The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - MOORE-BUTTS #6 -- How Leadership Works

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

The Moore-Butts conversations are like poli-sci 101, using anecdotes to explain politics.  The former Conservative cabinet minister, now a senior advisor at Dentons, James Moore, and the former Liberal principal secretary to PM Trudeau and now vice chair of the Eurasia Group, Gerald Butts, join forces today, their sixth episode, to explain how leadership really works.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. The Moore-Butts Conversation No. 6. Leadership. Sounds easy, but is it? And hello there. Welcome to another week. Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario on this day. Hope you had a good weekend. Did you look up in the sky? See any balloons? Unidentified flying objects? Cylindrical shape?

What a story this is. You know, it seemed like a one-off a week ago. Now it's like every day there's something new. But what is it really? And I guess that's what everyone is trying to determine. I see the Chinese, who are kind of the assumed to be the primary culprit here in sending balloons over North America. They're saying today, hey, we've had 10 American surveillance balloons

over China in the last year. Well, if that's true, would you be surprised? I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, this kind of thing has been happening for decades. You know, part of the space race was all about launching satellites to spy on each other. So we've got all these satellites going around the Earth right now, hundreds and hundreds of them. And a lot of them are spying on other countries.

So obviously from the space height, I can interfere with commercial aircraft. These balloons are a little bit different. But, you know, before the spy satellites, there were the U-2 aircraft that the Americans use and still use. I mean, I'm old enough to remember who Francis Gary Powers was. And if you're not, look up the name. It's a great story.

He was in effect, he was like flying a, he wasn't flying a balloon, he was flying a jet, but the same thing. He was flying over the Soviet Union, taking pictures. Now, I'm not saying, hey, this is okay. This does raise all kinds of questions, including the defense system that NORAD has in Canada's Arctic. And NORAD, remember, is North American. It's both the U.S. and Canada. They work jointly together. They operate under changing command.

Right now the commanding general or whoever of NORAD is an American. The deputy is a Canadian. But those rules can reverse and have reversed over time. But when they operate jointly in protecting the North American continent, that's why they have jets of both countries up. Now, there's a lot of stuff that's happened in the last week that I'm sure we have not been told about and how these operations unfold

and just how long they've been tracking these things. So I would be awfully careful jumping to too many conclusions right away. But it is a story we'll follow. But it's not a story we're going to dwell on today. Today is the Moor Butts Conversation No. 6, and it's all about leadership. Trying to get at the you know, like how do these men and women who are in leadership roles in political parties or in governments, how do they

operate? Is it lonely? Is it lonely at the top, as the saying goes? Can they still have friends? How do they deal with people who step out of line? What's the inside story on this? Well, the Moore-Butts conversations gives us the inside story, or as close as we can get, I'd say. Jerry Butts was the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau from 2015 to 2019.

He was also the Principal Secretary to the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGinty, from 2003 to 2008. He was the President of the World Wildlife Fund of Canada and he's a busy guy James Moore was a former Conservative Cabinet Minister under Stephen Harper's government he's currently the senior business advisor to the multinational law firm Denton's

and a public policy advisor at the global firm Edelman. He's also the national vice chair of the Canadian Cancer Society. Both these gentlemen on are a lot of different different things. So keep that in mind as you listen to what they have to say. There's more to what they're doing now and I'll go over that at the end of the program. But that's it for now in terms of a basic introduction. So let's get to it.

Here we go. Boer Butts conversation number six. All right, gentlemen, I want to start this conversation out with a basic question about leadership, which is sort of is leadership lonely? And I ask that because, you know, you occasionally will read a book by a former political leader or a prime minister, a Canadian and others in different parts of the world,

or you will talk to them personally, as I've done in a couple of occasions, where they talk about this issue of how lonely it can be to be at the top. What are they saying when they say that? Jerry, why don't you start us this time? Thanks, Peter. And as always, it's great to be here with you. And hello, James. It looks sunnier on the West Coast than it is here in Ottawa.

Lies. I think the irony, and it's it's a bit it's usually a tragic irony is that it's loneliest when you need people the most right when you're making the most difficult decisions that only you can make as the leader of the government ultimately you make them alone and um as a consequence you, I think that's where people are coming from when they say it's lonely at the top that it's it's not lonely on election night. And it's definitely not lonely when you're delivering a budget and going to the party afterward. But it's really lonely when they are very difficult decisions where you know you have people you rely upon

who are going to be disappointed regardless of which decision you make. James? Yeah. Bono once had a line where he said, the summit of aspirations is a lonely place. And I think that when you're the leader of a province, the prime minister of the country,

this real test of faith of who can I really trust? Who won't betray me? Who won't leak this? Who won't hold on to this information and hoard it? Because I need to rely on this minister to deliver this message that's really difficult and our base won't like it and the public will need a real explanation and the media will be cynical about it.

But I probably need to shuffle this person in the next year or so because this relationship is not working out. So a year from now, after they do all this, are they going to turn a knife? So the ability to trust and to have sort of the emotional intelligence to sort of see three and four chess moves down the road about who you can surround yourself with, who you can genuinely trust, who is on your team. I mean, I can tell you, you know, in conversations I've had with people who have been leader, provincially and federally, is you a crew. That's a ride or die crew with a leader who, who will be with you. So, so you have lifelong liberals who work with Paul Martin and maybe work with

North great 10 and hope that Stefan Dion and Michael Ignatius were successful, but now they're with Justin Trudeau. They need to be Justin Trudeau liberals. They need to be with him and, and follow his entire story arc from the young guy who ran for leader who nobody believed in all the way to a three-term prime minister who will be with him and defend him and his legacy for the rest of their lives as well. Stephen Harper has that with John Baird. He has it with me. He

has it with a few people. I'm a conservative, but I'm a Stephen Harper conservative. That was my journey and the legacy of that time in my public career. I'm very protective of, and I recognize the imperfections and all that. And I think we all do, but, but successful leaders need to have people around them that they know that they can trust who will go to,

who will go to the mattresses for them at all times. And if they don't have that, then they, then, you know, then they stop seeking outside advice. They stop seeking counsel. They stop, you know, risks and and doing the things that you need to do in order to be successful and to get you through the sticky times i i understand the trust part and i'm

wondering where where trust and friendship uh align because you know most of these people the men and women who end up in leadership roles go into them, you know, with friends, you know, they have friends in the caucus, in the party. Can, can you keep friendship when you're at the top? I remember once talking to your old boss, James, you know, Stephen Harper, who was a big movie fan, right? Loves watching movies. He'd watch them at home, but he'd love to go to a theater more than anything. boss, James, you know, Stephen Harper, who was a big movie fan, right? Loves watching movies. He'd watch them at home, but he'd love to go to a theater more than anything.

And it was pretty clear from the stories he told me that he went often with a, you know, not counting the RCMP, but he went alone. Like he did. It's not, I'm not sure it's because he didn't have somebody to go with, you know, his wife was out of town or what have you. But he would go to the theater alone as opposed to with a friend, which is, I guess in some ways, a bit unusual. But nevertheless, it made me wonder about this issue of friendship and whether you can maintain a friendship when you're in the top job. Jerry?

Well, I think it was, it wasn't Harry Truman who said, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. I think that that's largely true. And the people who I joked with a few friends after I left politics, that I hope to repair some of the friendships

that had inevitably put into the wood chipper while I was in politics, either through neglect or many other reasons. Because in those jobs, and James knows this well, you can't walk into a room anywhere in Canada without having a dozen people who want something from you. And inevitably, if you're self-aware, that will kind of alter your perception of other people. And you'll begin very quickly to be suspicious of all of those social interactions. And I'm blessed with some great friendships in life, as I know both of you are. They are, that feeling is absent from those friendships, right? That I just gabbed for, as I'm sure we all did, gabbed for an hour on the phone this morning with friends about what happened to John Tory yesterday. And one of them at one point said, the thing about two guys

have known each other for 25 years, in our case, it's probably more like 35 years, is you just don't have to worry about what you're saying to them. In politics, in a position of authority, whether you're a senior staffer, a minister, or a prime minister, you always have to worry about what you're saying to somebody. And I think that that infects your interactions with other human beings. I think it's impossible to insulate yourself from it completely. That's all very true and if you've been

around politics long enough as you know like people say well I was in a meeting and I heard that somebody said that Justin Trudeau said what they're going to do is they're going to do and so you're very very aware of yourself and what you say and how you know because for some people

you know just a two second conversation for the prime minister at a party fundraiser or something, that's the apex moment of sort of their connection with celebrity and fame and power. And it can be intoxicating if you go up to them and people often, especially partisans, they're charged and say, you know, I hope you go after this issue and really drive this into the ground. And then you say sort of something on the side, and then all of a sudden that's on Twitter, and then it's on Facebook, and then it has some momentum, and then away you go.

And all that stuff can be very toxic. Your example, Peter, of Prime Minister Harper going to see movies alone. I mean, I've been to some of his movie nights with him, and maybe he went alone sometimes as well. But I think that's actually a very healthy thing, right? Just to have a mental checkout and to decompress and to just wear a, wear a parka and a baseball hat and go to a movie theater and go to the

thing and order a hot dog and a Coke and just try to get just a taste of normal and just sort of see other people, see their kids playing the video games. And you look at the direction they're rushing into the bathroom just before the movie starts and just to take in some normal. And I think it's a very healthy thing. I think it's an important thing. And because you don't get very many glimpses of it.

So I think that's really a critical component. There's a good scene, by the way, I didn't mention this, West Wing gets punched up a lot by people in politics, but there are certain scenes and moments that I think have some weight to it. And there was one, I think, in the first season where the chief of staff character, Leo McGarry, he misses his wedding or his anniversary dinner. His wife put together a nice dinner for him and he came home and he's like, I missed it. I missed the dinner.

And she was really heartbroken and angry and felt betrayed. And she said, you know, this job is not more important than your marriage. And he paused and he said, yeah, yeah, it is. For these couple of years that I'm going to be the chief of staff to the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, my job is more important than my marriage. We have to make sacrifices if this is going to work. I have an obligation that is bigger than, and so, and so,

and their marriage dissolved. And, you know, there's a tension and a stress there that is, that needs to be managed and understood, particularly at the prime minister level and the president level, that if the people around you aren't fully bought into this experience, it's a tremendous sacrifice. You can't have everything. And if you don't have people around you aren't fully bought into this experience that's it's a tremendous sacrifice you can't have everything and if you don't have people around you who you sort of balance your over commitment to work and or understand your need to over commit to work you know a tragedy

happens and justin trudeau has to get on a plane and go there and be with the victims of some shooting or some horrific accident or a train derailment in quebec and he has to miss a birthday or an anniversary or something that stuff happens happens. And, and those, those social, those family wounds build up over time as Jerry talked about himself. So it's, it's a very tough thing. Like we, we, we punch up politicians so quickly and easily, but it's, it's a brutal job in terms of what we expect from people on a human level. Okay. Let me,

let me get back to this sort of the key element of what I'm hoping to get out of this discussion as fascinating as all that was on loneliness and friendship and all that. But in terms of, you know, a leader has to lead a cabinet and a leader has to lead a caucus. And I appreciate those are two very different things. But in that relationship, what's the most challenging part of trying to do that function well and not face sort of a blowback from whether it's cabinet or caucus, whatever it is? What's the most challenging part of dealing with that? Jerry? Well, Donald McGinty used to say all the time and he he was he really was a master in the way he led caucus he wasn't buddy buddy with everybody but he was friendly to

everyone and i think the most important thing he conveyed was that he was going to be fair in his choices right and he used to say nine times out of ten we'd be walking out of a cabinet meeting and he'd say or into a cabinet meeting and he'd say, or into a cabinet meeting and he'd say, it's a huddle full of quarterbacks. So it's, it's very different. Cabinet is very different from caucus because in most cabinet meetings, well, in most cabinets that I've observed, there's at least half a dozen people in that cabinet who, you know, they kind of think they'd

do a better job in the center chair than the person who's currently in it and uh that it's not the same six people every meeting sometimes it depends on the issue and there's probably a core of three or four who think it all the time but usually it doesn't matter what is being discussed there's somebody around that table who thinks they'd make a better decision than the person who's ultimately going to make it. So you have to be aware. I think the toughest thing, and James alluded to it a couple of minutes ago, the toughest thing is having the situational awareness

to know where people are coming from and why, right? Because there may be a constituent matter involved. There may be a personal interest involved. There may be a relationship between ministers that you're not aware of that is compelling people to say things and not only say things, but say them in a certain way, depending on the heat of the discussion. And believe it or not, I'm sure James would agree with this, there are open and heated discussions in Cabinet on contentious items.

It's never, we all agree, let's go grab one of those sandwiches. It's always, especially with difficult issues, I can think back to several in my time in both Ontario and in Ottawa, where there were legitimate and authentic disagreements around the table. And the prime minister or premier had to settle the matter and make sure everybody was part of the same team afterward. So to me, it's almost like you're a, you're a conductor of an orchestra and you have to manage the whole arc of the piece of music and make sure it resolves at the end so that everybody walks

out thinking they're on the same team that is not a common set of skills that's required of many jobs in the world well said and i've so here's a real world example i think it's been talked about enough that it's it's it's known but maybe not within the context of the conversation. In 2012-13, in that window, there was a lot of pressure to ban the production and exportation of asbestos from Quebec, which was mined in the riding of Christian Parody, one of, at that time, I don't know, eight conservative MPs that we had from the province of Quebec, who was a cabinet minister, a lot of jobs in a small town in his rotting that was beat up coming out of the recession. You know, NGO pressure from outside of the rotting saying, shut this down, get rid of it. So costing jobs in a rotting that is not wealthy in one of the handful of Quebec rottings that we have.

So that's the scenario. So we were going to rebuff and push back efforts to ban asbestos. While there's a fellow at the end of the table who puts his hand up and he's from Chilliwack, his name is Chuck Strahl, and he's got lung cancer because of exposure to particulates and things like asbestos in his professional life before he was a member of parliament. He was a cabinet minister and he went in for a scan. He wasn't feeling very well and they found a spot in his lung. Turns out it was cancer and so now you've got a cabinet minister at the table who's struggling with lung cancer who gets scans regularly and anytime that spot on his lung goes from a dime to the size of a quarter um you know you know what happens in terms of his life changing so he's at the table and we're sitting there having this conversation about whether or not how to triage this issue and to save the jobs and push back against people who are overstating the risks and all that.

And so you're going to ask Chuck Strahl to not stand up for victims of lung cancer, or you're going to ask Christian Paradis to not stand up for his constituents who are about to lose their jobs or just finish getting dragged through the economic storm of the recession. How do we how do you reconcile this and so someone has to blank and then and then after the blink you have to come together as a team and defend the decision so we did blink and we got a we eventually you know closed it down it has been closed down I gather but in the interim there's sort of a we effectively punted I think the issue. And so Chuck Straub could know that he stood up for his interests at Christian parody, at least to the next election, which has always seems to be the goal, the goalposts that we drive to. He could say that he defended his constituents,

but both had to give a little Chuck Straub, but probably more than he should have. And now they both have to, you can only do that so many times until you just say, you know what? I've got so much water in my wine. I don't know what this is. And this is not why I ran for office to compromise. I get a compromise,

but when you're asking me to compromise for the people who are sitting next to me, who are going through chemotherapy and the people in the oncology department at Vancouver general hospital, you want, you want, you want me to go back in there next week when I have my next scan and look them in the eye and talk about the good work i'm doing in public life like how many times can you do that until you start thinking what the hell am i doing here like what what is this about

let me just interrupt that happened with chuck but you can imagine but yeah let me just ask you this then i i understand the intense and emotional discussion that must have been but what does the leader do how does the leader manage that situation well in that circumstance you you you have to be very aware of the sensitivities of it all and fortunately both christian parody and truck stroll are pretty mild-mannered thoughtful people who were who were high in the eq scale who did understand the dynamic that both were coming from and they worked out a compromise. But you can imagine somebody being extraordinarily rigid

and dug in and saying, I will not compromise, I will not compromise. Well, now you've got a full-blown crisis. I think all governments have those moments. Fortunately, it wasn't on that particular one because obviously it would have been so hyper-emotional and difficult. But I think the job i think the job of the leader is to bring everybody together and and frankly to to have transparency and

accountability and say look just so we know when we make this decision this is what this is the world that that minister straw is dealing with this is the world that minister parity is dealing with so when we make this decision and the way in which we present this in question period when we're attacked understand that we have colleagues who are going to be at the, sitting in the front row who have come together to this position. And let's be very careful in the stridency of our rhetoric, be thoughtful about that. So I think that's the responsibility and a small one quick, I don't want to hawk up the time here but on on same-sex marriage when when i i said that i was going to vote in favor of same-sex marriage in uh december of 2004 memory serves

the vote was in 05 stephen harbert went to the microphone and he said to our to our group as he said you know um you know those of you who are in favor of the traditional definition of marriage you have your views and say that but but but I don't want you to say that those who disagree with you are risking destroying the family and, and don't believe in family because that's not true. And that's not fair. And those of you who say we're going to be avoiding in favor of equal marriage for gays and lesbians, don't go out there and say that people who do believe in the traditional definition of marriage are, are, are, uh, insensitive and bigoted and all because they're not, they have a view, like be respectful of each other's views, be thoughtful about it.

And I won't have any patience or tolerance for people who just, who denigrate the integrity character or intelligence of their colleagues, but by the way in which you publicly articulate your position, there's no room for that in this room. And there's no room for that in this parliament. You can't do that. And people took that message. It's really important that people be allowed to express their views thoughtfully.

When is a leader, does a leader invited as a good leader, invite those around the table or in the caucus room to challenge him or her on whatever the issue is? Absolutely. Have you seen that? Have my view have you seen that have you have you seen that for sure yeah absolutely i i think there are there are several kinds of issues that get discussed around a cabinet table there are things that you put in your election platform that presumably everybody had in their campaign literature and knocked on

doors saying elect me because we want to do these things and those are generally easy um as long as they're not insane when you promise them uh and there's a special category of those things too um then there are issues that arise and inevitably they do arise as the old cliche goes events dear boy events uh those that come up that you never planned on dealing with i remember for instance i hope i'm not going to get in trouble for telling this tale at a school when we'd finally come to a conclusion at the end of september 2018 the NAFTA negotiations. And James will remember this because he was helpfully, he put his, he sheathed his partisan sword to help his country in a time of need, which I will never forget. Along with several other conservatives,

I might add, and new Democrats. There was an agreement around the cabinet table about whether to accept those terms. And the prime minister spoke last and he went around the table and he said, I want everybody to tell me your real opinion and why. And they all did. And I won't name names, but it was not unanimous. But the prime minister, I think he had his mind made up going into that meeting, but he did give everybody an opportunity to voice what their views were. Was it close? Was it close?

It wasn't that close. It wasn't that close. I would say remembering correctly, if I remember correctly, it was about two-thirds one third that's pretty good though i mean i good in the sense that there was a challenge in there there was there was a yeah you know a division there was a yeah and there were issues during that debate which we'll all remember that got most of the play. But again, as James would know, that agreement is so vast that every single minister around that table

had something at stake in its conclusion, right? That there was some suite of issues that they were going to have to manage every day with their counterpart in the United States, but most importantly, with their own stakeholders and constituents that really mattered to those people. And therefore, it was a full team sport. Okay.

I got to take a quick break. I'll be back very quickly with more on this fascinating discussion. Back in a second. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. It's the Moorbutts conversation for this week. And we'll get right back at it because I find this angle about when you're building a cabinet, are you trying to build a cabinet where you know there are going to be voices in there

that are going to challenge you on some of the key issues? You know, it would be very nice to have a nice, peaceful cabinet meeting every week. Or you can construct a cabinet where you know certain people are against you on some important issues. Is that what you do? Or is that just what we'd like to think you do? James? I think it's more,

I don't think any prime minister worries about being inadequately challenged or criticized. You know, so, so whether or not it it comes from i think more than more than anything you you need your team who's going to be thoughtful about that and and defend you going forward but i mean cabin making is is you know as you know is very very complicated prime minister trudeau seems to have i think listened to the advice of predecessors or observed the advice of whether it's the blue team or the red team about the need to have as few cabinet shuffles as possible because every time you have a cabinet shuffle one or two people get elevated and and 73 people who don't get elevated

and every time you do that it's like a you know you know how you break a paper clip right you bend it and then you bend it and then you bend it and then you bend it and eventually it cracks and you can never put it back together as a paper clip it'll never be what it was but that's true of relationships as well you can bend them and pressure them and bend them and pressure them and eventually that relationship cracks and you can never get it back together and so every time you have a you have a cabinet shuffle and people aren't rewarding the way that they think that they they deserve to be well because they've you know they've sold the prime minister's message and his turnaround on F-35s.

They went door to door for two election campaigns and had people yell at them over blackface or whatever. And then they got passed over for cabinet again. Again, you can only do that so many times without some animosity building up. So it's a very human thing. And politicians are more alpha than beta. They're in public life to do something and they want to be seen to be doing something. You want to have a sense of legacy. And if you're being denied access

to have that opportunity to deliver and be seen to be delivering and to have that sense of pride of ownership of your public career, then you can build some pretty quick and robust enemies real fast. So I think that the team that you do invite in who are part of your inner team,

they have to be sensitive that that's what's going on outside the room with all of your colleagues and therefore take the responsibility to be effective counsel to the prime minister that much more, more seriously. You want to add to that. I think that James is introducing a really important variable end in this equation, which is time, right? That the cabinet you choose on the first day you're sworn in at Rideau Hall, you know that's not going to be the cabinet you leave office with unless something extraordinary happens in a very short period of time. And that means that you're going to disagree. with unless something extraordinary happens in a very short period of time and that don't disagree kim campbell would disagree as well yeah uh there there are some notable notable exceptions to that normally ironclad rule um so that means by definition you're cycling through the proverbial wood that uh prime minister mcdonald described right and you have to work with the wood that the public sends you in order to make a cabinet uh james's point about annoying 10 times as many people as you make happy anytime you

cabinet is true and it's without a doubt as a government gets into its late middle age let's put it that way there's a whole group of caucus members who draw correctly the conclusion that they'll never serve in cabinet so that creates a sense of sometimes animosity i've also seen it create a sense of helpful freedom in caucus members where they no longer feel they need to, you know, audition for cabinet in every caucus meeting. And we should talk a bit about caucus because it's very different relationship in my view. But, you know, the longer, the more times cabinet is chosen and you don't get one of those phone calls a couple of days ahead of time to come in for the vetting, your views of the prime minister and the people around him change. Right. Well, you see, there's a contemporary example, right? Joel Lightbound.

Yeah. Thoughtful guy from the province of Quebec everybody thought you know should be elevated to cabinet but you know given the you know given the balance that the prime minister has described given the number of seats that can only be allocated to the province of Quebec Etc and and so on that you know now he's running for the Quebec liberal leadership um you know it Justin Smith is another good contemporary example. Nate's a great guy who's probably going to run for the Ontario Liberal leadership. Yeah, and then there are some people who don't break out because they don't want James Rajat, right?

A very talented, thoughtful member of Parliament. He was elected with me in the year 2000 from Edmonton, but Alberta is obviously full of talented, conservative folks from, you know, Jim Prentice, Ron Ambrose, Jason Kenney, Monty Solberg, long list. And they're just only so many seats at the table and he didn't get elevated. And, you know, but he became a good team player, chair of the finance committee and deeply respected. And he found a role for himself where he contributed. So it's so people have to do things differently.

But then you do have people who do act out. Right. And, you know, I maybe your next part, Peter out right and you know i i um maybe your next part peter about you know like managing people but there is a point where you realize that okay i'm i'm not going to be elevated to cabinet there have been you know the prime minister trudeau he's in his third mandate um there's been multiple candidates by the way i did this map the other day for a for a client who was curious about this number. When Prime Minister Trudeau was first elected and his first cabinet was sworn in in November of 2015, there were 35 people sworn in that day.

Justin Trudeau plus 34. Of those 34 original cabinet ministers, 10 are left. That's a lot of cabinet shuffling. So 24 have gone, 10 are left, and that's who's still standing from his original crew. So you just start to feel alone. Then everybody comes in and people leave with their different baggage and it's all kinds of narratives and stories and those you hope that those hold it gets more complicated over time and stephen harper when we were in government you know we had a minority government from 06 to 08 it was the smallest minority government in canadian history

so the fear of losing and failing we didn't want to have that. So that kind of kept us bonded together. Oh, six to eight, we're going to strive to get our, finally get our majority that didn't happen, but the recession kind of, we blamed that and the way in which arts and culture was handled. No, we kind of blamed that, but we're so close. We're getting better. We're getting so close. And then 11, we finally got our majority.

And then people started loosening up because by then, now you've been in government for a while. People know they're not getting into cabinet and so they start breaking off and and you know it happened for there was a couple of high profile examples but there's one where we're a backbencher um who was elevated to parliamentary secretary then had it taken away but wasn't it was never going to go into cabinet put started putting forward a private member's bill that wasn't quite about abortion but it was about abortion it was right on the water's edge but we knew what was happening and they were testing stephen harper's commitment to balance social conservatives

and not talking about abortion and and there are different ways you can deal with these things but at this point we he'd kind of had enough and and i remember the moment claire's day where he got up in caucus and he said to this member of parliament he said you know i made a commitment to the party that we are not going to talk about abortion. I made a commitment to the Canadian people that we are not going to talk about abortion. I asked Canadians to give us a mandate for a focused mandate on the economy that would be a steady, stable, majority government. We're not talking about abortion. That's my mandate from the party. It's my mandate from the Canadian people.

It's my mandate in this parliament. And he turned to this MP who brought forward his private members bill. And he said, it might be why you ran for office, but it's not how you got elected or why we got elected. Cut it out and get rid of this bill in front of the whole caucus. And it was a phenomenal moment. It was a moment of leadership. Sometimes you triage these things and massage these things,

but there was a moment of leadership. Some of the best moments of leadership, I'm sure it's true with Prime Minister Trudeau from Jerry's lens and Stephen Harper from mine. Some of the best moments of leadership i'm sure it's true as prime minister trudeau from jerry's lens and stephen harper from mine some of the best moments of leadership are those moments you'll never see publicly that are not in front of the camera where just staring down a caucus member who was going to derail the government's agenda and saying abortion might be why you personally ran for office but it's not how you got elected or why you got elected cut it out in front of the room and that that person stands, stood down. And what did the room, just a second. What, how did the room react?

Standing ovation from everybody, but about 15. And at that point there was 170 conservative MPs plus 40 senators. So it was a big room and it was a loud ovation and that was enough. Yeah. Yeah. Jerry, sorry. I had an experience like that with Dalton McGinty when, and it was a much smaller room. There was a new, uh, Archbishop in Toronto and it was right after, speaking of John Tory, it was right after the 2007 election,

which was largely fought on the matter of religious schools. And, um, on the matter of religious schools. And I think the curriculum was being changed so that Ontario Catholic schools couldn't promote pro-life or something like that. There was something, it wasn't quite an abortion issue, but it was abortion adjacent. It was in Catholic schools. And the new archbishop came in, and I guess he'd been briefed that Dalton was a good Irish Catholic boy.

And he started to lecture Dalton. And Dalton said, Father, I'm going to stop you right there. and ontarian support for publicly funding catholic schools you go out after this meeting and say what you just said to me right here and i was like whoa i did not see that coming um and you know i think that the the times that i will look back on uh in politics where you get to witness something like that, make it all, make all of the, the obvious difficulties of political life worthwhile to harken back to what James started with.

Because you just don't see that anywhere else. And it's in those moments that you realize, you know what, the Canadian people are in that case, the people of Ontario, they actually kind of, they know what they're doing when they choose their leaders. And these guys or gals are put in those positions of authority because they know what to do with them once they get there. Okay, don't leave us hanging. What happened when the Archbishop went out of the room? He said nothing. It was lovely to meet the Premier.

Okay, you both suggested earlier that we should spend a couple of minutes, and we should in the couple of minutes we have left, about the relationship with caucus, the leader and caucus, as opposed to the leader in cabinet. We've covered that, but, Jerry, you suggested this is a different situation. It's a different ballgame, and that relationship is very different.

Yeah, I think a functioning caucus is one where the members of it feel free to express the views of their constituents on any matter, in any form right closed form i should say um where it's it's a gathering of the caucus itself for a subcommittee or etc etc and i think in the first couple of years of the government those there's a natural governor on that um that willingness and it's whether or not you're ever going to be elevated, quote unquote, cabinet. But as the years go by, I think it's almost like an aging molecule. It gets looser and looser and looser. And it takes a different set of skills to keep people happy and feeling like they're a productive member of a cohesive team.

And it's really easy for it to come apart because the paperclip analogy James used is a good one. I think that by the time you're in year eight or nine of government, there's been a lot of bending on a lot of paperclips and some of them are going to break. And the question is, how do you manage that situation when it inevitably happens? I'll just say this all the time. It's not whether something bad is going to happen. It's how you deal with that situation when it does inevitably. And that's how people will judge you ultimately when it comes time to mark an X on a ballot box.

And it's important that the prime minister, I think, pushes down his obligation to have a good relationship with caucus to his cabinet ministers and insists on it and have that be part of the mandate letters. I know that Prime Minister Trudeau and some provincial governments, now they make the mandate letters of cabinet ministers public and it seems this great moment of transparency. I actually don't know that's necessarily true because there's probably stuff in there that you don't maybe you don't need

to put in a letter but but there's but there's also advice that's really important in terms of just the management of the team that's important i remember when i was chair of a cabinet committee there was a there was a an aboriginal um a land claim settlement that was brought to cabinet in this one part of ontario and the minister presented it and said you know we're going to the next phase we look like we're heading towards a final agreement it'll mean this amount of land this kind of hunting and fishing rights this amount this dollar amount this kind of governance structure etc and we were it was a pretty mature thing and i just said to the minister i said have have you informed them i know this is

in a conservative riding have you told have you informed them? I know this isn't a conservative riding. Have you told, have you had a conversation with that member of parliament? They said, well, yeah, he's not a privy counselor and this is pretty sensitive stuff. And I don't want him sort of letting this out at a town hall. And I said, well, you're a cabinet minister because he's a member of parliament and enough people like him go into their ridings and get elected. And therefore you get to become a cabinet minister and make these decisions. the idea that you would announce this next week and he's not even been consulted i mean maybe don't give him a veto but he needs to be part of the conversation needs to have some ownership of this our government's about to announce how many hundreds of millions of

dollars and how many hunting and fishing rights i think conservative voters care about hunting and fishing rights and taxpayers dollars being spent and what indigenous relations look like so i i don't know how we can approve this this going forward if you say you haven't consulted with the member of parliament so like there's there's a there's like it was just such a dramatic oversight uh and arrogance that was really you know a huge problem um anyways you know so that management and respect that's extended to caucus is really important and the and the leader and, and also I think it's important for the leader and for cabinet ministers to understand why people ran for office in the first place. We're not all here because we just want to be an MP and we want to be a minister and we want to be important.

We want to know, like people ran for particular motivations. Some people ran because of a personal tragedy. Chuck Cabin ran for office because his son Jesse was stabbed over a starter jacket at a bus stop in Surrey and his son was killed and he was mistreated by the justice system. That's why he ran for office because his son, Jesse, was stabbed over a starter jacket at a bus stop in Surrey. And his son was killed and he was mistreated by the justice system. That's why he ran for office. Shelly Glover, for example, right? A conservative MP from St. Boniface, Manitoba. She's a cop.

And she ran for office because she saw in her, what she said to me one time, she said, James, there were too many calls that I went to where drunken men would beat up their wives and girlfriends. And we would go and we would arrest him and we would hog time and put him in the back of a cop car and try to protect these women. And then the next shift, we would drive by the residence to see how it's going. And I remember this one guy was standing at the edge of his driveway, giving me the finger, telling me to F off. And you get kind of tired of that after a while. And so she ran for public office to for criminal justice issues and of course we see her as a metis perfectly bilingual

woman from swing riding in manitoba so she's made minister of heritage and she was made parliamentary secretary of official languages and great privilege and an honor she served you know honorably and did the best work but she eventually she left and she went back to being a cop and now she's in provincial politics but she went back to being police officer because she said to the prime minister and to me and she goes i didn't run for office to sort of manage the jean gomeshi file and who knew what when in the cbc that's not why i ran for office i mean who did james yeah exactly who i don't know but there you are but but she's like you know but, but I'm dealing with like I ran for office to protect the women that I was and to take the fight to another level other than just

separating them from their drunken husbands who are beating them up. And I came to Ottawa to talk about justice issues and I'm dealing with personnel issues at the CBC. That's not why I ran for office. And there's I see no reflection. And so a leader needs to understand why people are in the room and what really motivates them and to make sure that not just their portfolio is getting taken care of, but that they feel a sense of ownership and accomplishment in the thing that they care about. That's a very hard thing to track in a big room. And I would just add shortly to that, Peter, that that was something that we had real problems with

in the first couple of years of the Trudeau government, because we had a bunch of cabinet ministers who had never been in a caucus before. And they just didn't understand that relationship. Right. So the story that James told about the land claims agreement and the cabinet minister quietly taking the member of parliament aside and talking to him or her about it, that happened three times a week in the first couple of years of the Trudeau government. And there was no malice, in my view, in most 99% of the cases with the cabinet ministers.

They just didn't know. They were sort of sworn to secrecy. They didn't know how to manage the gray areas in talking to non-cabinet ministers about cabinet items. I think they were, in general, trying to be purer than Caesar's wife about those sorts of things. But as a consequence, we'd get a couple of calls a week from a member of parliament who had an announcement made in their writing that they weren't invited to.

Yeah. Happened all the time with us as well. And it's, and so the bureaucrats scare you into an action and they say, you're putting yourself at legal risk. And so, great, you have no legal risk. Now you've got a massive political risk, and you've got an MP who's going to sit as an independent and say that you don't listen to the people of northern Ontario. Well, that's great.

So no legal risk, but our minority governments and the rest of Congress thinks that we don't care. All right. Last point. I've literally only got a couple of minutes for this. And that's the relationship with the premiers uh for the prime minister and it's interesting one because they're all first ministers so there's a certain you know equality uh amongst them um and yet somebody has to sit at the head of the table so how do you work that relationship when you're dealing with 10 plus the territorial leaders uh at the table

what is the secret to that to the management of that situation so kind of a minute or so each um jerry why don't you start again peter situational awareness right we knew coming in in 2015 that we had a lot of allies around the first minister's table and that that situation, if you know anything about Canadian political history, was not likely to persist very long. So if you've got a bunch of things that require provincial cooperation to get done, the Canada pension plan, the climate plan, the health deal, those things, you better get them done in the first two years where it's, in case it was basically uh you know 12 allies and um uh brad wall it was uh it was a magic period and i remember reflecting back on it thinking about

all of the first ministers meetings i attended with dalton mcginty uh where the liberal government of the day was kind of long in the tooth, starting with Chrétien and then with Martin, where that liberal prime minister couldn't even depend on the liberals around the table to be out. Right. So it's it changes really over time. And if you don't if you don't adjust your approach to the changing personalities around the table, then you're not going to get anything done. As I've observed, it seems to be the best, you know, that there's divide and conquer, which, you know, there's that. But I just think, you know, successful prime ministers,

I think in recent history have always had, I think, a very transactional relationship. You know, I think the two most successful relationships that, you know, the 10 years of Stephen Harper's prime minister ship that we had were with Gordon Campbell and Gary Doerr, you know, Gary Doerr, a new Democrat, a progressive broadly and Gordon, Gordon Campbell, he sort of red, Tory, blue liberal. I mean, I've known Gordon Campbell for 25 years.

I genuinely don't know how he votes in federal election campaigns based on his, like he's, he's, he, he really is kind of that enigma of red, Tory, blue liberal, but he's very, he really is kind of that enigma of red tory blue liberal but he's very very thoughtful and and he managed this provincial bc liberal team that is that sort of had a it was a big ship with a lot of different personalities on it but but he just he worked with prime minister creation he worked with prime minister martin he worked with stephen harper and he said these are my top three issues can we agree you decide prime minister which of the two two of these three we

can agree on and let's make this a win-win for all of us, and I will transactionally work with whoever, whether it was the 2010 Olympics or expansion of public transit to the airport. But there are big projects of lasting legacy for both levels of government that were non-ideological that people could come together on. It was just a very responsible approach to management of the relationship of getting things done that Gordon Campbell had. So I think that very responsible approach to management of the relationship of getting things done that Gordon Campbell had. So I think that's a way to do it. But then, of course, there are

times you see it with Daniel Smith and Justin Trudeau. Daniel Smith loves that Justin Trudeau's prime minister loves it. You know, she can't stop talking about Justin Trudeau without Justin Trudeau. Who else would she attack? She'd attack Pierre Trudeau. Justin weren't there, but, but it's but, but to get things done, which is ultimately what matters, right. As you, you have to have those, those, those effective relationships. And I think that you know, Justin Trudeau you know, look there are a lot of things that people can criticize over time, but I think that part of it is to be in prime,

to be prime minister for that long. I mean, Stephen Harper had his fights with Danny Williams. Justin Trudeau has his fights with daniel smith and brad wall but but on the whole in a very big complicated confederation of disparate interests and regional economies and tensions and all that i think canada has been held together for the most part by having people of genuine responsibility and understanding of the national unity of the country and and working in a transactional relationship and not an ideological square off. And I think that serves the country. Yeah, I think in some ways, Peter and James, I don't know

if you'd agree with this, seeing it from the other side. I thought Dalton and Harper got along really well, actually, despite the fact that there were a lot of Ontario conservatives in the Harper cabinet and caucus who always wanted to fight with us uh and vice versa for that matter um but i thought they had a very productive relationship especially through the financial crisis and the auto bailout all right once stephen harper pushed altamaginty to understand climate change and get rid of the coal fire then things moved in the right direction uh so now we're into the revisionist part of the program.

Listen, great conversation. I know we really only touched on a few things, but nevertheless, over the last almost an hour, we talked about a lot of stuff. You gave us a real kind of insider's knowledge of it all, which is the whole idea of the Moore-Butts conversations. So, Jerry Butts, James Moore, thank you both very much, and we'll get together again sometime soon.

That's it for this day. Thanks so much for joining us and listening. We'll be back in 24 hours. Thank you.