The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore Butts #20 - Does Canada Need a Majority Government To Deal With Trump?

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

To make Canada's position stronger, should Canadians vote for a majority government? 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It is a special Tuesday because it's Moore Butts Conversation number 20. It's our only one with them during this campaign, and it's a good one. Coming right up. And hello there, welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to that week between the so-called Liberation Day announcement by Donald Trump last week and the impact that's had on the Canadian election campaign. And next week's debates. So it's a big week for the candidates running for office across the land. And of course, for those who are running to be prime ministers. So we'll see what happens.

But in the meantime, today, Tuesday, is usually smoke, mirrors, and the truth. But for this week only during the campaign, we're taking it off to allow the More Butts Conversation number 20. And it's, as you're about to see, it's election related. So let me just explain More Butts for those of you who may be new to the program and especially those who may be new to watching it on YouTube as we're doing this one on YouTube for you. James Moore, of course, is the former Conservative MP, long-time Conservative MP, and former Harper Cabinet Minister. And Gerald Butts is the former Principal Secretary to Justin Trudeau in the early years of his Prime Ministership. Both are, you know, in the private sector, but are still connected with their parties.

James, of course, with the Conservatives, and Jerry Butts with the Liberals. And the Butts connection on this particular campaign, he's been doing some work for Mark Carney. So keep that in mind. But the secret of both these two gentlemen on the conversations, the Moorbutts conversations, is they try and successfully, I think, to stay away from partisan politics and instead try to bring you into what it's like behind the scenes. Our initial question this week, though, is really topical, I think, and I think you'll find the answers fascinating.

So why don't we get to that? More Butts Conversation number 20, coming right up. All right, gentlemen, the question I want to start with, and here I'll beg your non-partisanship in trying to deal with the answer on this one too, given the times, but here's the question. We're living through a moment where Canada's sovereignty is clearly under attack. The question is, would it be best to have a majority government?

Forget about which party it is, but the simple fact of a government in a majority position to deal with that issue, whether it's a majority government or a unity government or something that looks like one and not a bunch. Who wants to handle that one first? Jerry, why don't you start us? Well, I think it's, it, it is. And we've talked about this in the podcast before Peter, it's a pretty extraordinary time we're living through. And sometimes it's difficult to perceive just how extraordinary the times are when you are living through them. From my perspective, I'm not sure if it's a majority or a unity government or some amalgam or hybrid of both, but it would be certainly in the country's interest to have a strong government to negotiate, to face down,

to stand up, to choose whatever verb you want to use to describe our changing relationship with the United States. And I think that, as usual, Canadians are pretty, they're generally ahead of the curve when compared to opinion leaders in the country. I think they clocked the danger that Donald Trump posed to the country the moment he was elected. I don't actually think it took him saying the 51st state thing in public. And they're looking for a coherent, cohesive and very serious approach to this relationship.

Now, they know the United States that we're dealing with is not the United States we're accustomed to. I don't know when this will air, but we were just treated to stories about people having their phones confiscated and searched for their political opinions at the border. This is a very different animal we're dealing with than we're accustomed to. So I hope that we end this campaign with a government that's got a very clear and strong mandate and position to manage this crisis, which I firmly believe is the biggest of our lifetime. James, where do you sit on this? I think, yes, a strong majority would be my view. I agree with everything Jerry said, but but explicitly to your question, a strong majority, numerical majority in the Parliament of Canada, I think is really important. It is also, by the way, at some point, somebody needs to shoot a flare over to the Senate and remind them that out of the 105 seats in the Senate, only 12 of them are

Conservatives. And I think that number goes down to like nine or something by the end of this calendar year. So if Pierre-Paul Lievre were to win, the Senate needs to understand that legislatively it has a role to play in aligning with the lower house such that if there was to be something that was to be done with Donald Trump, maybe not necessarily with a USMCA or a free trade agreement with the United States, but some kind of legal changes on border security or immigration policy and you had to pass some legislation, I would hope that the Senate wouldn't become an express plutocracy that would block necessary legislative changes to sort of renormalize the new Canada-U.S. relationship. So that's important. But yeah, a clear majority in the Parliament of Canada, I think, is important. There are times where minorities make sense and it makes sense in times, and it has been helpful to the country to have a minority parliament. For example, if a region of the country has

solidarity around a political party, whether it's sort of the Prairie Provinces or Western Canada and the Reform Party or the Conservative Party or Quebec around the Bloc Québécois, or you can imagine, you know, if the Green Party were to grow more aggressively or if the Liberals were sort of, you know, boxed into a certain region of the country. But because of the political leadership or mistakes during a 36 day campaign,

mistakes during a 36 campaign, 36 day campaign shouldn't mean that a region of the country is ignored for four years. And so a minority parliament can act as a release valve such that those voices can be heard and they can flex their muscle and have some persuasion to get some accretive outcomes for their region. Even though the campaign didn't go well, the next parliament shouldn't go badly for your region. But in this circumstance, and there are circumstances where I think a clear, firm majority government that has

the ability to quickly legislate and move things forward, I think is really important. But they would have to counterbalance that with recognizing that it is a four-year mandate. And the strong mandate to deal with Donald Trump in the near term and medium term, maybe it isn't a four-year mandate and what the strong mandate to deal with Donald Trump in the near term and medium term maybe it isn't a four-year sort of stress test that we have with Donald Trump probably is but maybe it's not but that can't be your only mandate you have to also think about other parts of the country because Donald Trump can't be the only focus there are we still have to build bridges and tunnels we still have to uh you know administer health care make sure veterans have their benefits,

and CPPIB is doing its job, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a balancing act, but in this time, I think a clear majority in the parliament is warranted. Well, it's interesting hearing you both say that, because political party leaders resist the temptation of calling and asking Canadians to give them a majority. You know, almost always. There have been exceptions to that, but almost always, because there's a sense that the peoples kind of resist that when you ask for it. Oh, my God, he wants everything.

We can't do that. I mean, James, your party saw that in what was it oh six yeah but but on the other hand in 2011 stephen harper expressly said exactly i would like a steady stable majority conservative government to focus on the economy because that's what's needed right now um i could see mark carney or pierre polly i'm making that appeal down the stretch if the other party you know if the wheels come off in the last strokes of the campaign to say look like making like making the argument that I just made, that Jerry just made, like I can see somebody making that appeal. Used to be liberals basically pseudo made that appeal by saying to, you know, to the NDP liberal switch voters, you know, we got to make sure that, you know,

Randy White and the conservatives are not going to be excessive on, you know, issues like abortion or language policy or, you know, pick your poison. Right. And so they would appeal to New Democrats sort of on those kinds of issues. I could see them making appeal in the alternate direction like we just described. Equally, I could say, you know, you can say Pierre Polyab saying, you know, I you know, we need a strong conservative majority mandate in order to have clarity and purpose to deal with Donald Trump. And we need changes. You know, the liberals have had 10 years. Imagine the damage they'll do in 14 years. You can imagine the script. So I think you could see an explicit appeal.

And because I think what Jerry and I have just said, there's a reason why the New Democrats have fallen down to single digits across the country, is because the Canadians know it is a binary governing choice, typically, in this country. And whoever is going to be sitting in the chair that Vladimir Zelensky sat in, there's going to be a Canadian prime minister sitting in that exact same chair

in a couple, two, three, four weeks after the campaign, probably sitting in the Oval Office in that chair with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and, you know, in the alt-right media standing behind the couch barking at, possibly at him. That scenario could happen. And it would be helpful if that prime minister could speak with authority that Mr. President, these are the deliverables I can deliver to you. And or the Canadians can have confidence that that prime minister can,

you know, sort of leave that room at the end of the meeting and come back to Canada and say, I had the meeting. This is how it went. This is what we need to do. And I'm going to do it. That would be as opposed to I'm going to go back and, you know, talk to Elizabeth May about whether or not I've got her support. Like, come on, like clarity would be good.

Jerry, Carney's got a 8, 9, 10, 11 point lead, depending on which pool you look at. There are some that are less than that, but the majority show a significant lead. Should he be making that appeal for a majority? Uh, my instinct is it's, uh,

it's soon for that and it may never come. Uh, I'm a little old fashioned when it comes to this stuff, Peter, I think that Canadians don't like to have their votes taken for granted. Uh, and they don't like to, they don't like politicians who seem like they're taking their taken for granted. And they don't like politicians

who seem like they're taking their votes for granted. It's funny, I remember both the example and counter example that James mentioned. The first two campaigns I was involved in were both ended in Dalton McGinty majority governments. And the last 10, it was pretty clear it was going to happen about 10 days out and the last 10 days on the tour were spent avoiding answering that question right it almost became

a joke with the press gallery following him around a different person would ask the question in a sneakier way every day about trying to trick him into saying i want a majority government and we joked about it for two weeks on the bus both times. And it was largely because we were really worried that, you know, I've said this many, many times about my party, that arrogance is liberal kryptonite. And eight weeks ago, people were measuring all these liberals for their caskets, and they can't appear to even seem to be in the neighborhood of measuring the drapes, right?

And Canadians are going to want to know that a Mark Carney-led Liberal Party has learned the lessons of a Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party. And I think that's probably the last thing on people's minds about one of the last questions they have about Mark Carney. So I would not counsel him to go out there and explicitly ask for a majority government, no. And I would counsel him to focus on every day of the campaign and getting better and better every day. It's, I think, day 87 of his campaign since he kicked off his leadership campaign, which makes it even a week and a bit longer than that eternal 2015 campaign.

And as someone who was on the road with the then leader of the third party for most of that campaign, I can tell you by the end of it, we were all exhausted, like fall down, dead exhausted. And we were in our early 40s, right? So I think what I would counsel Mr. Karn, Prime Minister Karni, is just focus on the day ahead of you. Trust your team. And you've come a long way in a short period of time, but there's still a long way to go.

But Peter, as well, you know, on the direct appeal for asking for a majority government, every party has their handicaps. Right. And in a sweep of Canadian history, one in three parliaments or one in three elections has yielded a minority parliament. We've now had two in a row. And as I said, they have their virtues, but both dynamics are what they are. But I think certainly for conservatives, as Stephen Harper knew back in 2011, is that when you go to Canadians and say, I would like to be your prime minister, they say, I know that.

I'd like to have a government. I know that. I'd like to have a strong mandate. Well, I know that. And you say, no, I want to have a majority. People go, okay. So you really want to do some stuff. So, you know, the other side, they keep saying you have a hidden agenda. I don't I don't really believe it, but you really want a majority.

OK, like why? Why do you really want a majority? And Stephen Harper knew that that was sort of the mental math that was behind the hesitancy. They said, again, if a focused federal government on the economy in the global economic recession, we will focus on the economy and I need a strong mandate, a majority mandate in order to do that and to do the things that we need to do. And Canadians said, okay, fair enough, but you promised you're going to stay in that box. We're not going to talk about the social stuff.

You're not going to go down the road on things that will be divisive to the country because i care about my country i don't want us to be divided you're gonna just the economy that's why you get this mandate right that's why then canadians consented so if you ask a clear question you're sincere about it and people believe that you're sincere about it you can get the mandate but no no understand how your party is viewed by the public and if you're clear about it and you're sincere and persistent which we were for a month then canadians they will give you that and i think in this circumstance two minority parliaments in a row if you're if you're clear about why you want the majority and why it's necessary versus a minority the public will appreciate the honesty and then you might give you an affirmative uh a reaction okay i i think that's a really great

point and and you think about the different circumstances. I can remember like it was yesterday, walking to the subway station in Toronto with my wife in the middle of the 06 campaign, the 06 federal campaign. I was on my way to Queens Park. My wife was working in Mount Sinai Hospital at the time. And the globe, it sounds old fashioned, but there were still newspaper boxes everywhere at that point. And the front page above the fold, a one above the fold of the Globe and Mail said confident Harper predicts Tory majority. And I looked at my wife and said,

that's not going to happen now. He asked for it. He predicted it, right? and said, that's not going to happen now. Because he used the M word. He asked for it. He predicted it, right? Like he said it was going to happen. But then you fast forward five years later to the circumstances that James described. And a lot of the questions that the liberals

tried to raise about Prime Minister Harper, that he was going to peel back abortion rights, that he was going to spend too much time on all the social issues that James just described. They had five years of experience saying that he could restrain himself on those things. So he was in a very different position because he could point to his record in government, say, you can trust me that I'm not going to open up these issues. I tell you I'm not going to open because I haven't opened them. right? And circumstances have changed.

We're in the middle of the financial crisis. We need a really strong mandate to deal with it. And he went out there and asked for it and got it. I want to move off this topic, but before I do, the other kind of word that I used in that opening question was unity government. It's been what? It's been over 100 years, First World War, right? When there was a classic unity government in Canada

where members of different parties were in the cabinet and were the government of the day. Is this the kind of sort of crisis level issue that if there was a minority government, whichever party, it would not be unsought of to hear the leader of that party say, I want to bring the other parties in to govern the day? Is it that level of a crisis? If Donald Trump doubles and triples down, then conceivably that's true. But it depends on the nature of the mandate that Canadians provide Parliament after the 28th.

So Prime Minister Harper won in 2006, January 06. So he's the government, he's the prime minister. But there was a hole in our mandate, right? We didn't have anybody elected who could fill a cabinet position in the MTV, the Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver. And so Stephen Harper tried to fix that.

And he invited David Emerson into the cabinet. He put Michael Forte, you know, experienced politician who ran for leader. He was well known in Montreal business community and put him in cabinet as well,

but made him a Senator. So there was a little bit of accountability there and he committed that he would resign from the Senate and seek a seat in parliament. So a little bit more accountability down the road for his judgment. So that was the best we could do in that dynamic. David Emerson won his seat. So he was a member of parliament, brought him into cabinet from British Columbia.

And then in the Toronto area, we didn't, we didn't, the remedy was kind of Jim Flaherty will be the finance minister. I know he's from Whitby Ajax, not from Toronto, but close enough. And he was the finance minister for all of Ontario. I hope I hope that satisfies. And of course, we aspire to make more seats there. So there was that was kind of his way of dealing with that gap.

You know, if there's if somebody gets a mandate on April 28th and there's a big geographic hole in the capacity of the government to speak for all Canadians, then I think that would be something that could be remedied like that. You know, if Mark Carney were to be successful, I'll start off the top of my head, I don't know the full, for example, Senate compliment of who's in place in the province of Alberta, but you can imagine somebody of high reputation and calibre being appointed to the Senate. As I said, there are only 12 Conservatives in the Senate now. There are some vacancies. You can name some people to the Senate, which, you know, not the most popular body,

but it's something and it's of repute and it's a mandate that's clear and they have an office that can't be taken away by the Prime Minister. Like, there are things like that that you could do. Paul Martin named Hugh Siegel to the Senate, for example. So there's some things that you can do to sort of demonstrate some, you know, and everything from that to a unity government or something in between. There are tools at your disposal as a prime minister to try to demonstrate some cross-partisan open-mindedness to bringing in thoughtful people.

Sorry. Yeah, I think James is right. I think that there's a whole spectrum of possibilities to signal to the country that it's not your usual time and therefore it needs something extraordinary in the core representation of the government which is of course the cabinet and uh in that case you definitely you definitely facing down the next few years which i suspect will be really difficult, whoever is elected on April 28th, you want to make sure you have as much of the country with you as possible, right? particular premier smith saying things that are you know they're not they're kind of extraordinary in and of themselves about the nature of our relationship with the united states uh you don't want to have that fight right uh i think the prime minister and i'm biased of course i support the

prime minister uh i think that he has taken he has shown extraordinary restraint in not taking the bait on fights that in normal times with different prime ministers, you'd be seeing tomatoes thrown across the prairies between Alberta and Ottawa. And the people in Ottawa right now are just not rising to that bait. And I think that's a very good thing for the country. So you definitely want to end up with a cabinet that can speak directly to every part of the country after this, because Trump has shown great skill in dividing his enemies. the Americans themselves are so divided now that I think it could possibly, it is probably going to be one of our greatest strengths in facing them, that we're all together in doing so. And you can count on half of the United States or more disagreeing with the president. You don't want to be there here in Canada. Okay, we've got to take our one break in the middle of Morabot's conversation.

Number 20, by the way, that's what this one is. I should say, just on your last point, Jerry, that part of the reason that I assume that Mark Carney didn't have to respond to the Danielle Smith thing in a conventional way is the fact that conservatives responded to it including pierre polliev right so it allowed carney to kind of stay out of it um anyway let's uh let's take our break by the uh right back after this And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, our special Moore Butts conversation number 20. Jerry Butts, James Moore, giving us some sense of, you know,

what kind of goes on behind the scenes and what may go on behind the scenes. Here's what I want to talk about now. Every campaign, every party through a campaign is going to have those days where things didn't quite go as they planned and we'll have setbacks and the press will be all over them how do you maintain a level of confidence

and not losing it behind the scenes how difficult is it to calm down the troops when those moments happen? Or if there starts to be a sense in the polling that things are not going your way, and yet there's lots of time left in the campaign, how do you maintain that, you know, the level that you need to maintain during a campaign? James, you start us there. I would say not easy, especially now, you know, because people are getting polling results instantly, right?

It used to be, you know, you would have sort of weekly poll numbers and everybody would, you know, you'd bake your pie for a week and then you'd pull it out of the oven at the end of the week and see what the polls look like. And now it's like every two hours and then there's regionals and who's the best prime minister, who's up on this issue, who's more popular on that. And so it's just this constant feed and it's just this nagging pressure point. And if you have 343 candidates in the field, all well-intentioned people who are putting it on the line, they got their names up all over

their community on posters and billboards all over their communities. And they feel personally exposed and that they're being personally judged based on this macro enterprise that's beyond their control. And all that does is dial up. I'm getting anxious, just sort of saying it out loud. And it's sort of my, you know,

my five, five times I ran for office and like, you feel like a cork bobbin in the ocean and that you're, you've got waves crashing around you and you just don't know what's going on. And that anxiety dials up. And every day it's like a vice getting tighter and tighter and tighter as you get closer to the election and i just remember like i literally didn't watch the leaders debates because i just thought it's because every sentence you hope that it stayed on the rails and you didn't know if you were things were going to come off just because it

was so anxiety creating and so in that rubric, right, you'll have candidates will say, you know, I've got to push back and they pick up their phone and they tweet something out or they do something to spam or, you know, with, with not the clearest of mind. And they, and they push things out and they think, you know, if I run this newspaper ad, you know, I think, you know, I can, it's like, there are tectonic plates that are pushing the tides that are resulting in the waves that are way beyond your control and this it's going to be what it's going to be and the outcome when you're riding is based on historic voting patterns and demographics and pressures that you're not going to change with a tweet or with a newspaper ad or with the you know uh you know a local door knocking effort on

a super saturday like just it's what it. And for alpha personalities who feel like they're exposed on the line to surrender to the reality of things is a really hard thing. And you try to tell candidates who are getting into the race that to be a realist about the nature of the enterprise that you're involved in, that the rising tide can take you to a great mandate and a phenomenal public experience like I had for 15 years, or it can be extraordinarily brutal and unfair. You have to sort of surrender to the nature of things that you're surrounded by. And it's really hard to get people to do that. And then people panic and they start taking wild swings and you start hurting

people around you, including your own team. And it can be really hard to keep everybody on the, on, on the same direction. Sorry. Yeah. Well, the, on, on the same direction. All right. Yeah. Well, listen, Peter, I couldn't agree more with what James just said. It's a, it's, it's a great recipe for stoicism, right? It's knowing what you can change and what you can't change and knowing the difference

between those two, applying all of your effort and energy to the former and ignoring the latter as best you can. I have, if there are people who have worked with me on campaigns listening to this podcast, and I suspect there are, they will get physically ill hearing me say this again. But my motto on campaigns is always the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And that means you go into a campaign with a very clear, thought-out theory of the case. What is at stake in the election? What is the main point that you want to make every day on the campaign trail? And how do you build that toward a compelling, plain-spoken argument you want to make to the Canadian

public about why they should choose you and not your opponent? And there is, I know that sounds incredibly simple, but in my experience, that is the recipe for success. And if you don't have that broadly shared theory of the case with your candidates, with the people working at campaign headquarters reinforced every single day, then you're going to get off track. And if, God forbid, you're wrong and you want to have an election about A, B, and C, and Canadians want to have an election about X, Y, and Z, then you're going to have a real problem in that election campaign. So to me, most of the important work that is done to win a campaign is done before the campaign starts.

And then you have to build almost a mutual support network at headquarters and with the leaders tour that you have a bunch of people who are going to pick each other up when they're down. Uh, Dalma Ginty used to have this great saying when things went poorly or when things were going really well, that you're never too high when things are going well, and you never get too low when things are going badly. You just relentlessly stay in the middle of your own, you try and keep your own equilibrium. And it's really important to have people around who've done it before, obviously. It's really important that the people who are in charge of prosecuting the strategy, maintain their own

health and mental health through a campaign sounds like like a really simple thing, but you spend too much time in bars because you're all away from home at headquarters in Ottawa or Toronto or wherever it happens to be. And all of a sudden, by week three, people are getting four or five hours of sleep at night. It adds up. And in particular, in close campaigns in the last few in this country have been very close. In my view view it kind of comes down to the people who have clarity of thought and are able to make the best decisions in the last couple of weeks of the campaign it's almost like a hockey game that's tied going into the third period if you jump onto the ice every time with the purpose and you have a clear visualization almost of what you're going to do once you get on the ice,

then you're going to be successful. I think it's true that in elections, the public cares about their government. They care about the news. They watch the news. They observe. But they really judge in the course of a campaign, and that's fine. It's the way our system is. And so I think for a lot of Canadians, when they watch an election campaign,

they know everything we're talking about is happening. They know that there's a lot of stress. They know that the leaders are undergoing a real, a real stress test and a gauntlet of pressures from flying and media and the daily grind of things and all that. And they kind of like it. They want to see how you do. And I think this is part of the reason why Justin Trudeau was successful in 2015, a hundred day campaign. And there's, you know, four weeks out and the numbers started to turn because they said, you know, conservatives threw everything at him and they said that he wasn't ready after 100 days he kind of looks still calm and ready and in a in our in this current campaign you know i do think

people are looking at these two people and again the the screen that i think a lot of people have on it whether it's sort of conscious or not is which of these two people is the best person to sit in the chair that zelinski sat in and so so if you can't handle a wave of pressure from the media on scrutinizing your subpar French or scrutinizing the quality of the candidates who have had to be dismissed or whatever, when you're the prime minister, the stress of being prime minister is not very dissimilar to the stress of an election campaign, and it's for the next four years. So if you can't handle the pressure this month, I don't know that you can handle the stress of the next 48 months. And people judge pretty harshly like that. And they look at you and they want to

know whether or not you can handle it. And that's, it's, it's not an apples to apples test, but it's a reasonable test. And as you get into the final strokes of the campaign and all those 343 candidates out there start to panic, people are also observing how you're handling the panic. And if they think that your team is panicking, they start shooting at each other and they start saying, well, blaming the campaign manager, or we should have done this, or messaging should have been that, and why aren't we doing this? And they kind of go, I see, I see who's strong and I see who's not. And that's why Jerry's point about, you know, counseling candidates to stay on the message and to be cheerful and hopeful and focused and disciplined and all that is really important because it's the people who crack and break away who will expose and the public will go, if they can't hold it together for a month, I don't know

that they can hold it together for four years. So in this campaign, where people know that they're making a massive choice, the importance of the campaigns to hold it together and be disciplined under the stress is really important because there's a big judgment coming. All right. Part of that judgment will be made by some Canadians based on what happens in the debate, which is not that far away now, a little more than a week away. I want your best debate story from each of you. I know, Jerry, I'm sure you've been in more than a few debate prep sessions. I don't know about you, James, whether you have, and if you have, who you might have played in those moments in terms of trying to get the leader ready.

But give me a story about that, because it's the part that we never see, you know, those debate preps and what you have to do with your leader to get them ready for what is an intense, as you know, James said, I mean, the campaign in total is intense. Those moments must be incredibly intense, especially for, in this case, two people who've never been there before as leaders in Polyev and Carney. Cherry, why don't you start? Well, maybe a funny one and then a more serious

one and they're both the same campaign that'd be the 2015 campaign that was uh in in the run-up to those debates the conservatives were in my view mistakenly overspinning how badly stephen harper was going to beat justin trudeau up in these debates. Right. And I think Corey tonight, who is, uh, I think a friend of your show, uh, said in the, in the media, the day before our prep session, that all Justin Trudeau has to do is show up wearing pants and he's going to win this debate. So for the prep session, Justin came out in his boxer shorts, which was really funny.

And it showed it actually was a good he thought of that spur of the moment. And it kind of gave his team the sense that he was not taking this too seriously. And he was he was preparing hard, but he wasn't taking it too seriously. And then before the McLean's debate, uh, which was the first debate of that campaign, we had a prep session that day and I think it was Dwight Duncan maybe. And David McGinty, uh, we're playing the two print, two other principles and it just went disastrously badly. It was so bad and it eroded everybody's confidence in the room. So Justin and I went for a walk, just the two of us through Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto.

And it was, you know, it was a tough moment. It was, we were still in third place at the polls. There was a lot of pressure on his shoulders. He knew he had to win that debate to put us back in the campaign. And this, you know, youngish fellow comes over and says, Hey, you're Justin Trudeau. And he says, you know, I'm just a regular person around here. And a lot of us are counting on you and we're 100% behind you. I know your polls suck right now, but we're 100% behind you and you can do it.

And I, Justin looked at me as if to say, did you pay that guy to do that? Which I most certainly did. It was just, to say, did you pay that guy to do that? Which I most certainly did not. You did. I wish I'd thought of it, Jake. It was just a serendipitous moment, but it turned out to be a critical turning point in his psychological confidence going into that debate. I think he carried it through. James, you want to?

Yeah, I wasn't involved in any debate, perhaps, but as a candidate staring at the screen, being very anxious about this and hurting what had happened and seeing all the analysis of these things, it was my first campaign in 2000. And I remember as a candidate watching the screen, because I ran first for the Canadian Alliance. I was a staff member for Preston Manning and the Reform Party,

which morphed into the Canadian Alliance. And so I was a Canadian Alliance MP as my first mandate. mandate and stockwell day was our leader and you'll remember in that campaign you know conservatives hidden agenda and all that yeah uh and and about whatever was halfway through the campaign stockwell day you private health care in alberta and you know expanding your brain nationally and then he you know he pulled out that piece of cardboard that said no to to your health care on it and I just remember looking at the screen and going, Oh my God, like, like this, like, cause you, you knew them, you knew, you knew the thinking that right away that went into it. Right.

Which is there's going to be a screen grab. That'll be in the printer printed press, you know, it was the sort of pre you know, online news basically in 2000, but everybody was going to use that. He's going to hold up a two chair. And it's the classic thing, right? It's's like if you have to say it well maybe there's a problem and now if you have to say it and you have to write it down and you have to have it prepared and you have to hold it up then maybe there's really a problem and there's this sort of subliminal dialogue that happens in people's brains right and and just the way he kind of held it up and it was just like oh this is not this is

not good this is not good and i just remember like, Oh, this is not, this is not good. This is not good. And I just remember thinking, this is, yeah, this is a problem. So, so there was that on the inverse. I remember in the Oh six campaign to the, what we were just talking about a second ago about panic in a campaign can happen at the local level can happen at the national level. And I remember watching the leaders debate in Oh six, when Paul Martin said, you know, as prime minister I will never invoke the

notwithstanding clause and i thought oh like yeah he said like i will make it and he challenged stephen harper will you never bring in the notwithstanding clause and stephen harper pivoted and he said he said look the canadian system is a proper balance in the united states the courts are supreme in the uk the parliament is supreme and has the final say in canada we have checks and balances we have a charter of rights and freedoms that final say in canada we have checks and balances we have a charter of rights and freedoms that protects canadians and we have a parliament that advocates on behalf of canadians and one can check the other and we have checks and balances and it's the appropriate balance that doesn't exist in either the uk or the united states and that's

the canadian way and i just was like yes yes. That's the correct answer. And it was thoughtful. And he said it even more concisely than I, than I just did right there. And it was, and it made Paul Martin look desperate of trying to say no, not with standing and try to drag Stephen Harper into the deep waters. And Stephen just said, you go over there. I'm focused on them. I know that I know what you're doing. They know what you're doing. I know that, you know, that I know, and this I'm not, that dog isn't going to hunt. And it was just such a swat where my first campaign was Stockhold Day. I thought this is, this is really painful to watch. And then with Stephen Harper, right after that debate, I remember calling James Rajat from Edmonton on, and we were both elected in 2000.

And we both just said, I think we're going to win. I think Stephen really nailed it and gave us confidence. And he showed the whole country that he's a substantive person and we won that campaign that's such a great moment because in you know usually you talk about how you prep uh for these things and you come up with certain slogans and lines that you're going to use and you do use and some are funny some are just cutting or what have you that one was probably came from the unexpected right and you saw you saw the guy handle a question that was thrown at him uh that he wasn't you know it hadn't been prepped on i'm assuming that i'm i'm just guessing but those are the kind of moments that can make a difference no matter who you are and which party you represent yeah but peter i've always had i've always had

the view that leaders debates and and true in Canada, true in the United States, are really like leaders debates, what do they do? They expose how quick you are on your feet, how fast you are with a phrase, how you can respond and parry and sort of counterpunch and all that. That's not governing. That's a show. This is a skit. This is a stunt. Proper governing is being deliberative, is being thoughtful. It's consulting,

it's measuring twice, cutting once, it's being dispassionate and responsible, considering all the options and paring it down to one or two or three and making sure you're making the right call. You consult, you think about the outcome and you have a communications plan, a parliamentary, like there's a whole process around governing that is not sort of quick on the spot, being snippy and smart and strategic in your comms what is exposed as as the being a really good debater has nothing to do with effective governing what it does expose however is that when you have a moment like that where paul martin tries to surprise stephen harper is that in a in a quick moment it opens the brain of the leader to show how much depth there is in there and what they can come up with in terms of a counterpunch.

So it exposes the depth of the capacity of a leader. That's helpful. But the rest of it is mostly just a skit and a stunt and a communications exercise. Some of the most effective prime ministers and presidents across the world were not people who were quick and fast on their feet because that's not what you want. You don't want a prime minister who's making quick decisions and is being smart know smart and snappy you know you want somebody who's calm who's deliberative and that's not what debates are about the one qualifier i'd put on that and it's not really i think it's very much what you're saying at the end there james is you do get a glimpse into people's personality right and their character and their temperament, most importantly.

And while I agree that all of the accoutrement of debates couldn't be farther from the reality of governing, you really do want to know what kind of temperament the person has going into the job. And debates can reveal that. You can surround people with a lot of things and stage campaign events but uh especially i my understanding from these debates is that there will be no notes in the two debates this time that the the participants will be able to go up there with

a blank notepad and a pen to write stuff down on during the debate but they're not going up there with briefing binders and that's also very different from your day-to-day life, as James would know well as a senior minister answering questions in question period, where while the person is talking, you clue into a couple of keywords and you look for the right page in your briefing binder to get your key messages.

That's not going to be at the disposal of the people in these debates, so I think the people will that a makes it much more difficult um but it also will give i think viewers at home and i suspect the audiences will be unusually large for these two debates because of the stakes of the campaign you're kind of going to get to see what these guys and they are all guys in this case are like when they don't have a script in front of them. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. I think the audiences will be big for the debate,

even though quite often the most people who see the debate are going to be the ones who see the clips later that are put out by the parties and put out by the media as well in terms of its assessment of what happened on the night. But it all leads to Election Day on the 28th, where we're hoping the turnout, because this is a consequential election, couldn't be more important, that the turnout's going to be big.

The last biggest one was free trade in 88, somewhere in the mid-70s. It'll be fascinating to watch how Canadians go to the polls on this one. Gentlemen, it was great. Thanks so much for doing this. We'll talk again. We probably won't talk again. More Butts Conversation number 21 will probably come after the election, so it'll be interesting to hear what you both have to say on that.

Until then, thank you much. Talk soon. Thank you. Great to see you, Clarence. Always a. Until then, thank you much. Talk soon. Thank you. It's always a pleasure. Well, there you go. The More Butts Conversation number 20. Told you it would be interesting. Hope you found it especially so.

A couple of reminders now about the rest of this week. Tomorrow will be our encore edition. I haven't decided yet which one that will be. Thursday is going to be interesting, I think, for a number of reasons. It is your turn. It is the final week of your letters that you started sending in a couple of weeks ago, and there have been lots of them. We don't need more. We don't need more. We've got enough. But it will be the final week of your letters about what you see as the major issue of this campaign.

Everybody agrees the Trump tariffs and Trump's claims about sovereignty, 51st state, all that stuff is a major issue. And maybe the major issue. Maybe that's the ballot question. But there are other questions that have been on your mind as well. And this program has been answering those on Thursdays, on your turn, and the random ranter, of course. Here's what's different about this Thursday show. I won't be here.

I've got a major speech I've got to give, and it just doesn't work out in terms of timing. So for the first time in the history of the bridge, somebody else will be hosting, but that somebody else is the one other person who has been helping me do this program for the last five years. And that is my son, Will. So Will is going to do, he's going to be reading the letters on your turn on Thursday and introducing our friend, the Random Ranter. So that's coming up. Be nice.

Be kind. I think he's great. He's got a great voice. I don't know where he got it, but he's got a great voice. And he also understands the tech a lot better than I do. So I'll look forward to that. Friday, of course, is a good talk with Rob Russo and Chantelle Hebert. So that's your look at the week ahead,

and it's also your look at today's special edition of the More Butts Conversation number 20. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again, well, in our encore edition in 24 hours.