got the solution for the future. And in the absence of that, it does feel like you're just watching gravity kind of have its way. And it's just a question of when. In the list of people that have been clearly undermining O'Toole is the past leader. So you've got kind of Max Bernier who won 12 of 13 ballots and you've got Andrew Scheer and you've got Jason Kenney and you've got Candace Bergen and you've got Pierre Polyev. And I'm looking around for who's the other cadre. And in every one of these past fratricide situations, at least you could find some people who are standing up and saying,

no, no, no, no, no. We're going to fight climate change. We're going to be diverse and inclusive. And so I don't know how this ends, but it doesn't look good right now for Aaron O'Toole. So we're already watching death by a thousand cuts and we're probably at cut 900 already. A lot of cuts. A lot of cuts.

A lot of cuts. Well, and there are, Brian Mulroney used to say, you dance with the one who brought you to the dance, right? And the fact is that Aaron O'Toole, in sharp contrast with Stephen Harper, did not run on what he says he wants to do. Stephen Harper ran for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance against Stockwell Day,

telling members, if you vote for me, I am not going to pursue anti-abortion policies. And won. And could rightly say to anyone who said, we need to change this, I'm sorry, but I told you what I was going to do, and I have a mandate for it. Aaron O'Toole courted the elements that now support Andrew Scheer and others to get rid of him by saying, I'm not like Peter McKay. I'm going to do your bidding. Here's a wink in your direction. And that is how he became became leader he would not be leader if he had not campaigned on that side of the party and then he turns around and tells them well gee we can't

win with that so i'm gonna do the carbon pricing thing and i'm not gonna pursue abortion i'm gonna walk in pride parades and go down the list. At some point, that made a critical mass of smart people in caucus happy. But now those people are looking and they're saying, this guy is unable to deliver. For one, he can't hold a line. He has no moral authority left. And there is nothing to defend here. I would argue that even Stockwell Day, when he was challenged, was better defended by some prominent MPs who otherwise probably knew they would be better off with him not being the leader than Aaron O'Toole is defended these days. I remember, Peter, watching you.

I always felt like your interviews with sitting prime ministers were fantastic because you would ask them questions and then you would pause and let them kind of deal with their answer that there was this kind of moment where they had no choice but to give their best shot because you weren't just going to fill the air. You were going to let them fill the air. And I can't help but think that if you were asking a tough question of Jean Chrétien, why do you do this? Or Stephen Harper, why did you do that? The thing about those two people, and this is to Chantal's point, is that they wouldn't say something that sounded

like, well, I didn't really try to do that. They'd say, well, you might not like it or worse to that effect, but this is my position. And people relate to leaders who do that rather well, even if they disagree with the position. They want to know that the person who's dealing with a tough issue, maybe went through a process of understanding the complexities of it and coming out the other end. And even if they didn't like the position that came out to the other end, they wanted to know that that person was committed to it, that had thought it through, that was prepared to defend it, that had the words and the emotion behind that position, that they weren't going to go, oh, you didn't like that? Okay, well, maybe I should recharacterize what it is that I stood for, what it is that I said.

And I don't find that Aaron O'Toole is doing much of that. I think that exchange with Justin Ling yesterday. You should explain that. Yeah. So Justin Ling is a journalist who, in the course of a press conference with Aaron O'Toole yesterday, kind of went through some of the commentary from the truckers and asked Aaron O'Toole how he could say that he was going to meet with them.

In fact, I think he finished his question with a rather emotional kind of point, which is, what were you thinking? And that's that kind of moment in my world as somebody who looks at communication where you really need the good answer. You really need that firm answer. You need to fight back hard on that. And I didn't think that Aaron O'Toole's answer was very convincing. It was, you should know that I've always been in favor of diversity and inclusion because you've known me for a number of years. But, you know, it was just one of those moments where the question asked and the answer, the question had firmness and clarity to it. The answer did not have that kind of stubborn. I'm taking the right position for the right reasons. Here's why.

And I think that's a big part of the problem that Aaron O'Toole has. Oh, he does have, you know, if he doesn't want to resign, but he doesn't want to wait for the Towson cut. He does have one mechanism, and that is to ask for a confidence vote in his leadership and put his leadership on the line. But I don't see how he can just go along with weeks like this and they will repeat. It's going to be Groundhog Day every week uh going forward we all watched John Turner go through a similar process I don't think a confidence vote resolves it but if you're the leader you you do have that option to go down

fighting you could also call a leadership and say you're going to be running for your own leadership. It doesn't always work, as we know, Joe Clark, Stockwell Day, but at least you're not fighting shadows anymore. You are putting members in front of the alternatives. You're forcing people to come out. You're smoking out the competition and forcing them to actually do better than from the shadows, give lectures to journalists, but not explain exactly how it works that you would do away with a vaccine mandate for truckers when the US is requiring one. So he has those options. So far, I would not qualify Aaron O'Toole from what I've seen of his leadership. And I know him So he has those options. the courageous move would be to go down fighting, and for that, he should pick a place and make a stand and find a hill to either die on or move on from, because the current process is going to

leave him in tatters. 100% agree with that. As we, all three of us know from our past experiences of watching these things unfold, that a leader is in less trouble when there's not a clear alternative than he or she is when there is a clear alternative. There was a Nanos poll this week on who would be most preferred as a leader in the Conservative Party. And this was the first time I actually saw

Polyev in the lead. By this was the first time i actually saw polyev in the lead by not just a small margin but you know six or six or eight points is he the clear alternative and does that make things even worse for um aaron o'toole that there is seemingly an alternative at least in that one poll well i don't think that the public opinion is really that relevant except to say that the public opinion is not signaling that it believes that aaron o'toole is a popular person um but i say that because the public's not going to choose the conservative leader conservatives will and the caucus think, will have a large part to say in the shape of that leadership race, because it's kind of hard to get in in a situation like this and to gather momentum

if most of the leading figures in the party have decided that there is really one alternative. And it does look as though a lot of that is headed towards Pierre Polyev. It also kind of looks to me like Pierre Polyev is doing absolutely nothing to say, I support the leader. Unless I missed it, all these stories are happening. And in any other version of this movie, at least the insurrectionist leader would go through the performative motions of saying no no no i support my leader but there is absolutely none of that uh going on right now uh which is really quite telling um i don't think it's going to be andrew sheer i don't think any of the other names have the kind of sense of that they could kindle the passion of the base of the conservative party that Pierre Polyev does. And but and I'll finish on this point.

If I'm the liberals, I'm kind of looking at this and going, well, I don't know. It would be horrible to run against Pierre Polyev. His positions on issues that mainstream conservative accessible voters might be drawn towards have not been the kind that would win that conservative party votes. Now, he might change, and people might be so fed up with Trudeau and the Liberals by the time the election rolls around that the Liberals lose regardless of whether people like Pierre Poliev or not. But it does look to me like it'll be Pierre Poliev. And I would guess sooner rather than later. And then we can watch him search for the middle ground.

Or not. and then we can watch him search for the middle ground or not I think he comes across as believing that the middle ground is a place where no proper conservative should be standing but I'll just throw in there one the grass always looks greener and polls tend to show that remember Kim Campbell and that glorious summer that she had after she replaced Brian Mulroney and then the duck with two seats but a more recent example

would be Michael ignatief get rid of Stefan Zion because he's a dud he doesn't communicate well his English is lacking he doesn't have the people's touch. So we're going to go for Michael Ignatieff. And people so dislike Stephen Harper, how could anything go poorly for us? And then Stephen Harper not only wins, but the liberals end up in third place. And I'm not saying this to throw stuff on Michael Ignatieff, who I happen to like, but you usually look better on paper. And sometimes once you're tested, you come across as even better. But I think Stephen Harper came to the leadership from the other side of that view. People did not expect him to rise to the occasion, to up his game,

to become prime minister, and he did all of those things. But when a party is still looking for a miracle worker, same with Justin Trudeau, by the way, who looked like he could keep the party alive, but no one at that point, including himself, expected him to be prime minister with a majority government a few years later. So maybe that is where the conservatives will go. And maybe that will take them on another detour for a longer lease in opposition until they decide that they do want to win. And if they want to win, they're going to have to win back people like my friend Bruce here, who used to vote conservative and work with the conservatives.

Because if that's not who you want, then you're not going to win an election. You know, I think that point about Polyev that deserves to be said is that he has consistently been an effective communicator using some milestones for measuring um his his message is usually clear his words are precise and they have edge he doesn't lack for a kind of a sense of emotional commitment to what he's saying. He uses modern communications techniques. Sometimes they look a little bit kind of overly performative, but we live in a world where a lot of the overly performative works. And if he stays focused

on an economic message, inflation is a problem Inflation is a problem. Fiscal imbalance is a problem. He'll have a better chance than he appears to have right now to rally a lot of voters around the center. It's when he doesn't talk about those issues and he talks about indigenous people, for example, that I think will make potentially those center right voters say there's something in this guy's heart that I don't trust or I don't like or I feel like he's not committed enough to. And I think that's the question I would be watching for with Polyab. Does he does he start signaling a concern about climate change?

Does he sound different on diversity and inclusion? Does he find some way to ping a little radar signal to that center right to say, I'm not the person you think I am. That's who I play on TV sometimes. times and at the same time as doing that does is he more skilled at not offending the people who are in the convoy the people who are the uh we must never have somebody who looks like they're too comfortable in ontario or quebec uh or atlanticana for that matter so i don't i don't you know he's a skilled person and i and I wouldn't want to sell him short. That's for sure. All right. We've got to take our final break. Just to back up briefly on to the Michael Ignatieff part, and I only mention this because I found it interesting in terms of my past in interviewing political leaders.

Michael Ignatieff was one of the worst interviews of a Canadian political leader that I've seen. He just never was able to be comfortable in that scene, I thought. And yet when I interviewed him after he'd left politics, when he was the president of university in Hungary, and he was up against the Orban government, that interview go down for me as one of the most productive interviews I've ever been involved in. He was fantastic.

I sort of looked at him and I said, you know, why couldn't you have been like this when you were leading a party? And he said, it's politics. I was never right for politics. And he was right about that. Anyway, we'll take a quick break, and I'm back for a quick last word on Justin Trudeau's leadership right after this. All right, we've just got a couple of minutes left.

Chantel's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Stratford, Ontario. And Chantel, you have the floor on this one. We talked about a leadership rankings poll for the Conservatives. There was also one for the Liberals. And Justin Trudeau was not at the top of the list on the answers of Canadians. But Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister,

the Minister of Finance, was. Does that mean anything right now? Is there reason to look at that and think, hmm, this could be interesting here this next while? For sure in the cycle, and that would have been true of Stephen Harper and Jean Chrétien, it was true of Jean Chrétien, there is fatigue with the person who has been prime minister for the past few years, especially in the case of Justin Trudeau, who has been overexposed by the nature of the pandemic and those daily news conferences. So the appetite is starting to manifest itself for fresh face. And that's a syndrome that affects all prime ministers.

What I found interesting in that poll, for one, Chrystia Freeland, yes, did better, but not by a huge margin here. But she did better by a huge margin than any of the other names that were mentioned to succeed Justin Trudeau. And the Liberal Party has had competitive leadership campaigns in the past. They mostly tore apart the party. And since the Stéphane Zion Convention, they've mostly not had them. Michael Ignatieff was put in the chair. Justin Trudeau was the prohibitive leadership winner from the day he declared.

And it looks to me like it is possible that that would be the case if and when Justin Trudeau declines. And I'm assuming Christia Freeland is interested. But there are other things that explain why she gets those numbers and the others don't I watched this week and you must have to the news conference that the prime minister gave about Ukraine and Russia and there he was with the defense minister the foreign affairs minister or lead on the file and Chrystia Freeland and And if you time the interventions, the person who, besides the prime minister, who got the most ice time and was the most effective and the most forward was the deputy prime minister. I can't remember a deputy prime minister who has had as much presence on other

people's files in public as she has. I can't imagine Jean Chrétien calling up Sheila Copps to say, we're going to do something big internationally, so why don't you come along? She was deputy prime minister. Most people forgot that she was deputy prime minister. So she's been, Christia Freeland, front and center on files that don't necessarily pertain to finance in any way, shape or form. And there are those who say, well, that's because Justin Trudeau wants to put her forward. Me, I think that Justin Trudeau needs a shoulder to lean on, on foreign and economic policy, and that she has become part of his comfort zone.

You know, I read the other day that some Liberal MPs who've always had a problem getting through to Chrystra Freeland to get an answer from her or a moment to talk to with her have suddenly in the last couple of months been getting their calls returned. That always says something. Bruce, you have a minute and not a second longer on this i'm gonna use up some of that time just like that no uh look i think that justin trudeau has packed 25 years of trouble into the last two years and so the idea that at some point people are going to get tired of any incumbent absolutely true uh. Put a 25-year-long epidemic into

the middle of it, and that day is going to come sooner. And I hope for Justin Trudeau's sake, he recognizes that moment when it comes and that he decides that it's time for him to do something else and that the Liberal Party should refresh itself. And it feels to me that that's logically going to happen before the next election. Second thing, I talk to a lot of people in business and in the private sector who meet with people in government. And the one thing that I keep hearing from them about Chrystia Freeland these days, how smart she is, how effective she is, how productive those meetings are. So I think that the idea that she's just there because she's been given this kind of opportunity on a, on a silver platter by Trudeau.

I don't think that's right. I think the talent is why she's considered the front runner and she'll be a formidable candidate if she runs. All right. Well, that wraps her up for this weekend, man. That was good talk. That was a lot of good talk. So thank you, Bruce.

Thank you, Chantel. The Bridge is back on Monday. And we're looking forward to talking to you then. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.