The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore Butts #17. How Can You Tell When A Parliament Is Off The Rails?

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Former Conservative Cabinet Minister James Moore and former Liberal insider Gerald Butts get together for another of their popular conversations.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday. It's More Butts Conversation number 17. How do you know when a Parliament has gone off the rails? That's coming right up. And hello there. welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to our first More Butts conversation of year five of The Bridge. That's right, the fall of 2024, and this is our debut More Butts conversation, but it's number 17 in the string of these conversations that we've had over the last couple of years.

Conversations between a former Conservative Cabinet Minister, James Moore, and a former Liberal inside man, a former Principal Secretary to Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts. So we've talked about all kinds of different things in these conversations. And we try to keep them focused and try to keep them non-partisan. And pretty much that's the way they've been. I think today's will be too, but it's kind of more topical in the sense we're dealing

with some issues that are actually facing us in this moment, given this parliament and the, I don't know, tentative nature of the minority government, especially now since the NDP has pulled the plug on their deal with the liberals. Anyway, we're going to have that conversation, and we'll see how it goes. And I think you're going to see that there's some surprises in here. I think you're going to hear our two friends say some things that might surprise you about where we are in the current round of things. Anyway, that's all I'll say.

I will remind you that the question of the week this week, for Thursday's your turn, is if you were the owner of a newspaper in Canada, what would you do to drive circulation up at a time when newspapers are going under? What would you do? This is your opportunity to write in and say, this is what I think they should do. So give some thought to that one.

Send it to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Have it in by Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern time. Include your name, the location you're writing from, and keep it short, right? No essays. Just give me a paragraph on what you think would work to allow newspapers to drive up their circulation.

Okay, enough talk. Let's get to the main event, and the main event on this day is More Butts Conversation, number 17. Here we go. All right, you two guys have been around the block in politics enough times. You've seen all kinds of things. I want to start off by just getting a sense from you as to, you know, when you watch the machinations and the maneuverings and the, you know, the downright nastiness that's been going on in the last couple of weeks of the final year of a minority government.

Have you ever seen anything like this before, at this kind of extent that we're witnessing now? James? Yeah. They all have their own sort of organic inputs and stresses and dynamics and all that. I was in Parliament for five terms, 15 years, three of my five terms were minority parliaments, the Paul Martin minority, 04, 06, Harper 06, 08, and then Harper 08 to 11. And they each had their own different ingredients. The Harper minority of 06 to 08, that minority government was the

weakest numerical minority in Canadian history, because we had 124 members of parliament in a 308 seat house, which meant that numerically in the way the opposition was fragmented, we had to have not one, but two opposition parties support our government legislation at any time. And that minority parliament lasted for two and a half years. It was the longest lasting minority parliament, I think up until this one, if you count this one with confidence and supply or the previous one. But up until then, it was the longest, most stabilized minority government in history. And we had to have two opposition parties. And on top of that, when we were elected, we had, I think, 23 out of 105 seats in the Senate. So we had two dual minority legislatures, and it was really unstable. But we found,

you know, Stephen Harper was very, I think, successful in finding ways to navigate a minority parliament. Some of those lessons, I imagine Justin Trudeau will borrow for this one, which is, you know, when we were elected in 06, our mandate internally, I think, was, for Prime Minister Harper was, because we had heard that people within the bureaucracy were calling us the temps because they didn't think that that dynamic was going to sustain. And we only had like, we only had like four or five cabinet ministers who had any cabinet experience. And that includes like Rob Nicholson, who was a cabinet minister for like three months under Kim Campbell, and David Emerson, who'd crossed the floor. So we didn't

have experience that looked very unstable on the surface. It looked very unstable beneath the surface. But Stephen Harper, one of the, I think the tricks to getting us reelected was that Canadians would see us as not an unstable group of people who couldn't be trusted with the basic machinery of government. And so they were very strategic. We were very strategic. I was more along for the ride because at that point I was a parliamentary secretary. But the trick was, you know, we had our five key priorities in which we were elected as a government, cut the GST, et cetera, et cetera, but was to put in the window and to front load the agenda with stuff that would have obviously some support from at least one or two of the opposition parties, demonstrate the ability to work with other people and get it going on to the point where when we finally got to 2011,

we could tell Canadians credibly a steady, stable majority government that would focus on things because we'd done that in the past. And I think Prime Minister Trudeau will be tasked to do that himself, which is to look at what's remaining on the calendar and put stuff out there that'll have some opposition support. And there's some legislation, the Online Harms Act, which already has NDP block support, is sort of tepid block support they've got legislation on um water on on indigenous communities and voting rights and um so on there's about five bills that have some already have some existing support from the block and the ndp and all they need is one of them so i think they'll have stability through the end of the year i guess what i was getting at though was this and i don't think it cropped up as much in those Harper minorities,

the kind of nastiness that's around. Oh. You know, he seemed to actually, Harper seemed to try, skillfully at times, to have a relationship with the other parties, even in minority situations, including back when Martin was prime minister in those final years of the Martin government. But anyway, let me get Jerry's thoughts here, first of all. Have you seen anything like what we're witnessing now? Yeah, I think it's pretty normal, actually, Peter. I think you start most minority parliaments. I've never served in a minority parliament, and I've never worked in one either. But I do remember

when Dalton McGinty fell one seat short of a majority in his third term, he asked me to, I wasn't in the office at the time, but he asked me to kind of look at what happens to minority governments in the past and how they usually develop. And the truth is they start like a tight molecule and then they decay depending on the particular configuration of, to torture the metaphor, the atoms, in this case, the arrangement of the political parties. And in this case, you had a pretty obvious alignment between the two center-left parties, the center-left and the left party, that was formalized in an arrangement. Now, I think that the new Democrats have decided that

it's no longer in their interest to be part of that arrangement, or they were bullied out of it by the conservatives, depending on your partisan perspective. It's a matter of time before this parliament dissolves, right? I think the history of minority parliaments in Canada, and you've covered a lot of them, is that they almost always end in a way that people wouldn't have predicted at the beginning, right? That there's some piece of legislation, there's some conflict, there's some change in the polling, there's some change in the self-interest of the parties involved, and all of a sudden you're in an election and it seems to hit people by surprise. My own view is that the NDP pulling out of the supply and confidence motion means confidence and supply motion means we are going to have an election sooner than we would have otherwise.

That just stands to reason the base rate probability of an election goes up. And if I were a betting man, which I am am not i would say that i would circle maybe the last 10 days on the calendar in october uh for the house to fall for a december election whoa okay do you want to say anything do you want to weigh in on that james this isn't this wasn't the direction where i was planning on going but we're into it now, so let's try it. I think it depends on, yeah, if Justin Trudeau is staying, I think Jerry's assessment could very well be true. Part of the arithmetic of this is that minority parliaments don't always fall by design. And I've said this to a few people.

They think, well, you can plan the stability as best you can, as I just described with a couple of the bills that are before parliament and all that. But people screw up. People don't show up. There are poison pills. People play games. Opposition parties say they're going to vote one way and the last minute they discover something. You know, we all remember, you know, the liberals under Paul Martin, you know, luring Belinda Stronach to cross the floor and then Chuck Cabman at the last minute vote showed up with cancer and it was a one vote split and the speaker broke the tie. Like minority parliaments have have a way of screwing themselves up. So which is why I think, you know, you see the news this week of Pablo Rodriguez leaving federal politics, even though he'd been thinking about it for some time. But the consequence of the St. Paul's by-election, the Salimara by-election, and I think people intuitively knowing that these things are not always collapsed by design, it's going to cause a lot of people, staffers, bureaucrats, cabinet ministers, others to literally take this week as we're discussing and thinking about this, to start thinking about should I bail and should I go? And so, you know, that will have its own consequence of whether or not people show up.

So I think it could be very unstable and accidents can happen. Yeah, and I agree. Sorry, Peter, I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead. I don't know. You finish your thought. Well, I'm in Montreal right now for a conference and I've been here for a couple of days

and I've caught up with a lot of friends and former colleagues in Montreal. And I think most of them have spent the last few months knocking on doors and LaSalle Verdun, right. And, uh, by-elections are con are not always consequential events, but in my view, when they happen at a, an inflection point of a minority parliament, they can be very consequential events. And I think the most consequential aspect of this by-election is that the good people of La Salle, Émar, Verdun now have a sovereigntist MP. And that has given the Bloc Québécois, which suddenly finds itself with the fate of the

federal parliament in its hands, a cause to step back and think about how it furthers its own cause, right? And they haven't had that kind of authority in a parliament, I would argue, ever because of the arrangement that James just described, that Prime Minister Harper needed the support of two parties, not just one. They've got a lot of power right now. And I think they believe, whether it's true or not, that it's in their interest to have an election before there's a change in leadership in the Liberal Party, because they think that the current constellation of leadership in the Liberal Party with Pablo Rodriguez leaving a relatively low poll numbers in Quebec for the first time in the life of the government.

They think that the iron's hot right now. So I would not be surprised if they struck. Okay. And also, again, for Canadians, I was in Montreal this week as well for three days talking to folks. And, you know, Chantal Hébert talked about it on your podcast just the other day, Peter, talking about the rolling boil that's happening in Quebec politics right now, right?

Whereas for the first time in my lifetime, we've got two francophone-based political parties, the CAQ, Coliseum Québec and the Parti Québécois, are the top two parties in the polls before Pablo Rodríguez comes in. And so effectively, there's a primary between the CAC and the PQ to decide who's the actual party for the francophone, you know, 85% majority of Quebecers to be their voice against Justin Trudeau now and Pierre Poliev later, who's going to be the true voice of francophone Quebecers. And that primary is going to be, you know, testing. You see it this week where you have Francois Legault challenging the Bloc Québécois to bring down Justin Trudeau, the Parti Québécois are staying silent. But amongst those three parties, Coalition Québec, Parti Québécois, Bloc Québécois, there's a open air warfare of debate about what's the best time to sort of challenge the incumbent government in Ottawa to Quebec's net benefits. So the Quebec piece in terms of federal politics is going to be, I think, a dominant window for quite some time. And then if you cast ahead and Pierre Palliet

becomes prime minister, think about some of the things that he's talked about, which could instigate increasing tensions with Quebec, whether it's building pipelines, policies on climate change, just, you know, defunding the CBC and what that means for French language, arts and culture, which, you know, the Stephen Harper government, I was heritage minister was a pretty tricky file. Cost us a majority in 2008, I would argue. So like all these things combined together is that you've got the current dynamic in Quebec and what it means for politics, but ongoing in terms of what it means for national unity and the promise of the PQ to trigger a referendum campaign, the Quebec lens and its tensions and opportunities here to flex power for a creative benefit for Quebecers and their view is going to have a knock-on effect and the

rest of the country is going to have to just sit and watch for a little while. Okay. So how, let me get it. Do you want to make a point on that, Jerry? Well, I'm stunned in English Canada, how a lot of really well-informed people that I talk to all the time are very surprised when I say I think we're going to have a referendum in Quebec in the next two to three years. And it's going to be a very difficult one to win because I think the dynamic that James just described, which I agree with every word he said, and I certainly agree with every word that Chantal said, because she's usually righter than all of us about this stuff. That's terrible, isn't it? Yeah, it's terrible. It's annoying, but I've gotten used to it over the years. I think that that primary that James is describing is happening with the assumption that Trudeau is going to lose the next election. So if you go back to the 2015 campaign,

what was then La Salima did not come to us, get in the red column from the orange column until there was about five days left in the campaign. I remember watching a bunch of Quebec ridings turn red at the very end of the campaign. And why was that? It was because Quebecers don't pay attention to federal politics between elections normally. And they sort of park their votes wherever they voted last time. And it took us, and it was a very long campaign, as you will both remember, it took us about six weeks to convince Quebecers that the New Democrats didn't have a chance to beat Harper in English Canada, but that Trudeau did. And when they became convinced of that, they all kind of flooded into Trudeau because they'd already decided that they were going to

defeat Harper. The dynamic now, the unrelenting negative polling and press coverage that the Trudeau government has gotten over the past year and a half has sort of seeped into Quebec consciousness, and it's been confirmed by the Le Salamard by-election. So the instinct in Quebec now is how do we, and remember Pierre Palliot was about as popular in Quebec as Justin Trudeau is in Calgary. If you look at the numbers, the instinct in Quebec is how do we vote to protect ourselves from what seems to be an inevitable poly of government. So that is a very unstable environment. And there are lots of people who mean the country grievous harm on the sovereignty side of the equation here who will capitalize on that and have a

referendum as quickly as possible. So how do you, as a strategist, as a politician, as somebody who's run for office, how do you manage this situation now? I want to kind of break it down in a little bit. James, you're sitting in the Polyev office. How do you manage the situation that's going on right now? Obviously, every day he's calling for an election and trying to convince Singh or the bloc that they should pull the plug. But how do you manage the situation? Because things seem to be, at the risk of bringing up

my initial comment again getting almost out of hand in the way they're dialoguing the way they're talking to each other the way they're doing the business of the country well i would say every parliament majority or minority doesn't matter they all they all follow the same trajectory in terms of their style. They all start with everybody comes in. Everybody's the high school class president, Eddie Haskell. And let's just get along and find ways to get cooperatively. Yeah, we should talk. Let's have lunch and figure things out and prioritize stuff. Let's do some good work. And, you know, I'm really congratulations on getting elected. You know, we'll figure stuff. And then as the weeks and months go by, it just gets worse and worse to the point where you're saying come at me bro uh in parliament right like all right well you know and there are other versions of that that have happened in recent years so it gets uh they all start great and they all end up in the same in the same ditch part of that is tension ego personality you know all this stuff the uh wounded feelings that have built up over time that expect expectations of your base yada y, yada. I think for, for Pierre Polyev and all, for all the parties, I think it's, I think it's healthy for everybody in all walks of life. It is certainly true of politics as well

to keep reminding yourself of the serenity prayer and, and focus on the things that you can control versus the things that you can't. And, you know, and if you're Pierre Polyev, you know, you keep, keep fundraising, focus on your nominations. 343 members of parliament and 343 candidates in the field is a lot of people to keep sort of focused and sustained and on message and not veering off in ways that create national attention. Keep nominating good quality people of different backgrounds that can help you be shock absorbers, depending on what crises come in the future. Do your diligence in Parliament. You've said flat out it's an easy marker to meet, which is I don't have confidence in Justin Trudeau. I don't believe in the liberal agenda.

We need to get rid of this government. We're going to be voting against everything. And we're going to be slowing things down in committee as well because we just want this government to do less harm to Canadians. So it's a pretty simple track. Focus on the infrastructure of your party, focus on your message, prepare a platform that will be adequate enough to sustain the questions that you're going to get in the campaign. And then in Parliament, just hold the line and being opposed to the government moving the ball down the field, because it's going in the wrong direction in your view. And then be open to the different,

you know, dynamics that come to mind, whether it's a campaign in October, as Jerry described, or if it's something that doesn't happen until spring or even fall of next year. Does baiting the other parties in the way that Polyev does, he's pretty good at it. Is that harmful in the long run or does it matter? No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, every time he puts forward a confidence motion, especially one, you know, that's going to be voted on this week, that is just very clear and concise. Just we don't have confidence in Justin Trudeau. We don't have confidence in the government. Asking other members of parliament, do you agree?

The ballot question that conservatives clearly want is do you want change or do you want more of this? Change or more of the same? And that's the default ballot question in any election campaign anyway, unless something comes in like free trade or LNG in British Columbia or something else. But that's the default ballot question. And just re-emphasizing it and re-cementing it over and over again. So even if the liberals have a change in government or a change in leader, it doesn't matter. The ballot question is still the same. It's do you want to continue down the path that you've been on? And obviously, that's a winning formula for the conservatives in the current world. Jerry, you used to give advice to Justin Trudeau. If he was asking you today, what would you be saying on how to manage the situation? I think it's a really difficult situation, Peter. I'm not sure what I would advise him. Assuming that he wants to stay in the office, I think that you live to fight another day

and hope that events transpire to break your way, basically, that you catch a break, right? That's assuming he wants to stay in office. I think the challenge- You don't sound convinced that he does. Well, I don wants to stay in office. I think the challenge. You don't sound convinced that he does. Well, I don't know is the truth. I really don't. And yeah, I don't know. But I think the point that James is making is a really interesting one now that I think about it, because we've gone from a situation where all of if if you think of parliament, like a play and too often,

it resembles one, all of the actors had their roles assigned and they were relatively straightforward ones, right? Pierre Polyev was going to rail against the government every day. It was the cause of all the problems. Canada is broken, et cetera, et cetera.

Although come to think of it, come to think of it, maybe the only thing that Yves-Francois Blanchet and Pierre Poiliev agree about is that Canada is broken. And that makes for a weird kind of mix in parliament. And the other two parties, well, they generally voted with the government. The NDP had signed on to do so long term, the BQ was episodic in its support, but really had no external constraints about how it voted. Now it really means something. When the BQ tables a confidence motion, which could happen between now and Christmas, then the other two opposite

Federalist opposition parties have to consider whether they want to be seen to be in league with the Sovereignist Party to dissolve the Parliament of Canada. And the dynamic changes whichever one of the opposition parties tables the motion. Now, I understand from people who are involved, not you, James, but other people told me that when Harper, Duceppe wanted to table the motion that brought down the Martin government, but Harper insisted that it had to be him because it had to be a federalist party that brought down the government and not a sovereigntist party.

These are all thoughts we're not used to thinking and we're not used to thinking are important because it's been a dormant issue for a long time. But, and most Canadians probably don't even know, in English Canada, don't even know who Yves-François Blanchet is. But they're going to get to know him over the next few months. And he holds a lot of power, and his choices are going to determine the future of the Parliament.

I want to take a break, and we'll come back. Because there's lots in this, and I'm fascinated with the positions you're taking and explaining. So we'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge. It's a more butts conversation, number 17. And we're trying to make sense out of the situation we're witnessing in Ottawa these days and trying to put some historical perspective on it at the same time

to get an understanding of really how different is what we're witnessing than we've seen at different times in the past. And with us for the Moore-Butts conversation is James Moore, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, and Gerry Butts, the former Principal Secretary to Justin Trudeau in his first term as Prime Minister. Okay. Explain to me why there's any point in keeping this government going.

Not this government, this parliament going, given what we're seeing. Can real good for the people of Canada still be accomplished in this parliament? James. Well, as a conservative, no. As a nonpartisan observer of the scene, what would you say? Yeah, as a nonpartisan observer, exactly. And what constitutes good for the country, you know, assuming that that's flexible, depending on what your perspective is.

Can the government still move the ball down the field as they see it? I think the answer is yes, right? So if you look at the calendar of what's left for this, you know, 2024, you've got the break for Remembrance Day, the break for, or Remembrance Week rather, the break for Thanksgiving, the Christmas holidays are coming up. There's five opposition days between now and the end of the year. So the time is very limited. So you can plug in, you know, once you do one confidence vote this week in Parliament,

you know, to just keep going back to confidence vote, confidence vote is, you know, conservatives will find ways to put it forward in ways that are sort of artistic and sort of, you know, emphasize a particular issue for reasons why there's no confidence.

But yeah, they can muddle through and maybe get some progress on legislation that matters to the government. Online Harms Act is an obvious one, as I said, water on Indigenous reserves and all that. So they can do that between now and the end of the year. And then if you move forward, assuming Justin Trudeau is going to run again and not do his walk in the snow this Christmas, which I think is a distinct possibility. Then you get into the budget and the budget offers you all kinds of opportunities to throw money around and build coalitions and build friends and build allies and do something meaningful. So those handfuls, a couple of bills that you can probably push into the Senate and maybe get on the track towards royal assent.

And then a budget where you can sort of emphasize something and do some spending. And then it'll be up to the bloc and the Np to decide whether or not they want to vote for that budget and give just trudeau another breath of six to nine months of life so that that's kind of it uh and then while all this is going on you've got u.s politics does donald trump come back does justin trudeau try to bait uh you know conservatives into an into a war over over culture policy with regard to donald trump doing something like uh creating a special access to the to canada to canada for americans who american women who are seeking reproductive health services for example and have conservatives dare to dare to oppose that or you get my point there are little games that they can play they're

they're big stuff so so they can still do some, but it'll all be laced with some pretty intense politics going on, right? Election in BC, election in Saskatchewan, election in New Brunswick, election in the United States, this rolling boil we've talked about in the province of Quebec, and a pretty nasty tone that's crept into parliament between Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, and Pierre Paul Leav on a personal basis. So it'll be an interesting six months. Yeah, I'll say. Jerry? Well, I will note this being the 17th conversation, we've passed the iPhone.

So I'm pretty impressed. I doubt we're going to be used as frequently or are as effective, but we have made it to 17. I'm reminded, as I heard your question there, Peter, you will both know the saying from my neck of the woods that when things are going badly and they can't be repaired, someone says, the arse is out of her. It kind of feels like the arse is out of this parliament, that you can maybe keep it together to get one more stop down the road or two more stops down the road, but the direction of travel is pretty set. This is not going to be a long journey. And if James is right, and that there is a likelihood, this gets back to another really important point you made earlier, James, that it doesn't even matter whether it's possible that the

prime minister could take his walk in the snow over Christmas. If the other opposition leaders think it's possible, then the likelihood of this parliament dissolving before he gets that opportunity is much, much greater. And then, are they right? Is Trudeau as weak as they think he is? Maybe we'll find out in the course of a campaign that he's got one more comeback in him. But none of this matters because, as Yogi Berra probably didn't say, the problem with the future is it hasn't happened yet. And these are all predictions about an uncertain future. And that's why when you think about the likelihood that any one of them could be wrong and misinterpret their own self-interest that this parliament is going down i don't think a change in liberal leadership changes the course by the way i mean i'm not saying this again as a conservative you know i i think the next election's ballot question is very

set right do you want change or more of the same because we're on the 10-year swing back and forth between red and blooming canadian politics we talk you know, successions of prime ministers, but we actually go through eras, right? 10 years of Brian Mulroney, 10 years of Chrétien, 10 years of Harper, 10 years of Trudeau. In intervening, yes, you have Kim Campbell's and Joe Clark's and Paul Martin's and all that, but we actually go through 10 years oscillating swings about back and forth. And it's actually pretty straightforward and relatively predictable and stable through all of Canadian history since the Second World War and even mostly before that. So we're kind of on that trajectory and the Canadians want change and Pierre Palliet has kind of checked the box of being a credible alternative to change. So I think if Justin Trudeau were to decide that he is going to leave,

polling numbers get really bad. And right now in Quebec, I mean, the numbers, they're building on the La Salle-et-Mar by-election, the Bloc Québécois and the Sauvétistes are. But in Quebec, the BQ are about 35 and it's about 24, 22 for liberals and conservatives and all that. That's a decent gap. But if the Bloc gap, for whatever reason, goes up to 45, then the NDP are in a corner, the Bloc will want to campaign, conservatives want to campaign, and then everything goes sideways in an instant. So polls will direct a lot of this. However, if Justin Trudeau sort of sees that storm coming, and he decides, you know what, I don't I don't want my last act in public life to be getting just destroyed. So I'm going to leave and he announces he's not going

to run again. And then he prorogues Parliament, which you can do that for, say, two to three months. And Doug Ford showed when when Patrick Brown got quit and in as leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, you know, the Ontario Conservatives ran a leadership race in a footprint that's one third the size of Canada and population Ontario. That was massive in size. They did it inside of two months. They sold memberships and they flooded the party with new energy and money and cash and members. And they did a credible leadership campaign between multiple candidates. And they got Doug Ford elected leader and became premier.

So I think you can prorogue parliament, not have a lame duck prime minister for a long time, do a two to three month campaign, and then have a new prime minister in early February, and then go into a budget in early March, and then go into a campaign for June. That's probably the second track if Justin Trudeau wants to leave and sees the storm coming well you know i i think there are going to be liberals calling james about more on this

strategy that sounds like quite the quite the interesting way to go about the next few months yeah to be fair and i i always give uh james his due this is not, I don't think that's the most, that's the least obvious great point you've ever made, James. You know, there are other people. That would have occurred to other people. No, but people wonder, like, what does it look like if Justin Trudeau leaves

and you have to have an interim prime minister and can they actually, and yet you can do it. You can do it. It's pretty simple about how you do it. And that's what it actually probably looks like. Okay, I want to close out this conversation on this related topic. While all this maneuvering is going on inside the House of Commons and the back rooms of the political parties,

we're seeing, at least we started to see in the last week or two, kind of the second formation of the truckers' protest in Ottawa, sort of in the neighbourhood of the Parliament buildings. And it's not pretty, it's ugly. And, you know, we saw Jagmeet Singh get into a bit of a tussle with one of the protesters. And they seem set on wanting to do this to parliamentarians all stripes are going in and out of the House. And there is a fear that this, you know, this could get quite ugly. What's happening here? Why are we seeing this happening? Uh, you know, go ahead, um, Jerry. Well, we're seeing it happen because you've got a bunch of people

who are trying to turn themselves into YouTube stars, right? And the parliamentary protective service has got to do its job. Uh, as you know, I'm a lifelong liberal, but what happened in that almost incident with Jagmeet Singh is preposterous. Nobody should be able to do those sorts of things to the country's national public servants. And, you know, someone's going to get hurt if this situation doesn't get under control by the authorities in Ottawa. As you know, someone's going to get hurt if, if this situation doesn't get under control by the authorities in Ottawa. As you know, I was a very, um, uh, uh, I'd call myself disgusted critic with the, uh, authorities that, that be in Ottawa that allowed our, you know, Wellington street to be occupied for a month by a bunch of Yahoo's. And, uh,

there is literally no other country in the world where that would have been allowed to transpire. Some people see that as a good thing. I'm not one of those people. Uh, but I think you've got a bunch of self-interested people trying to make themselves famous, create events, and God knows where the money is coming from to support all these efforts. I think all that is true. I think all that's true. And also the other YouTube stars, sure. But there's a there's a flip side to that, too, Jerry, right, which is that social media has allowed us to close the distance a lot as, you know, public office holders and all that to say, you know, here's my dog, here's my cat, here's me, you know, at a wedding. And so you invite people in and so you get really close to people in public

life now, if you want to. And if you're a public person, if you want to do that, you can show whatever you want online. And so it's closed the distance between people and people in public life in a way that can be accretive. If you're in public life to sort of D, you know, sort of humanize yourself and defang and get people to like you. And maybe if they like you, they'll vote for you and all that. But people feel really close. And so they get online and they tell you to F off and they tell you bad things as well. But because we've closed that distance digitally, some people think you can close that distance physically and they feel intimate that they know you intimately. And therefore, I can get right in your face and say,

you know what you did last week? That was crap. And just get really aggressive about it. So I think that's part of it too. How Jagmeet Singh handled that situation that I thought was telling, because I had my moments, I had people get in my face,

I've been spat on, I've had my tires slashed, I've had windows broken, I've had all that stuff. Like what you saw happen to Jagmeet Singh, there is nothing compared to what I went through and I know others have gone through as well. It just happens to have been recorded. But when Jagmeet Singh, there is nothing compared to what I went through and I know others have gone through as well. It just happens to have been recorded. But, you know, when Jagmeet Singh turned around and said, who said that and got in his face for about a half second, I thought, yeah, get in his face and call him on. Like, do that.

And then I very quickly went to, well, that's a bad idea. Because if you get in the habit of doing that, someone's going to take a poke at you. And someone's going to put him on the ground or do something really awful that will be good and so we've had enough of these incidents right where people are getting in people's face stephen harper had a bunch of these kinds of incidents some of them recorded some of them not drug me saying now the rocks of trudeau and the campaign last like there's a plenty of if somebody gets hurt or somebody gets stabbed or somebody gets shot uh you know nathan cirillo was killed um and that nathan you can put nathan cirilloillo and put any one of our members of parliament

or cabinet in his shoes on the Capitol Hill, or Parliament Hill, rather, any time right now, and you would have that tragedy. And you and all of us would be on the same podcast saying, how did we get, this is so predictable, and it's so obvious, and so it's such a clear and obvious risk to the safety of our public office holders that i'm it's just amazing to me that um that there's there isn't more infrastructure around to protect um politicians because the threats are everywhere and the tools are everywhere and the energy around our politics is getting darker yeah and i just i just add to that peter that you know i don't want to be

critical of jagmeet because I don't know what was going through his head when he turned around to confront that person. But he also, the YouTube point goes both ways, right? He knew that there were people filming that altercation. And before Sunset on that day, he was promoting it on his Twitter feed. They're making money off of it. And making money and raising money off of it. That is not a wise decision if you are concerned about the general safety of your fellow parliamentarians, because it just encourages like any hit movie, it encourages a sequel. And the subsequent sequels are usually less entertaining than the original. And in this case, that lack of

entertainment could mean real violence. Well, that's a very good point, Jerry, as well, because we are about to, maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a few months, every party is about to unleash 343 candidates across the country. And in our culture, we have deference to authority and deference to our leaders. And candidates watch all the press conferences of the leaders and try to mirror the language and mirror the body like mirror the tone, mirror the perspective. And if there are 343 NDP candidates out there and they're going to be facing protesters as well because they're going to get maybe not as much heat as Justin Trudeau, but they're going to get a lot of the Trudeau heat for having kept Justin Trudeau in office. And these kinds of people are going to get in their face and say, how the hell and all that. And out of 343, what are the odds that zero are we're going to mirror Jagmeet Singh's

language and say, say it to my face. You might have a few. And again, all it takes is one. All it takes is one. And then, you know, then we're back into a really, really ugly spot. And so anyway, it's, it was bad that it happened. Jagmeet Singh's response was human but ill-tempered,

and the way in which this is getting celebrated as, you know, see he's a tough guy, that's a bad call. If the answer is a better infrastructure, I can see that on a day-to-day basis around Parliament Hill, although, you know, the whole idea of Parliament Hill is the people's house and it's open and all that. But take it the next step to an election, because you're right, James, we're going to have over 1,000 people running for office in different parts

of the country, you know, close to 2,000. You can't set up an infrastructure there. Yeah, and so the cascade effect this is again sorry an obvious thing to say but yeah it causes a lot of people to think do i want to run for office um gabby giffords was shot in the head uh republican steve scalise was shot playing playing uh softball near near capitol hill in the united states donald trump was shot in the head he was shot there's three people in the last 10 years in u.s politics have been shot. And I'm sure there's been all kinds of violence at the subnational level that we don't know about, you know, fights and maybe stab stabbings. And I don't

know. There's no reason to think that that energy and what social media has done in terms of really weaponizing people's darkest views of things on the left and the right, can't spill into Canada and become really problematic. And so therefore, I think political parties need to think about it. And I hope that they are. I mean, I'm not in those rooms anymore. But I hope that Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Green Party, I hope that they're briefing candidates not just on their policies on aquaculture and borders and immigration, but they're giving them some advice on how to think about your campaign office, how to think about your personal protection. Don't go door knocking alone.

Don't go door knocking by yourself. Maybe have a phone at your disposal with a quick 911 or let police know where you are. Have a conversation with your local police about your work. It's unfortunate we're talking about this, but we need to talk about this. It's like from fish farms to ranch farms. Everything you need to know. Exactly. How things have changed. talk about this. It's like from fish farms to ranch farms, everything you need to do to be a candidate.

Exactly. How things have changed. Listen, gentlemen, thank you very much. Another great More Butts conversation. We'll meet again, and the idea will be to broadcast the next More Butts conversation, number 18, on the day of the U.S. election. So the day is the Tuesday in early November. We'll do the, you know, while people are voting in the states, we'll be talking at

noon that day. On the impact that, God knows where we'll be there. We may be in the middle of our own election campaign if Jerry's right. But wherever we are, what happens on that day is going to have an impact in this country, one way or the other. And so we'll be talking about that on the U.S. Election Day. Gentlemen, thanks very much. Pleasure as always, Peter.

Well, there you go. The Moore-Butts Conversation number 17. That was an interesting one. And you can make your own judgments about what you think is going to happen next based on your own thoughts, but also, you know, you probably had your mind open a little bit too with those two. And good at them both, as always, to join us. James Moore, Cherry Butts.

Okay, a couple of reminders about the week ahead. Tomorrow is a wonderful Wednesday It's an Encore Wednesday So we'll have a good show from One of the past five years Well, four and a bit years now Of The Bridge We'll be on tomorrow in the Encore spot

Thursday is your turn And the Random Renter And your turn this week The question If you were the owner of a newspaper in Canada and your turn this week. The question, if you were the owner of a newspaper in Canada, what would you do to make circulation go up and perhaps save the paper in your town? What would you do?

Want to hear your thoughts. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com is where to write. Include your name, the location you're writing from. Keep it short. Have it in before 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, tomorrow. Okay? Friday, of course, is good talk.

Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson will be here with their discussion about kind of the week gone by and the week ahead. What to expect in the national political game. People get mad sometimes when I call it a game. And it's not a game. It's serious business. But sometimes it looks like they're playing a game, right?

All right. That's it for now. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.