The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore Butts #21 -- How New MP's Can Hit The Ground Running

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

After the pomp and pageantry of the King's visit, Parliament gets down to work and for a lot of MP's it will be a new experience. 

And hello there, Peter Bansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the Bridge. It's Tuesday and this Tuesday it's Moore Butts conversation number 21. That's coming right up. And hello there. Yes, you heard me right. More Buts number 21. Our first conversation since, well, since the election.

And in a way, that's what we're talking about here. This is an important week because new MPs, old MPs, new cabinet ministers, old cabinet ministers, and some cabinet ministers who are still MPs but are no longer in the cabinet. They're all heading back to Ottawa. They're taking their seats. They're getting their offices. And they're getting ready for a new session of parliament. And for some of them, this is going to be a challenge.

It may not be at all what they were thinking when they ran for office. And two people who can tell us all about that are former cabinet minister James Moore, a Harper cabinet minister, and former top aide to Justin Trudeau in the prime minister's office, Gerald Butz. They constitute the Moore-Butz conversationsations which we've been having for the last couple of years. This is number 21 and we'll get to it in just a second. But a quick reminder about the question of the week for Thursday's Your Turn. And that question is this, the post office. What do you make of the post office? What would you like to see done with the post office?

Do you think we still need a post office? What are your favorite memories about the post office? You can pick any one of these angles that you want. But we know things have changed. Things have changed since the introduction of the internet. How and when's the last time you wrote a letter? Have you ever written a letter? Yeah, think about that for a minute. The post office used to make money. It hasn't made money since 2017. It costs a lot of money to run the post office and all the estimates suggest if we

keep going it's going to cost a lot more to run the post office. So what's the answer to that question? What do you think about the post office? You know, once again, this week I'm in the UK. The post office is a royal institution here. It's been around for more than 500 years. The Royal Mail. It actually makes money, not a lot. And it has real challenges too.

But the institution here is thought of very differently than the institution in Canada. For one, they do home delivery six days a week, still. Anyway, think about that. Catch your answers in by noon Eastern time on Wednesday, no later than that. Keep it to 75 words or less. Include your name and the location you're writing from. Send it to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Okay. Time for, well, it's time for more butts. Let's get her started with more butts conversation number 21. All right, gentlemen, why don't we start this in a very general fashion in terms of

what it must be like for somebody and, you know, James, you've done this and Jerry, you've certainly watched enough others do it. But when you go through what has been a grueling campaign and a grueling pre-campaign period, how hard is it to hit the ground running when the election is determined, you've got a seat, and now it's game on?

How hard is that? James? Uninspiring answer. It depends on who you are and your dynamic, right? I was elected five times. I was only 24 when I was first elected, but prior to being elected, I was a staffer on Parliament Hill. So for me, I understood the pace of things, how the members' budget works, how you allocate.

Back then, it was typically two staffers on the Hill, two in the riding. And so for me, I was able to hit the ground running. It was one of the selling features that you get this young 24-year-old with not a lot of life experience, but boy, do I know how an MP's office runs. So you put that in the window. Others, it's a lot more daunting.

We have some people who represent ridings that are larger than some European countries. I remember Jeremy Harrison, who represented Destinete, Miss Nippy Mills, basically the northern half of Saskatchewan and the riding was physically has more square kilometers than Germany and has one stoplight and you know that's a committed, the whole infrastructure that you have to establish there in order to service your constituents and to be out and about and to be seen to be present is much more

daunting. You know, mentally though, it's just the, you know, the infrastructure part. Mentally though, I think if you go into politics and you're really surprised when you get there, you might not have been a wise idea to go into politics. Maybe you should have talked to more people. And I hope there's not a lot of people who are in that circumstance because if you get elected and you're surprised by a lot of what you see and the process and the pace and the lifestyle and all that, then you're setting yourself up either for real disappointment or some real destruction.

And you know, we're not going to name names, but I know a lot of people who for whom running for office seemed like a really good idea, a really inspirational thing, a real good effort to have a purpose in life and to do something of meaning. And for sure those people were worse off personally and their families were worse off because they ran for office and they shouldn't have done it. And those stories are kind of littered everywhere. Political parties don't do a good job

of taking care of their people. And we entice people to run for office for sort of short-term gain because we think people are the right political sales, people on the right writings in the moment. And then leaders come and go and war rooms come and go and chiefs of staff come and go. And people are left with this experience in their lives

for the rest of their lives. And if they haven't been prepared for it, it can be devastating. Well, that is, that's haunting actually listening to that. And I wanna touch on a few of those things with you, but first let's get Jerry's sort of general sense of an answer to that question. How hard is it to hit the ground running?

Well, it depends on how well you planned it out before. It's sort of a version of what James said in my experience, Peter, if you have a good plan going in, then the main challenges are how do you enact that plan? And God forbid you get there without a plan of what to do afterward. And because it's much more difficult, if not impossible, to make one once you get there. It's challenging for even the best prepared for the office because there are always things that you don't expect.

I think having seen it from a senior staff perspective a few to a couple of times, and I'm sure there's a huge difference. As you said at the outset, I'm just observing it. I'm not experiencing it. I can't imagine what it feels like to have all of your friends and family around you while you get sworn into office and you're trying to make sense of this bewildering array of demands on your time and half of it you're doing while you're away from the people who care about you most at home. And if you're not psychologically prepared for it, as James describes, it's a very difficult experience to navigate. And it's, again, without naming names, I've spent a lot of time doing

quote unquote exit interviews from people who have left the last government either willingly or unwillingly. And it's an adrenaline crash at best. And it's a very difficult psychological transition at worst. Yeah, this is fascinating because I think for most of us, we'd assume, wow, you've won and here you go. You're in Ottawa. You're getting a fancy office on Parliament Hill. And you're getting staff.

And you'll be in the House of Commons, et cetera, et cetera. But you're making it sound, and I'm sure you're not saying this about everybody, but clearly there must be enough people who just aren't ready for the challenge or the challenges are unexpected to them. They weren't ready for it. James, can you give us an example, not on a person, but the kind of things that they're not ready for?

Well, I mean, psychologically, all the incentives are reversed, right? Inverted relative to the sort of the private sector in the sense that you go from maybe not having a job because you're campaigning for a long time and struggling, or I was a student that didn't really have much life experience or what have you. And then you go into office and it's all of a sudden, it's your signs are up everywhere, your face is everywhere. And you get elected and you feel like a million bucks. And you're in a campaign room and everybody's cheering your name.

And then all of a sudden, here's $200,000 a year. Okay, and here's your flight pass. Go to Ottawa and you go to Ottawa, you see these magnificent buildings in this historic room where a lot of really big things happen. And you have the security guards bowing to you and you get your pin and you can go everywhere and you know you're an honorable member of parliament and my god and all of a sudden you have staff and you have offices with your name on them and business cards and you're really important you're on committees and you're getting handed really official documents and you go from zero to 100 real fast in terms

of all the benefits all the prestige and in and in the first three to six months of every parliament, everybody gets along and everybody's deferential to you because you won and your government won or you won your seat. And it's like all the rewards are front-ended. And on the cabinet side, it's even more so, especially if you're a new MP, because you have the ministerial salary and the car and driver. So all of the benefits and all of the allure and all the romance is up front and, oh my God, here you are, here comes our superhero to do something really good for the country. And then it kind of slowly sort of goes down after that,

if you're not mentally prepared for it. So you have to stay grounded. And so right out of the gate, you think, oh my God, oh my God, here we are, oh my God, wow. And so if you're not mentally mature, you don't realize that you're not, people aren't answering your phone call because you're James Moore.

People are answering your phone call because you're James Moore, the Minister of Industry. And as soon as my name is substituted out and Navdeep Bains comes in or Mellon Jolies comes in, then you know, you have to expect that. So to stay personally grounded, you really have to go into government with your eyes open. And one of the things that I recommend always to people who are running for office was a recommendation that I got when I first ran, which was before I officially launched my campaign way back in 2000, is you write a letter to yourself. Write a letter to yourself that says, in five years, if I have accomplished these things, I will genuinely feel proud of them.

Why did you run for office? And you spell it out in really blunt, really definitive language about who you are, what you are, and then you really should assemble a kitchen cabinet of people who are not interested in James Moore, the member of parliament, James Moore, the cabinet ministering, but me as a person, what's good for my health, what's good for my personal benefit, my family, people who will keep me grounded,

who will rattle me and pull me in. Write yourself a letter, stay personally grounded, be honest with yourself about why you're running and what you wanna do, how you'll have esteem when you come out of office, and then surround yourself with people who will tell you to cool it, or tell you to rein it in, or tell you to grow up, or tell you to stop doing the stuff

that's overly partisan or whatever, and that'll be two good survival mechanisms. Why, you know, when I hear that story, and it makes sense to me, but what if you, but what if you don't achieve cabinet status? You're basically a backbench MP. How likely is it you can achieve the kind of goals that James is talking about, Jerry, in terms of writing things down about what you hope to accomplish over a five-year period or eight years or whatever it may be. How likely is that you can even achieve those roles

if you don't have that extra lift of being a minister? You're just a backbencher. Well, it depends on what the goals are, obviously, but if one of those goals is to serve in cabinet, that's ultimately outside your control. And before I answer that question, when James was talking there, I was thinking about what I've seen people go through

as you prepare as the prime minister and his or her staff prepare to assemble a cabinet. And that is of course the vetting process, which is a relatively opaque thing to the public. And I'm not sure how much of it I can get into having just done a bunch of them in the last couple of weeks. Is it real because I got to say over time I've heard a different, we're going back

here somewhat in history, cabinet shuffles in the middle of a government's life where the vetting process is so short that the RCMP or whoever the security intelligence agency is that is asked to do the vetting has basically only time to check out what may be registered under the person's driver's license or what have you, that to do anything deeper than that in this short period of time is awfully hard. Well, in a transition period,

you usually have a couple of weeks though, right? In the first Kearney transition, there were only four days, which is an incredible thing. And then in the last one, I think it was the second shortest since the 1970s. So in both cases, it was short, but in the one that just concluded, there was just over two weeks. So there's a lot of time, especially in this electronic age, to look for things that could

haunt somebody. And in this day and age, because of the prevalent, we've talked about this many times in the podcast about how difficult it is to run for office in the social media age. That means there's a digital record of your existence online that just didn't exist pre social media, pre the internet. So normally now people will, by the time you get into cabinet, you will have gone through three, maybe four vetting stages. One is to become a candidate for your party. There's a rigorous green light process. And you will have noticed in this campaign, for instance, that very few people got taken out as candidates from either party. There were, I think, a grand total of seven or eight people who had

to withdraw as candidates based on something they did or said or were proximate to online in the past five years, which will show you parties are getting a lot more sophisticated and diving a lot more deeply on this stuff. So that's vetting number one to become a candidate. And then if you're being considered for cabinet, you're being vetted again for a political vet, which is not people who have access to top secret security and clearance intelligence, but people who just have a sense of what could cause

either the person being considered for cabinet or the prime minister or the government in general problems if it were to come to light and that's a very rigorous process. It's usually done by people with a lot of political experience who have seen a few things and know what questions to ask and know how to probe and determine whether people are being truthful in that kind of process. And then the worst, not the worst, but the most rigorous part of it is the security and police service vetting that, as you said, the RCMP and the intelligence services do.

And in all these cases, you know, it's got to be a harrowing experience for someone. I would not want the old saying that every person is there, every man as the saying goes is a hero to isn't, no man is a hero to their valet is also true for all of us, right? It's even those of us who don't have valets. And it's, I guess you're kind of stripped down to your bare essentials psychologically by the time you put your hand on whatever book you choose to swear an oath to in front of the governor general and the sec, the, the, um, your peers and the prime minister.

There's the obvious sketchy stuff that gets caught and vetted and so you can sort of sort people out and just kind of go to them and say, just so you know, you know, this is there. And if you were to run for office, we're to a pretty, this would come on. This would be enormously embarrassing. So I don't know if you know that this is there. And if you were to run for Optically Word or a pretty, this would come out and this would be enormously embarrassing. So I don't know if you know that this is out there, but it's out there. There's that. But then there's the other part of it with stuff, which is the big gray zone, right, of stuff that is, you know, somebody does a keg stand 15 years ago and Cancun on spring break or something like, well, you know, these pictures are, you know,

and people kind of know that we all know. We've all kind of gone through this era now where there's embarrassing stuff out there about everybody, nobody's perfect and all that. But part of the vetting and the testing, I imagine for cabinet now as well, but even just for suitability for public office is actually the democratic process of the public exposure of a campaign. Naming names, for example, Aaron Gunn on North Vancouver Island. You know, he ran for office, he's said a lot, he's fought for a lot, he's done his documentary films and all that,

and he stood in the campaign and went to all candidates' debates and did some media interviews, and he stood his ground, and people can take his opinions for what they are, and you can not like him or whatever, but the party can go, okay, well, he can stand in the breach and take the fire, and so the gauntlet of the election campaign

allows you to sort of get a sense of whether or not this person can explain themselves, articulate themselves, have sound reasons for the position that they've taken or the explanation of things, and then we can move forward or not. Of all people, Joe Biden, I remember, I think it was in 2000 or maybe an earlier campaign when he ran for president many times.

And one of the times he ran for president, uh, there are all these stories about infidelity and this and that. And he just looked at, he said, when I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish. All right. Well, fair enough. You know, that was good enough to suffice for the, for the moment of, of whatever it was that he was caught in at the time. And so, so part of the process is sort of seeing how people communicate the

imperfections that all of us have and whether or not they're worthy of hiring greater responsibility. Okay. Let me get, sorry, sorry about that, Peter. Um, it changes over time as well, right? That it's kind of quaint to think that, um, marital infidelity could be a disqualifying, uh, could disqualify you from being President of the United States in light of everything that's happened since Joe Biden read for us. And Gary Hart wrote a love letter? What? Yeah, exactly.

But that was sort of... Gary Hart was, you know, when that was late 80s, was really the kind of last time that that really had an influence, right? I mean, you're Bill Clinton. There were all kinds of accusations. He blew the brakes off it. Yes. Bill Clinton. Yeah. So to speak. That is one way of putting it James. You know, ever since then it, it hasn't really been, you know, an issue that would bring down the candidacy. It used to be, it was like clear that whoever it was, we're going to be out of a,

either out of a job or out of a candidacy. But that all changed somewhere in the nineties. And let me break it down to a new MP and a new cabinet minister. Starting with a new MP, first time elected, comes in. I know that all the major parties have some kind of a rookie camp kind of thing that starts off the process where they're, you know, obviously taught certain things about what's going to happen in terms of running their office and how they should feel about the media knocking

on their door, et cetera, et cetera. But is that enough to prepare you for what's coming? I mean, you went through this stuff, James. Yes it is, but there's what happens and there's the culture around what happens. And they're very different things. And even in the time that I was a member of parliament, which was 2000 to 2015, 15 until now, the past 10 years, things have morphed quite a bit. Like it used to matter at least 2000 to 2015.

Like Questioning Period was a thing. Questioning Period was a moment of accountability. Questioning Period was simulcast live on CTV, CBC, during the day, every day to sort of find out what's happening on Parliament Hill and does it matter to markets? Does it matter to people? Does it matter to, you know,

they're talking about the big news story. And now it seems like Question and Answer doesn't really come up at all. The galleries are empty. They don't really seem to be matter. It's just kind of a set prop for members of Parliament's social media feeds rather than sort of a substantive thing. And that's sort of a degradation of a whole bunch of things.

The way in which questions are asked, the way in which they're answered, the way in which heat pushes through as opposed to substance. It's not Matlock and sort of a moment of an inquisition against the government's approach to things. Everything has changed because attention spans have changed. But in terms of the backbone and the structure, like first reading, second reading, report

stage, community stage, third reading, like some of this archaic language that maybe you don't know going into it. That stuff gets unpacked. And they bring in people who are esteemed parliamentarians. When I was first elected, we had Bill Blakey, Don Bujria, and a few others who were experienced members of parliament and officers of political parties and house leaders and so on.

And they would, members of all the parties, explain the daily running of things. So when there's a call and division, here's what it means and standing five and all the sort of rules of parliament, that was kind of explained so that you weren't, you're still kind of looking left and right for the first three months or so

when the votes are happening, but then you find your footing and you find your process of things. So all that stuff is taking, the culture part is different. The culture part, that takes more getting used to because you think you're getting into – like when you sit there and you're abiding by the dress code and there's speaker and yes, Mr. Speaker speaking in a third person doing your thing and all. And then you realize that what happens in the room versus what gets pushed out of the room and what people actually see are two completely different worlds.

What about cabinet ministers? Jerry, you've certainly been involved in watching new politicians come into office and receive a cabinet position right away. There's often been discussions about, are they really ready for this? They may be smart, they may be attached in some fashion to the portfolio they end up getting, but they don't get politics. They don't understand it. They don't know what it's going to be like in there. How hard is it to prep that? And I don't just bring that up out of nowhere. You've got a guy who's already getting a lot of attention as a potentially as a major player in this new cabinet and that's Tom Hodgson, the new energy minister. Tim, sorry. Let's see, there you go. That's how new he is. But wondering about his political expertise. He certainly has the expertise on the economic side and the energy side to a degree.

What do you do to prepare somebody like that for the kind of office they're going to get? prepare somebody like that for the kind of office they're going to get? Well, I mean, I don't want to comment specifically on Tim's case, although I will say that he's not only had economic experience, he's also been the chair of Hydro One in Ontario for the last five years and anybody who knows anything about Ontario politics will tell you that the permanent government is Ontario Hydro and it's a very political environment. So running that will have exposed him to more politics than the average politician will experience in a long time. I think more generally though, you really have to be humble and stoic about it, right? Because whatever you've done in your past life does not prepare you for being a federal minister of the crown in its entirety,

which I'm sure James would agree with. And that is especially, I think the people who get into the most trouble in my experience, who come into those roles, having never done them before, are people who have been extraordinarily accomplished in other areas of life and think that those experiences are somehow superior to what they're about to undertake on behalf of the people of Canada, or that they're exactly analogous, that there's a perfect overlap in the Venn diagram. I talked to people having been fortunate enough in my career to have senior leadership roles in both the private and public and third sectors. I think there's a huge difference among those sectors in how you motivate people, for instance, that a lot of people from the private sector

come in to government work or broader public sector work of some way, shape, or form to quote unquote, get things done. And they depict themselves as people who know how to get things done. When for the most part, they've motivated their direct reports and their organizations over the course of their lives with money,

right? That's how they've motivated people to do what they want them to do. And if you're trying to lead an organization in the public sector, especially if you're doing it from the front bench where you're the person out there answering questions and being accountable to the public as an elected politician. You don't have that tool in your toolbox. You have a lot of other things in your toolbox. You have moral suasion, you have proximity of power,

you have, but Brian Mulroney was legendarily great at, good old fashioned making people feel good. But you don't have that fundamental instrument that you've been using your entire career. And I think that people who come into public sector leadership positions not having developed the, I guess I could put it, diplomatic skills to persuade people to do what is in both your and their best interest

and in the broader political organizations, best interest in the absence of money, um, have a really hard time. James, you're on to that. Uh, all true. And I think it's actually not a stereotype, but I think those, that challenge that Jerry outlines is probably more true actually for center right parties where, where people are, are, are often more successful in the private sector, who you try to draw in that try to draw in that rewiring that has to happen and understanding the motivations of the people around you.

As I said at the beginning, everybody, all of us, the three of us, everybody watching, listening, everybody wants to live a life of purpose. You want to live a life that your kids and your family, they just go, you know, he was successful but he did those things too. And that was really cool. It was really impressive. You know, you served in the military or did this charitable stuff or built this thing. And people want to live a life of purpose.

And for a lot of people who are in public life, this is their shot. And to get sort of bogged down in partisan garbage or to get bogged down in sort of the daily mullings of things and not being able to actually get progress on it can be really frustrating and so that's why as parliament grows when i was when i was first elected it was three hundred

one members of parliament now it's three hundred forty three and you know that's a lot of people a lot of personalities a lot of egos a lot of expectation a lot of hope a lot of lives of people who really want to see something of progress and for a government you know hundred and sixty nine seventy whatever members of parliament they have now, the 170 people there who are really helpful and ambitious and want to get things done. And now they're on the government. And there's a difference between being in backbench versus being a front bench.

And there's a difference between opposition and government. My first two terms were in opposition. Then my last three were in government. And so all the talking and all the big promises and all the self-righteousness and opposition is like, all right, now you're in government and now you're in cabinet. It's like, let's get after it, let's go. And so for a lot of those liberal members of parliament

who are now maybe just getting into cabinet or just getting into government, it's like, you talked really big in the campaign, you talked really big for the past few years, let's see what you got. And they really wanna deliver. And it's not just they don't embarrass themselves, but again, they square that circle

of having a life of purpose and not squandering this opportunity. So they have to get it right. And, you know, often I had some of my colleagues in Michelle Glover was a backbencher, then a parliamentary secretary at finance. And then she succeeded me as minister of heritage. And, you know, I had good talks with her about how to sort of get

off the ground running and all that. And I remember saying to her, you only get one chance to make your first impression, but the good news is, you don't have to make your first impression this week, this month, or even this quarter, or even this half year. Go slow, manage your stakeholders, staff yourself up, know your files when you engage,

engage in a file that you know, and that you have stakeholder third party advocacy for what you're doing, and understand the risks and the blowback, communicate relentlessly, be humble and get after it. But do it when you're ready on your timing so that your first drive down the field, you get a few first downs, maybe a field goal, if you get a touchdown, that's great, but you get progress, progress, and then learn from it and then re-engage in the second file and then the third file and have some structure to it and muscle memory. There's a way to sort of engage things that'll be comfortable and you can build success on success. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back with more, more butts.

It's conversation number 21 right after this. Conversation number 21 right after this. And welcome back. The 21st in our series of conversations between Jerry Butts, James Moore about the life inside politics. And it's especially relevant today as we're discussing what it's like to try and hit the ground running after an election campaign, no matter where you sit in the House of Commons. Gerry, I've always wondered about one aspect and I guess it's especially so for ministers, although it couldn't be the same for any MP, is developing that relationship as best one can with the public service, especially if you're a

minister and you have a department and you have senior officials in that department who are going to basically be working for you in the best interests of the country. How hard is it to develop that relationship with a public service? I think the Canadian public service is extremely professional in my experience of it, both here in Ottawa and at Queen's Park in Toronto. Very different cultures between those two places, but what they share is this unique heritage of the British parliamentary system that we have. If you want to be pejorative about it, the Americans talk about their deep state all the time, but we really do have one. And in its worst form, you have a public service

who can sometimes treat elected officials like they're temporary foreign workers. In its best form, you have a public service that grounds the more populist tendencies or short-term interests of the politicians they report to. In my experience, the Canadian Public Service is very good at finding the balance in those things. So I think that where I've seen ministers make mistakes in the relationships with the public service is if they try and treat their deputy ministers as kind of personal friends and psychological counselors, that you should have a constructive, open, warm relationship with the public service, especially your opposite number who's your deputy minister and your chief of

staff should as well. But you should always keep in mind at every moment that they have obligations that transcend their relationship to you, right? And that you're going to get into a position sooner or later, usually as you get closer and closer to an election, where there's going to be more and more tension between the professional obligations of the permanent public service and the political interests of the government of the day. 06 James, you had a number of portfolios in cabinet, so you obviously had to deal with a fair number of public servants. How do you see that relationship? Yeah. I mean, deputy ministers, like politicians, like we're all human, and sometimes people

click, sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's a combustible mess that doesn't go anywhere. Sometimes it's like it's a perfect marriage, professional accomplishment, and they can move forward. So it you kind of don't know until you you know, as an incoming government, and you know, this government, yes, there are a lot of ministers and all, but I think there's only four ministers who had previous portfolios that held over into this government. So so there actually is still a lot of change. And so if you have, you know, a minister going into a portfolio dealing with a deputy minister and they don't get along really well, it can grind to a halt real fast and be

really, really problematic. When you're a new government coming in, imagine Pierre Polly everyone, there's this temptation to sort of look at your deputy minister and be like, you were part of the problem. I'm here to change you. I'm here to change the government and that means you. So this is our platform. This is my mandate letter. This is our throne speech. Let's get after it. And so I'm here to sort of confront the way that this has been done. And I'm here for change. And people can get really defensive because they say, you know, I've been here for 10 years or 15 years. This is part of my life's work. I acted in good faith. I worked with the previous government because they were democratically elected like you are. We tried to try to reflect what parliament decided, you know, like you were going to do.

And so I think for a new government coming in, getting the right balance of having a minister in a portfolio for which there's competency and capacity, having the staff and having a deputy that maybe reflects because it's not realistic to form government on a mandate of change and then have all the deputies in place and and all the same, and the permanent government Jerry describes, have the permanent government in place. And they've just been working for a decade for Justin Trudeau to try to move the ball down the field in one direction, and then to come in and to say,

everything you've been doing for 10 years, we're now gonna turn it around 180 and start marching it back. It's not reasonable to expect professional adults to actually undo everything they've just spent a lot of time and pride trying to build and construct and even if you don't agree with it so you have to move some deputies around so that you actually have people who will in good faith with good effort try to move the new government and the new agenda forward responsibly that's one thing

second thing is when we were in government and I know that Justin Trudeau for a lot of reasons there's good and bad about it, I don't agree with it, but whatever, but making the mandate letters public, making mandate letters of ministers public has its virtues because there's accountability, but it seems to be more, over time, it became more and more about

sort of a stakeholder management thing. The mandate letters that I got as a cabinet minister, so that people don't know, you run in a platform platform and then the prime minister gives each minister a mandate letter. My mandate letter was very clear, very linear, very specific, right? In the first three months, you will work

with the minister of this and the minister of that and come to cabinet in the first 30 days and you will do this. In the first six months, you will work with this minister, you will consult your stakeholders, you'll come back to cabinet with two options to move forward on this. And it was very prescriptive.

And so I got my mandate letter, the deputy minister got the mandate letter. We both looked at it and one by one we worked through our mandate letter. And if I wanted to do something that was beyond the scope of my mandate letter, I had to write to the prime minister and have a sit down and get it added to the mandate letter, then that can be included. But that were those were my marching orders. And that was what I was to deliver because it reflected the platform we ran on the throne speech that was consented by parliament. It was the promise that we made to Canadians and let's go. And anything beyond that was a value added, which you can only do if you fulfilled

our promise to Canadians as reflected in your mandate letter. And it was very prescriptive. And so therefore the relationship between the deputy and the minister was off to a running start because we had our battle plan. And if you're committed to this, then you can be the deputy for that portfolio. If you're committed to this, you can be the minister for that portfolio. You two make it work and let's go. It was a much more business-like in that sense arrangement as opposed to stuff that was more amorphous. It's time for advice giving here. I got a call on the two of you with giving your experiences. You're talking to the group of new MPs

and it doesn't matter which party they're in. And you're asked to give them one piece of advice that they may not have thought about up to this moment. They're sitting in wherever they're sitting in parliament listening for advice from two veterans of the process. What's that one piece of advice you'd give? Jerry, why don't you start? To an incoming member of parliament. Never forget why you did this, who you are and who sent you to do it.

That's advice I've given many, many members of parliament over the years. It's easy to get caught up in whatever appears to be important here in Ottawa, whatever people are talking about at the Met or whatever somebody is writing about in Politico or the Hilltimes and nobody gives a shit outside of Ottawa and it's really really important to keep that tattooed on the inside of your eyelids, right? That you presumably got into this for a public interest purpose to serve the people of your community to get some things done for them and that's what you should go to bed every night thinking about and what you should get up every morning thinking about. I remember when I was a you know I was a correspondent in Saskatchewan for the

National and they said we want you to go to Ottawa and work on parliament hill. And I said, no, no, no, no, please don't send me there. I can't stand Ottawa stories. Don't want to be any part of it. And they said, no, you actually have no choice. So I went and within two weeks, I was part of that Ottawa bubble. It's amazing how fast you fall prey to that. It is. So that's clearly what you're talking about.

Just to follow up on that in a practical way, and you really do have to take pragmatic steps with your life to ensure that you have as much insulation from that bubble as possible. You can choose who you have dinner with, you can choose where you live, you can choose the kinds of information you consume, you can choose the kinds of subject matter that you engage in conversation about. It's probably harder now than it ever has been, but I can't remember who said this, but it's one of my favorite quotes that the most important freedom you have in life is you're free to choose what to pay attention to and nobody can take that away from you. And that's true if you're a private citizen, it's also true if you're a member of parliament,

but it's a much more important imperative if you're a member of parliament because what this city does, and I think it's true of all capital cities, is they take a very diverse group of well-meaning people and turn them all into a version of the same guy or gal. And I've seen it happen to people over the years. I will say one of the things I've always admired about James is he seems to be exactly the same guy when he left as he was when he got there. And that's even more remarkable considering he was a

child when he was a lawyer. A mature child. So no, you really have to know who you are when you get into politics because you're going to find out once you do and you don't wanna be the last to know. Okay, James, you get the last word, advice. Well, the best piece of advice, building on what Jerry said, that I got was actually from Senator Jerry St. Germain. He said, always remember, there are no votes

for you in Ottawa, go home, go home, go home, which is good. My piece of advice would be, and because it's an umbrella statement from which cascades a lot of other bits of advice, which is this is gonna end and it's gonna umbrella statement from which cascades a lot of other bits of advice, which is this is going to end and it's going to end quickly. Act accordingly. You know, I had five terms in 15 years, 10 in government, eight in cabinet. That's a good run by I think, like I'm incredibly blessed by the privilege that I got to serve

and all the things that I got to do. But my 15 years went by like that, right? I was elected, the Canadian Alliance went into a civil war for Stockwell Day's leadership. Then Stephen Harper came back. That was, and then 9-11 happened. It was all about 9-11. And then Harper came back. We merged the parties.

Now it's 2003, 2004. We go into an election, Paul Martin, Paul Martin minority, when's Halloween's gonna last? Goes to 2005, then election campaign focused on that. Can we get Harper in? We win. It's a minority. It's really fragile.

Oh my God, 06, 08, another minority. Now I'm in cabinet and I'm dealing with cabinet issues, learning cabinet, going to 2011, 2010 Olympics. I'm the minister, big, huge distraction, and great moment and all that, 2011. But that's a decade, like that, gone, because of leadership races and politics and crises of 9-11, the Iraq war, all the,

it just evaporated in like overnight like it just goes and so if just know that this is going to end for the vast majority of these members of parliament these 343 men and women who are just elected know now that this is going to end earlier than you think it's going to it's going to end quicker than you think it's going to end and for many of you it's going to end in heartbreak disappointment maybe some embarrassment because you thought you were going to have more than you think it's going to end. And for many of you, it's going to end in heartbreak, disappointment, maybe some embarrassment because you thought you were going to have more time and all that.

Just know it's going to end. And so use your time judiciously, really judiciously, and write that letter to yourself that I described. Define your goals, define them tight. Don't make it 10 things, make it four things. Know that you'll have progress on three, you might lend two. And if those are the two that your grandkids are talking about 20 years from now, you have some sense of pride that you got something done.

It's a massive country. It's a continental nation with all kinds of divides. Our system is complicated. There's a lot of competing interests. Be focused on something that you genuinely care about that matters and, and ask for advice, reach out to people who have been successful and lean in and be really aggressive and know that it's

going to end and leave it all in the field. Great advice. And I think that's a great point. and ask for advice, reach out to people who've been successful and lean in and be really aggressive and know that it's gonna end and leave it all in the field. Great advice, great conversation as always. And you know, barely scratched the surface, but 40 minutes, well worth listening to. Thanks to both of you as always. Always a pleasure, Peter. Thanks Peter.

Well, there you go. More Buds conversation number 21, all wrapped up and added to, which is almost a couple of dozen conversations now, that really take you inside the workings of government and politics and parties. Some of the good, some of the bad. It's all a very interesting story to tell and these conversations have told it in a way that I think we've all learned from it. So I appreciate both James Moore and Gerald Butts for taking part in these and there will

be more when we come back in the fall. But that's our last one for this season. Um, I think we'll play it again tomorrow, just as our own core for this week, cause it's really good. Um, okay. That's going to wrap it up for, uh, for this day. Uh, if you missed the top of the program, dial it back and you'll hear the question of the week.

It's about the post office. Um, so there you go. I'm Peter Mans week. It's about the post office. So there you go. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk again in almost 24 hours.