The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore Butts Conversation #18 -- Advice for The Rocky Political Road Ahead

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Their advice for their political foes -- James for the Liberals, Gerry for the Conservatives.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, and what a Monday it is. More Butts Conversation number 18. What a week, what a day to have it. That's coming right up. And hello there, welcome to a new week, welcome to a new year, and welcome, it seems, to what's likely to be a new leader of the Liberal Party, a new Prime Minister of Canada, all coming up within the next days, weeks, months. Ottawa is flush with rumours as we begin this new year.

Rumours that may well have, by the time you hear this, have already taken effect. The rumour, of course, and I think it's more than a rumour, everyone pretty well accepts it and have accepted it for the last few days, is Justin Trudeau is, after much pushing, has decided he will step down as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. But the questions remain, basically, as to what happens now. There's a great social media post today from our friend Andrew Coyne.

Let me read it. It's not that long. I have questions. Does Trudeau step down? When? On what terms? Does an interim leader replace him? If so, who? How is that chosen? And an interim leader replace him? If so, who? How is that chosen?

And who is it chosen by? Or does Trudeau stay on until a new leader is chosen? Who decides that? On what basis? What process is used to choose a new leader? Is it a full national process? Or does it just happen in Ottawa? I added a few words in there.

But Andrew's right. There are so many questions surrounding this that one wonders what in fact will actually be settled in the next day or so as Trudeau steps down. Those are big questions. And what's needed for people to make those decisions? Good advice, right? And so that's why we're doing a more butts conversation number 18 today.

Based on the assumptions I've just outlined, no matter what happens today, the questions for James Moore, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, and Gerald Butts, the former senior advisor to Justin Trudeau when he first took office in 2015. They've gathered together now for, this is our 18th conversation with these two, and they're great, trying to leave their kind of partisan nature aside and give us a sense of what goes on in the back rooms.

Today is a little different. It's got a bit of a twist to it. Today is, what's your advice, short-term and long-term, for not just the Liberal Party, but also the Conservative Party, in these times. Because these are interesting times. Times unlike any we've seen before. At least this generation. Perhaps the last couple of generations of political watchers, whether they be analysts and commentators and journalists

or whether they're citizens who care about the political process. So there you have it. That's the plan for today. It's going to be an interesting week, as you can imagine. And when we start to get some of the answers to these questions, we'll be talking to all the likely candidates, like our good friends at Good Talk. All right, let's get started.

Conversation number 18 with Moore and Butts. Here it is. All right, gentlemen, both of you guys have spent the majority of your adult lives, I guess, in politics. And part of that has been giving advice to friends and colleagues. And that's what we want today, but with a twist. We want your advice to your political foes. So, Jerry, your advice will be for conservatives.

And, James, your advice will be for liberals. We'll split this into three parts, advice for right now. And right now is we don't know what's about to happen, if anything. I think we can go with certain assumptions. So advice for right now, advice for the next period before an election, and advice for the election itself, whenever that may be, spring, summer, fall. So let's get started with the advice for right now. And, and James, why don't you start us?

What's your advice for liberals as they face these next hours and days? Assume the crash position. The, it's just a short way of saying it, but, but no, not to be flippant about it. I mean, it depends on who you are as a liberal. I mean, my advice to Prime Minister Trudeau would be to find as dignified an exit as possible with the debris that's around you that would allow you to find that pathway as possible.

You know, as a lifelong conservative, you know, pulling back all partisan, you know, biases about these things. I do think people who are leaving public office should think about how they plan to leave early in their mandate early. I'll leave as many doors open as possible to leaving with a sense of dignity, accomplishment and so on. And those doors have been shut so fast for Justin Trudeau. I think it's, you know, in some ways tragic. If you're a really mean-hearted partisan on the other side, it's comical. But it's undignified, and he should find as many ways as possible to do that.

If you're a Liberal member of Parliament or a Cabinet minister right now, in the short time that you have left, find as many ways as possible to find a project on which you can deliver that is near to your heart and near to your soul, because the future is so uncertain and probably catastrophic for you politically, that you really want to do things that in the last window of opportunity that you have, to do something that is meaningful to your heart, that is meaningful to your sense of purpose, that's meaningful to your sense of accomplishment, such that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when you turn to your kids and grad kids, you can point to something and say, I did that in our community. I did that in our region. I did that in public policy, or I did that in terms of

a project. And it really improved the quality of life of the people around me. And it'll give you an anchoring sense of accomplishment as you leave. And I think any effort spent on doing that as strategically and quickly and as effectively as possible is time well spent. My advice broadly for the Liberal Party would be make sure the leadership race, if there's one in front of us, make sure it is as quick, short and efficient as possible. And be very wary about your obligation, not just as a government, but as a political party, to the stability of the country. And be very careful that those who are still left in the Liberal Party, if there's a leadership race in front of us, those who are

still left in the Liberal Party are the true believers. They're the hardcore. They're the base. They're the people, in my view, whose voice should be disproportionately more listened to at this juncture in the Liberal Party. And I think be very wary about people flooding into the Liberal Party to try to use those last couple of months of the power of the office of a G7 leadership position and what's left in the government to manipulate that office for some kind of regional sectarian ideological reason that is not in the best interest of the country. And you have an obligation to safeguard that uniquely

at this time in Canadian history, and be careful about that as you go into a leadership race. Are you seeing that happening? That last- Not yet, but you can see people baiting it. And you hear, I mean, I'm not a liberal, but you hear rumors in the Liberal Party about the effort and the infrastructure being invested into, frankly, old school brokerage, ethnic politics. And just sort of the rumors about it, I think, is unsettling.

It happens, frankly, can happen. It would happen in any party. It would happen in the Conservative Party. It would happen in any party. But I just think at this time of diaspora politics in Canada, what it looks like and what it can be in its worst iterations, I worry that the Liberal Party could become susceptible in a time of desperation to an influx of power within the party that would be destabilizing for the party. And because the prize is the prime ministership of the country would be destabilizing for the party. And because the prize is the prime ministership of the country, it would be destabilizing to the country.

All right, Jerry, you're sitting down. Imagine you're sitting down with the brain trust of the Conservative Party and they say, Jerry Butz, Jesus, you've got to tell us. What's your best advice for our situation here right now? Yeah, well, believe it or not, I do know a lot of those people and consider them friends. I won't name them so that they don't get shamed on Twitter or something or whatever Elon Musk is calling Twitter these days. whom, as you know, was a mentor and maybe my political idol, Dalton McGinty. And the other is a great political philosopher, Wayne from Letterkenny. And in the case of Dalton, Dalton used to have this saying, no matter where we were in the polls, he would say, never too high,

never too low, just relentless all the time. And I think if I'm in the conservative shoes right now, the biggest enemy is ebullience. It's getting a little too excited about the prospect of power. And they're probably surrounded by a lot of people who haven't had a lot of experience wielding power. And that feeling can get very hard to manage in a context like this one, where, as James was saying, there are probably a lot of those people in this latter category of people enjoying watching what's happening to the prime minister and to the party right now in the conservative ranks and the job of the leader in this immediate term is to calm people down and say now is it's sort of like that great picture of ali i think he's standing over is it joe frazier or sunny liston i can't remember where he's kind

of he's got his arm cocked but he doesn't throw the punch. I think that kind of reserve and resolve is what should be called for because people will be looking, regular Canadians will be looking at this drama. They don't look at politics very often closely, but I suspect this is one of those moments where they will be taking jersey numbers, right? They'll be looking at how everybody behaves in this situation and the way that the prospective next prime minister of the country behaves. We'll, you know, it'll leave a mark. And, you know, Wayne from Leonard Kenney used to have this saying on the show all the time that, you know, just take 20% off, you know, just dial it down 20%.

And you don't have to change your fundamental direction. You don't have to, obviously what you've been doing has been working for you. So you don't need to change radically, but maybe just dial it down a bit. And I think if he shows that kind of calm resolve in this moment, it will serve him really well. Have we ever seen anything like this moment before, like in our lives? I mean, somebody pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago that this is kind of like what happened to Diefenbaker in the early part of 1963 that led to the election that he lost. Yeah. But, you know, even I wasn't around for that.

Have we seen anything like this? I don't think so. I'll get something off my chest, which I've heard too many people say in the last couple of weeks, Peter, to me privately, raising the prospect of 1980, right, where the prime minister's father came out of retirement to lead the party in a victorious election. And I will remind the people who are too young to remember that. I think that's literally my first political memory. I think I was eight or nine years old when that happened.

Pierre Trudeau wasn't prime minister at the time. He was leader of the opposition and the Conservative Party had been in power for nine months and tabled what was until another of my mentors, Alan McKechn, outdid them a couple of years later, the most unpopular budget in Canadian history, which, by the way, featured a giant carbon tax. It's just kind of funny, right? It was an 18 cent per gallon tax on gasoline from John Crosby. So it was a totally different scenario. If there are any liberals out there kind of thinking about that as a framework, they should read history a little more closely. God, you make me feel so old. You were eight or nine. I was standing in the lobby outside when the government fell that night

in December of 79. And Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau, actually left, right? He said, I'm not running again. I'm out of here. Pick a new leader. And then suddenly he was back, thanks to Alan McKechn and others who arranged all that. James, have you ever seen anything like this moment before? Since 1984, there have been four transitions of government, either from red to blue or blue to red, right? And this is the first time since 1984 where we really had a sense that we knew what was likely going to happen in the next election campaign, that it was going to be a shift, it was going to be from red to blue. In 1993, of course, Kim Campbell started the campaign ahead, and then the ad and all that, and John Crichton won a big majority. And then in 2006,

we didn't know if Stephen Harper, if the new Conservative Party was going to hold, if we were going to win, if Paul Martin was sort of an overinflated stock that had to crack. But it happened that way. Justin Trudeau, Tom Mulcair, Stephen Harper, it was a three-way fight halfway through the campaign, 30-30-30. We didn't know. And then the final two weeks, Justin Trudeau took off and won. But each of those transitions of 1506 and 93,

in all those transition years, either from red to blue, blue to red, it was kind of a surprise. It was like, oh, okay, on election night, we kind of don't know, maybe we do know. 84, we knew. So this is the first time in 40 years where we kind of know pretty much what's going to happen. And it looks like we have a pretty good predictability about it, which means that, you know, the obligation on, on probably having the conservatives to treat this moment very seriously is there. And, you know, in terms of the structure of our conversation here, then for the liberals, you have very limited options about sort of the pathway ahead.

So it's not unprecedented, but it's extraordinarily rare. And people need to think about this, this, you know, slight window of history and sort of act accordingly as best as you can. Think back to 84. Think back to those windows of time where you kind of know what the transition dynamic looks like and accept reality on reality's terms.

All right. Let's stretch the window out a little bit now in terms of your advice to your foes. James, on the Liberals, you know, between kind of now and the next election, your advice to them? Because we're assuming they will be into a leadership race of some kind, and maybe just internal caucus or executive, or it could be the old way, what we describe now as the old way of electing a leader. What's your advice to Liber liberals right now for that stretch of time? Yeah, keeping to what I just said is when transitions do happen, it's rough and you're in the wilderness for a very long time. If you think about the transitions of 93, for example, or the

transition from 2015 and Stephen Harper. After the transition from 93, you know, the conservative movement fractured into two pieces, the PC party, the reform party, Canadian alliance, the dissident group of 13 MPs are sad as independents, then we came back together. It was messy and ugly. And it was internal civil war for a very long time. And as you think about the sequence of leaders that the conservative movement broadly had, not exactly in this order, and it's a little more complicated, but from Brian Mulroney to Kim Campbell, to Preston Manning, to Stockwell Day, to Joe Clark, to Peter McKay, to Stephen Harper, it took multiple leaders to find your footing and get it right, because you had to push out the old order because political parties

that are built around personalities, you develop habits, mores, dispositions, values, vocabularies, nomenclature around that person that is appropriate to that person that is not transferable to the next person. So know that as you go into a leadership transition, it's going to take a really long time

for you to find your footing on policy, on style, on personality. And what seems obvious today is not necessarily going to be the answer to the back end. When it was said that Pierre Palliev was likely going to be the next leader of the Conservative Party after Aaron O'Toole left, people laughed, right? And then there's that, you know, that saying, you know, first they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then you fight you, then you lose. Like that is true. And so, you know, you look at the Liberal Party after Paul Martin, the sequence of leaders that they had, whether, you know, from Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff and internal Bob,

like there's a cycle of leadership where you kind of rattle around and figure out your footing, know that that's going to happen. And when that happens, you know, you need to stay very grounded in terms of what your mission is, what your purpose is, what you're fighting for and have clarity. And if you're an incumbent Liberal Member of Parliament or Cabinet Minister, know that the journey between now and redemption, whenever that time comes, is a very long, very curvy, very humbling, very dispiriting grind. The prize waits at the end eventually in the fullness of time. But know that you're in for a very, very long gauntlet of heartbreak, trial and error.

You know, it's funny. I totally hear you on the length of time and all the different twists and turns that can happen over that period out of office. But when one looks at the history books, it's really not that long a time, right? It's sort of 8, 9, 10, maybe 11 years at the most or shorter. You know, we get used to the number of times I've read, and not only read, but taken part in conversations about the Liberal Party is dead, they'll never return. I remember the first time that was actually 79. You know, there was this feeling that, you know,

Clark could be in power for a long time, even though he was starting off with a minority, and that the Liberals had been reduced to whatever it was, you know, a number of seats, more so in 84, I guess, when Turner came back with 40 or so seats, that they were done. They were finished. They'd never come back. So there is redemption at the end of a road.

It may take a while, as James suggests. But the liberals would be wise to, and we'll get to this in a minute, and obviously I'll let Jerry speak in a second here, but therefore how this ends for the Liberal Party in the next whatever, three months, six months, nine months, how this ends sets up whether or not you can bounce back because the foundation of the Liberal Party right now is so cracked, so broken because they've wrapped themselves in messianic leadership.

And then once that leader goes, what's left? The foundation is so shaky right now. It does lead one to wonder whether or not the Liberal Party can endure, should the defeat be as devastating as some people think. Do you think they understand that? I'm asking you as the guy who's sitting in the room with liberals giving them advice. You're looking across the table. Do you think they get it the way you just said it?

I think increasingly they are because the number of people, whereas the Atlantic Liberal Caucus, the Quebec Liberal Caucus, liberal MPs who are younger and I think have a longer time horizon, way past Justin Trudeau, the fact that they're publicly coming out and speaking like this, the drip, drip, drip that we predicted on this show months ago is happening. So there's a little bit of an order to the disorder. Okay.

Jerry, your advice in this sort of medium term. Well, I can't resist just adding. I knew there'd be some liquidity here, but I think, and I'll personally plug the sub stack. I wrote about this over Christmas that I think the liberal party, sometimes parties do disappear, Peter. And while the conservatives won the election in 2006, the progressive conservatives were an artifact of history by that time. And it was the progressive conservatives that got annihilated in 1993 by that very strange election where the party had fractured in a bunch of different ways. There's no, I said this in my piece, but there's no law of nature that guarantees the continuance of the liberal party. And I remember going back to mindful of what you said, it's death has been predicted many times, but going back into the,

my personal vault, when we were putting the Trudeau leadership campaign together, I remember saying to people, you've got to be excited by the fact that there's no ceiling and no floor on this. And if you're in, if you're in this worried about, if you're in that crash position at that point, and you're worried about protecting illusory territory that we don't really hold, then we're going to do really poorly. But if you kind of embrace the possibilities here, then the upside is pretty enormous. So I think that's still true about the Liberal Party. I think it's very, I differ slightly with James's characterization of what it's become

under Trudeau's leadership, but I think it doesn't have a natural home base right now. And that's really tough in times where you're being assailed on all sides, that the conservative party under Stephen Harper knew it could retreat to the prairies, sleep in its native soil for strength and come back stronger. And it's not obvious where the native soil for the Liberal Party is right now. Yeah, the base of support when you get down to the bare metal for the Liberal Party, like it used to be said, you know, 416, you know, West Island and Montreal and all that. That's all at risk now from the bloc, from the conservatives, from the vote split, all that. It's true. So then you think, well, what's the ideological base? Well, of course, in my view, the Liberal Party has shifted so far to

the left that they've sort of consumed the New Democrat space such as it was that was there. But of course, in our first-past-the-post system, that the difference between the conservatives being at 40 or 45 and the Liberals being at 20 or 25, that vector of 20 to 25 is the difference between 90 seats or three seats. So like when you get to that kind of a gap, it's genuinely catastrophic for the party. And once you're in a saw for party status, then it's over. And then that's when you see things really shake up on the left side of the spectrum. Yeah. So to get back to your question, Peter, I've been involved in two transitions from opposition to government, taking over the government from the Harris-Sieves government in

Ontario in 2003, and then from the Harper government in 2015. And I remember the lead up in both those cases, the outcome was uncertain. But especially with Dalton, Dalton insisted that he be ready with a plan to govern the province the day after the election. And I don't know who's doing the transition work for Polyev. And there's almost superstition in politics that you don't want to spend too much time on your transition binders. But if I were in his shoes, I would be said I would be spending a lot of time thinking about

personnel, who I want in my key cabinet portfolios, who I want running my office. And most importantly, and you see this happening with my friends in Great Britain, they had a terrible 100 days, first 100 days. And it's difficult to recover from that because you really, the old cliche that you only get one chance to make a first impression is absolutely true in your personal life. It's even truer as a government. And if you don't stick that landing, uh, you're going to have trouble no matter how popular you are on election day and the time to get ready to stick that landing. Um, as Bill Parcells used to say, this is why we lift all those weights, right? Uh, it's in, in the fourth quarter and we're in the fourth quarter now. And he I were him, that's the kind of thing I'd be thinking about.

Okay, let's shift it to that window that runs up to the election. And I'm wondering, Jerry, why don't you start for us now? And the election campaign itself. Does what you're saying change at all for that period, for your advice for for conservatives or is that pretty much the same? No, it changes a little, Peter, because I think this is really hard for, in my experience, for political people to wrap their heads around because you are in it. Your face is pressed up against the glass. You're thinking about these complex matters 24 hours a day. You're plotting your strategy. You're choosing your campaign themes. You're building your advertising stack. You're writing your policy platform. All of those things you are thinking about 24 hours a day if you're running a campaign. What you're not thinking about, and as my wife often says, the problem with people who lack self-awareness is their lack of self-awareness.

You're not thinking about the fact that for most people in the country, especially coming from opposition, they are taking a hard, close look at your candidate for the first time. And you get a chance to decide, especially if you've got a lead of this magnitude and coffers that are overflowing with potential advertising dollars, you've got a chance to present your candidate in exactly the way he or she wants to be presented. And they should be spending a lot of time thinking about that because while they have a 20 point lead, I would suspect if history is any guide, three quarters of the country hasn't given Pierre Pauly much thought, right? It may even be higher than that. So they really have a chance with an open ice to skate on to make a first impression when the Klieg lights come on.

And that's a very valuable moment in a politician's career. All right, James, advice for the Liberals. You know, one has to assume they'll have a new leader. They will have done whatever they've done for a period of months, and then they're suddenly into an election campaign. What's your advice to them? New leaders should make it very clear to the Liberal Caucus, you need to decide by this time in 48 hours whether or not you're in or whether or not you are out. You'll have had time to think about this through the leadership race, whether or not I was

going to be the leader or not. But I am the leader. I need to know within 48 hours if you're in and if you're out. And if you're out, I appreciate the service that you've had. And I expect you to leave gracefully, respect the democratic mandate that I have as the new leader to lead this party and to move forward and to allow me to go on and fight the good fight. And I wish you well in the next chapter of your life. But you have to respect the democratic fact that i'm the liberal leader and i'm going to move forward and do this and

then i think you very quickly pivot and you you pick up arms and you start getting really aggressive about pierre paulie i've been challenging him along the lines of what jerry described right i think you go very very hard at the open um open ground that exists on policy that doesn't exist right now in a lot of places in the Conservative Party. They've been allowed to, I think, run in the same direction as the Liberals, as Liberals have been chasing, trying to chase away from the realities of the cost of living pressures and the, and the, and all the crises that we've been having as a result of inflation, as a result of the economy and all that. And Liberals have never found their footing.

And I think it's very important for that new leader to make it very clear to the Canadians that there is stability, there is purpose, there is clarity. We are going in a certain direction. I do have grips. I have a wholesale change of cabinet and make it very clear that Canadians, you are going to have your say on what I, but let me give you a taste. Let me give you a taste of the new direction of things. And I think stylistically, substantively, in terms of personnel, you would notice a very clear pivot from the past. And of course, it'll be more difficult if the new liberal leader comes from within the current tent, or if they come in from the outside, the dynamic will be a little bit more challenging in terms of getting people to agree to have that graceful

exit. But the ability to have a refresh will be even more pronounced and obvious. And I think they need to just get very aggressive and very clear about what the choices are in front of them. And these ads that I'm seeing from the Liberals now from over the Christmas break are, you know, being concerned about the Pierre Polyev cuts and, oh my God, what does this mean to my, I mean, that stuff is child's play compared to, I think, the ammunition that's going to be needed to try to fight against Pierre Polyev. One comment on what Jerry said, though, I have to say about Pierre Polyev. I think it's true.

And I think conservatives know that it's true that, you know, because he's been so far in the polls now for a year and a half, right, 15, 20 points up in the polls, that the point about the transition for conservatives is very pronounced, I think, in the minds of the public. I think Jerry's right that a lot of the public hasn't felt a hard and clear opinion of Pierre Polyev, but they will because of the nature of his presentation, the nature of his communication, the nature of his approach. I think opinions of Pierre will harden very quick and very fast. And so there's a very narrow window there. And also because I think Canadians have been telling

pollsters for a year and a half, we don't like the current government. We want change. We don't like the government. We want change. And the Liberals lost the popular vote in the last two campaigns. So the public has really been primed for change. And they've said to the Conservatives, we're ready for change and you're next. You're next. You're going to get the keys. You're next. Be ready. You're next. And then when the election day comes and the keys get dropped into the hands, you're next. And then when the election day comes and the keys get dropped into the hands, you're next. Now go. You better hit the ground running because you had a year and a half head start of clarity from the voters to say, you're next, be ready. And so when you get the keys in

your hand, make sure you know what to do. Shift it into first, two hands on the wheel, shift it into second, clear the intersection and go, go and head to the horizon and show me what you got. It's true that governments are defeated. In order to win government, the public has to really want the current government out. True. But when you win a majority government, it's because the public really wants you to govern and they're ready for you. Know that. And so that when you get that opportunity, know where the horizon is and have two hands in the wheel and drive with purpose and clarity. And that expectation of high expectations and a short honeymoon are what awaits the conservatives should the election go as pollsters predict. That may well be why you see increasingly in the interviews that Polyev is doing, and he's very selective about who he's doing interviews with, as we all know. But in those interviews, he's, he's signaling what he's going to,

what he would do like right away, like day one almost. And it's like significant stuff, you know? So it's interesting because that's, that's starting to play out now as well. But part of the reason why he does the Jordan Peterson interview is that Jordan Peterson gives him an open door, and he doesn't quickly challenge him on every sentence, and yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but. He allows him to speak freely, which, by the way, if you don't like Jordan Peterson and you don't like Pierre Polyev,

that's fine. You should want Pierre Polyev to speak in an unchallenged way for over an hour and to get his views out there in an unthreatened environment. That's a good thing. That's a healthy thing, so that he's not on defensive and you know you know you know doing the apple thing and fighting with like that's a healthy and a good thing and it allows him an opportunity to sort of get this stuff out there and have again some some clarity and a sense of

purpose about um the direction that he wants to go and i think that's those are that's a positive i don't i don't disagree with that in theory And I've always been a believer in the way I interview. Everybody has different interview styles, but I've always believed that you let them speak. That doesn't mean you let them speak unchallenged on points, but you allow them their time, their moment to express their opinions and the direction they would want to go. You can still follow that up with questions challenging the record they have on those particular issues. Anyway, I want to take our quick break and then we come back and there's one question left. And it would be your advice, both of you, to a different party. And that basically being the NDP.

What's your advice in this period, this overall period of the next six months or so, to the NDP? And we'll get that right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Moore-Butts conversation number 18. James Moore, Gerald Butts. And we're trying to kind of look ahead and get advice from the two of these political masters as to what their advice would be. What we did in the first segment was to their political foes. This is still a political foe, but it's both of them contributing advice for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. What do you say to them at this moment in the political life of the country? Jerry, why don't you start? Well, let me start by saying I'm glad I escaped

having to discuss with you the appropriate way to interview somebody, because if I had the temerity to tell Peter Mansbridge how he should do an interview, I think my mother would come back and haunt me for it. We loved your mom and still do today. I think I think in the case of the NDP, and this is tough advice, but I think they should change their leader. And they should do it before there's an election. And if I were an NDP partisan, I would be screaming from the rooftops that there is a once in a lifetime opportunity in front of them if they had someone like, I don't there's no juice left in the liberal brand. And I'm not saying whether I think that's true or not. But if it is true, then somebody is going to contest Pierre Poiliev in the election. And I have a hard time seeing that be Jagmeet Singh.

So I think like all politicians, and I respect them all for their public service, Jagmeet has had a pretty open runway for a long time, and he hasn't gotten the plane off the ground. And if I were a new Democrat, I would be drawing a pretty firm conclusion that he's never going to get the plane off the ground. Now, I may beat those words. He may have the campaign of his life and could end up, we could have another orange wave somewhere in the country as we did with Jack Layton. I'm sure there were people writing off Jack Layton a few months before the 2011 election campaign. But I have a hard time seeing it under his leadership right now. And you have to be pretty cold-blooded about these

opportunities when they arise. And I'll tell you why I say it, Peter. I remember almost with PTSD, the period after Rachel Notley won the election in Alberta in 2015. And we had a, I personally held deep conviction that the country was, not to be disrespectful of Mr. Harper. I have a lot of respect for what Mr. Harper accomplished, especially on the political side. But the country was done with him. And I think we drew that as a firm strategic conclusion going into the election year 2015 and had anticipated that the fight was not going to be so much. Are we done with Harper? But who's going to replace him? And could we be that party? And as always happens, events, dear boy events, the famous cliche in politics. When Rachel Notley beat the conservatives in Alberta on May 5th,

I think it was, or 6th, and it just so happened the next day we were launching our platform, I was like, holy smokes, this is trouble. And I don't think the new Democrats realized what an opportunity they had, because those clean lights we talked about that Canadians don't shine on their politicians very often. They were ready to take a close look at the New Democrats and kick their tires in the period between the middle of May and the middle of July in 2015. And had they been ready for their close-up at that point, they would have won the 2015 election. I really believe that. And they weren't. And we needed a break to go our way. And we finally got one. And then we won the election.

But I actually think the New Democrats are in a pretty strong position if they had a leader that could articulate a pretty, you know, a steady state center left policy platform. James, I think I think all that's true. And Jagmeet Singh should be thanking his lucky stars that there isn't a star on the bench sitting next to him or behind him in the liberal caucus who was pushing through on social media, who is creative with their communications, was thoughtful bilingual and aggressive and presented well in in such a way that would that would create him real problems i mean no offense to the current liberal caucus but i see no one there no one there who is an heir apparent so everything jerry said is true uh and judgment saying is lucky

but the circumstance you're meaning the ndp caucus right what's that the remaining caucus yeah exactly uh you know and there's a difference between drug you know jack layton uh you know he didn't do well uh in in 04 he didn't do well in 06 didn't do well uh in in 08 and then 2011 he hit the ground and he found a magic elixir mostly because the liberals fell apart and jerry's point is right that he could that there could be a dynamic here where the liberals could take off and move up. But there's something about Jagmeet Singh that I think is that there's so much evidence about his lack of judgment. And frankly, I think a lack of substance. We all have phones with 4K screens and we look into them. And as the kids say, real recognizes real. And it's real recognizes

real in terms of substance, but also in terms of sincerity. And Jack Layton, you could disagree with him, but you can tell that there was an earnest sincerity there from a guy who was saying the same things in 2006 and eight and 11, that he was saying in 1976 and 1986 and 1996, that he was this, he would, there was a consistency in there of his character and personality. And he was earnest and sincere. And Jagmeet's saying, I don't get the sense of any of that. And his command of the issues is weak. The performances that he's had about, you know, we're tearing up this agreement or, you know, all the options on the table and all these super cringy press conferences, I think have ruled him out as a

serious option for people who are looking for a serious option. And I think Jerry's right that if everything goes pear-shaped for the liberals and conservatives win a serious option. And I think Jerry's right that if everything goes pear-shaped for the Liberals and Conservatives win a big majority, and then you have Justin Trudeau goes, there's a new leader, the leader is unsuccessful anyway, Pierre Poliev wins, there's a big majority. Liberals will go into a tailspin over whether or not the new leader who was Prime Minister briefly but failed and then didn't get elected, should they stay on? There'll be a year because Liberals will take themselves very seriously as a big monolith party and all that. New Democrats would be very wise after Jagmeet Singh has failed now twice to strike hard, get rid of him, get a new leader, get very aggressive

and displace the liberals as the as the option, frankly, for English Canada, should the Bloc Québécois pop and do well, like the window of opportunity there to strike and strike hard while the liberals are broken, demoralized, you know, navel-gazing, self-obsessed, you know, in the wilderness as Canada's governing party in the third or fourth place in Parliament, that opportunity, you better grab onto it with both hands and ride it till the wheels come off. Last quick point.

The pictures you've painted in this last, you know, almost hour, did they all change if Justin Trudeau's gone? I've said most of what I've said on the assumption that Justin Trudeau's gone. I think if he stays, it gets more catastrophic for them. But the transitions that are happening are, I think, really apparent. The tectonic plates are shifting and it's resulting in certain tides, which are resulting in certain waves. But the tectonic plates are shifting and it's over. Jerry, last word. I think the hardest thing for people to do, not just politicians, but politicians are never.

Suffer from self-doubt, you know, and we do. We just don't show it. Well, you're an exception though, James. Believe me, they don't often suffer from self-doubt. And I think the hardest thing to appreciate for all of the people we've been talking about is that unlike the other elections we've been talking about, we are at a really critical moment in history globally, right? That the post-war order is dead. There's no clear sense of what's going to replace it. We can't rely on the Americans anymore.

That much is obvious. And it's not really clear what Canada's place in this emerging world will be. So, you know, approach this moment with a lot of humility would be my advice for everybody involved. Try and keep the windshield really clear so that you can see all around you. This is all going to happen very fast. This, frankly, the only moment I can remember, and certainly in my lifetime, that even approximates what we're going through now is 1989. And I remember in 1990, I was in a full year course called Government and Politics of the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union broke up at Christmas time. I do think we're living through a moment of that magnitude. The global order is

changing that rapidly and that decisively. So if you happen to be in a position of authority now or a position of political leadership, the palette is very broad, right? You can choose to be whoever you want to be and you can choose to promote whatever it is you truly believe in. And thinking carefully about that before a microphone, before you're on the business end of a microphone, delivering your first press conference as prime minister is really important. All right. We're going to leave it at that. It's been another fascinating more butts conversation and look forward to the

next one. Who knows what the lineup will look like by then. Whatever it looks like, it's going to be interesting and fascinating to talk about. So gentlemen, thank you both for this, and we'll talk to you again soon. Thank you.

The Moore-Butts Conversation number 18. Great to have James Moore and Gerald Butts in the house, especially on this day. Now, as we were recording this, things are happening. They're probably a lot clearer now while you're listening to this. But I think everything that we talked about in that conversation applies no matter what the decisions of this day are, because it's the decisions that are going to be made later,

in the days and weeks, possibly months ahead, that are going to have the most impact. It's just like that Andrew Coyne social media post I read at the beginning of the program. There are so many questions that need to be taken into account now, and how the various parties react to answering those questions will determine a lot about our future how about the future of the bridge this week listen things are so in flux i can't tell you i like i wish i knew but i don't know a lot of this is going to be made up on the fly um you know the basic structure of our week, and we'll maintain that. I've talked to Janice Stein, by the way, a number of times over the weekend.

She's fascinated by this story as well. But the odds are we're going to be leaving her input aside for this week, and we'll start off next week with Janice, because there's just too much happening on the political front in Canada to be looking at. As challenging as those stories are in Ukraine, Russia, Middle East, Syria, Iran, you name it, we're going to leave those for a few days. I will say this about Thursday, about your turn,

because I would still like to hear from you on this crazy week. I kind of watch on your mind your turn for Thursday. And, you know, don't necessarily jump the gun. Sometimes when I announce these things, people write like immediately, like, well, the program's still on the air. You've got a couple of days to think this one through. The deadline is Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern time. Writing to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

The question is, what's on your mind on this crazy week as we start off a new year with all kinds of new possibilities? So what's on your mind? Make sure you give your name and the location you're writing from and keep your answers brief. That way we can get as many in as possible. But give it some thought. Be innovative. Be different.

Looking forward to hearing from you. All right, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Be innovative. Be different. Looking forward to hearing from you. All right, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Enjoy the day. Who knows what's still to come. Talk to you then. Bye for now.