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

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

An encore of 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 and the latest episode of the bridge is an encore edition. That's right. It's Wednesday. And that means we're going to encore last week's Moore-Butts conversation number 20. This is a really good one for just days before the election. The question here to our two great talkers about politics,

the former Conservative cabinet minister James Moore and the former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau, Jerry Buntz. The question is, is this a time where Canada should have a majority government? Keep in mind, we've had what, five minorities so far this century, but is this the time given the various crises that Canada is facing? Is this the time that we should have a majority government?

It's a good question. Lots of good answers coming up. Enjoy. 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 the those who are running to be prime minister. So we'll see 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 Moore-Butts conversation number 20 and it's as

you're about to see it's election related so let me just explain Moore-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, longtime 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 more-but's 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. The More Buds conversation number 20 coming right up. Alright gentlemen the the question I want to start with and here, you know, 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? Who wants to handle that one first? Jerry, why don't you start us? Well, I think 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 hot murder 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. We were, 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 explicitly to your question, a strong majority, numerical majority in the Parliament of Canada, I think is really important.

Um, 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. Um, and I think that number goes down to like nine or something by the end of this calendar year, so if Pierre Pauli ever were to win, the Senate needs to understand that legislatively it has a role to play in 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 USMC 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 is, is sort of 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 around the 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

and get some creative 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 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. We still have to build bridges and tunnels. We still have to administer healthcare, make sure veterans have their benefits and CPP, IB 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 people 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 in the, on the other hand, in 2011, Stephen Harper expressly said, 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, or Pierre Paul, I have 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 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, we got to make sure that, you

know, Randy White and the conservatives are not going to be excessive on, on, you know, issues like abortion or language policy or, or, you know, pick your poison, right? And so they would appeal to the 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 can say Pierre Poliev saying,

we need a strong conservative majority mandate in order to have clarity and purpose to deal with Donald Trump. And we need changes. The liberals have had 10 years, imagine the damage they'll do we need changes. You know, the liberals have had 10 years. Imagine the damage they'll do in 14 years. You can, you can imagine the script. So I think you could see an explicit appeal.

Um, 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 Canadian 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 the couple two, three, four weeks after the campaign, probably sitting in the Oval Office in that chair with Donald Trump and JD Vance and you know and 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. Prime Minister, 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, but whether or not I've got her support, like, come on,

like clarity would be good. Jerry, um, Carney's got a eight, nine, 10, 11 point lead, depending on which pool you look at. And there are some that are less than that, but the majority show a significant lead. Should he be, should he be making that appeal for a majority? My instinct is it's soon for that and it may never come.

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. 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 what I would counsel Mr. Kern Prime Minister Carney 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. 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 they have their, both dynamics are what they are. But I think certainly for conservatives, as Stephen Harper knew back in 2011, is that like when you go to Canadians,

say, you know, 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 really believe it, but you really want a majority. Okay. Like why? Why do you really want a majority? And Stephen Harper knew that that was sort of the,

the mental math that was behind the hesitancies. They say, 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 going to 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 the minority, the public will appreciate the honesty and then you might give you an affirmative, a reaction. Okay. I think that's a really great point. 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 glow, 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 of mail said confident Harper predicts Tory majority. And I looked at, uh, my wife and said, that's not going to happen now. He predicted it, right? Like he said it not going to happen now. Because he wasn't the one that 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 appeal 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.

And 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 a hundred years, First World War, right? When there was a classic unity government in Canada where members of different parties were in the cabinet and 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 unthought 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 Harper, Prime Minister Harper, won in 2006, January 06. But it was, you know, so he's the government, he's the prime minister. But there was a hole in our in our mandate, right? We didn't have 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, 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, 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 a, 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. 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, 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 in that case, 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? Especially in this set of circumstances where you have, in my view, premiers, a couple of one of them in 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. You don't want to have that fight, right? I think the Prime Minister and non-biased, of course, I support the Prime Minister. I think that he has taken he has shown extraordinary restraint and not taking the bait on fights that in normal times and 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 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, right? And 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 are disagreeing with the president. You don't wanna be there here in Canada. Okay, we gotta take our one break in the middle of Moribud'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 Poliev, right? So it allowed Carney to kind of stay out of it. Anyway, let's take our break. We'll be 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 kind 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, because people are getting polling results instantly, right? It used to be, you would have sort of weekly poll numbers and everybody would, 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 you have three hundred forty three 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 five times I ran for office. And like you feel like a cork bobbing in the ocean in that year 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 are 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, 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 writing 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, you know, a local door knocking effort on a Super Saturday, like just it's

what it is. And for alpha personalities who feel like they're exposed down 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 same direction. Sorry. Yeah, well, listen, Peter, I couldn't agree more with what James just said. 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 most 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's, 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 that 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. Dalton McGinty 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 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 and the last few in this country have been very close. In my 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 gonna do once you get on the ice,

then you're gonna be successful. I mean, like the police. I think it's true that in election, 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 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 stress test and a gauntlet of pressures from flying in 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 100 day campaign. And there's four weeks out and the numbers started to turn because they said the 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 this current campaign, I do think people are looking at these two people. And again, 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 Zelensky sat in. And so if you can't stand and handle a wave of pressure from the media on scrutinizing your subpar French or scrutinizing the quality of the candidates who had to have been 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 stand to 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 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, 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.

Cause 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 have never been there before as leaders in in Polly Evin Carney Jerry why don't you start? in Polly Evin Carney. Jerry, why don't you start? Well, maybe a funny one and then a more serious one and they're both the same campaign. It'd be the 2015 campaign that was 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 Cory Tonite, who's I think a friend of your show, said 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 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, 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 were playing the two print two other principals 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 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 not. It was just a, I wish I'd thought of it. It was just a serendipitous moment, but it turned out to be a critical turning point in his psychological, his 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. And Stockwell Day was our leader. And you'll remember in that campaign, you know, conservatives hidden agenda and all that. Yeah.

And about whatever it was halfway through the campaign, Stockwell Day, private health care in Alberta, and, you know, expanding, you're going to bring it 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, because 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's a 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-tier and it's the classic thing, right? It'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 he, 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 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, he said, like, I will make it any challenge to even 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 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, 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 Scanty 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. When my first campaign with Stockholm, I thought this is, this is really painful to watch. And then with Stephen Harper, right after that debate, I remember calling James Rzot 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 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 the guy handle a question that was thrown at him that he wasn't, you know, it hadn't been prepped on. I'm assuming that 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 true in Canada true in the United States are really Like an effect like leaders debates. What do they do? They expose how quick you are on your feet how fast you are with the phrase

How you can respond in Perry and sort of counterpunch and all that that's not governing. That's a show This is 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 pairing 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 and parliamentary. Like there's a whole process around governing that is not sort of quick on the spot being, being snippy and smart and strategic in your comms.

What is exposed 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 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 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 in a communications exercise

Some of the most effective prime ministers and presidents in across the world We're not people who are 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 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 were 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 especially my understanding from these debates is that there will be no notes in the two debates this time that 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 key messages. That's not gonna be at the disposal of the people in these debates.

So I think that people will, that makes 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. 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, uh, are like when they don't have a script in front of them. Okay, we're gonna leave it at that. I think the audiences will be big for the debate even though that quite often the most

people who see the debate are gonna be the ones who see the clips later that are put out by the parties and then 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, you know, 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. Moore-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 that? Until then, thank you much. Talk soon. Thank you. Great to see you, sir. Always a pleasure. Well, there you go. The Moore-Budts Conversation Number 20

told you it'd be interesting. Hope you found it, especially so. And that was this week's Encore edition of The Bridge, Moore-Budts Conversation Number 20 from last week. A good question, majority governments, is this the time to have one in Canada? We'll be back tomorrow with our next up-to-date new edition of Your Turn. That's tomorrow, Thursday, Friday of course, is Good Talk with Chantelle Bair and Rob Russo. We'll see you then.