The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore-Butts: How To Deal With Political Stress

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

I received a number of letters this week from loyal Bridge listeners and viewers on two topics worth exploring. From Albertans worried about being "stressed out" by the referendum in their province and what it may mean for them and the country. And from British Columbians with related concerns about the upcoming BC election and the impact it may have on the rest of Canada. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday, and on this Tuesday, it's a more buts conversation, but that's not going to start for just a couple of minutes, because I've got some things I've got to tell you, first of all. First up, I hope you had a great holiday weekend. Thanksgiving is always a treat. I hope yours was treat for you as well.

But Thanksgiving meant we were in repeat yesterday. It was an encore edition of Good Talk, actually. It was a good one. But it meant no Dr. Janice Stein. And I know for some of you, Mondays, you need your Janice. Well, Janice is up for tomorrow. This week only. It'll be a Wednesday, Dr. Janice Stein conversation.

And the other thing we've got to tell you today is what the question of the week is, because there was no show yesterday. We've got to give you a hint as to what the question is, because you've only got, but. about 28 hours, 27 hours, to answer it. The question is, you know, we've had a lot of kind of political questions lately. This one is not a political question. It's more of a personal question.

And it's, you know, we'd like to throw these in every once in a while just to get a better understanding of who we're dealing with out there. Well, here's the question. Have you had a habit that you wish you could break? Now, maybe a habit you've just developed or one you've had for a month or one you've had for a year or one you've had for 30 years. But you've wanted to break it. And so far you have not been able to break that habit. Could be a good habit, could be a bad habit, but you wanted to break it.

Or the question can be this. Have you had a habit you were successful in breaking? What was it and how did you break it? Okay. So there are your questions or question for the week. Got it? You know the routine. Maximum 75 words. You write to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. You include your name and the location you're writing from.

All of those conditions are important. You have to match them. Okay. So there you go. There's your question, the conditions. Janice Stein tomorrow. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. And coming up right after this,

we'll have Moore Butts in their latest conversation. All right, well, here they are, James Moore, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister and Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau. Gentlemen, I had actually more than a few letters this week from people who are living in Alberta and people who are living in BC. and there's a similarity to the concerns being expressed, although the issues are different.

In Alberta, it's about the referendum. In BC, it's about the election. The Alberta one struck me first. It's kind of the stress factor involved in the decision that Albertans are making. I mean, I think sometimes when we look from different parts of the country, we say, well, you know, the polls say that one side's way ahead, they can't be that difficult.

But clearly what I'm hearing in these letters is the stressful nature in Alberta of the referendum question and to a degree in BC, stress based around the fact that people think, some people have written anyway, think that the rest of Canada doesn't understand the big decisions that are having to be made in BC, because of this, you know, in this election.

So I want to separate them first. And let's deal with the Alberta one, first of all. James, what do you make of that? Does it surprise you that we'd hear something like that? No, because what Alberta is going through is not just an election campaign. It's a very core question about governance and Alberta's place in Canada, or whether or not Canada respects you as a group of citizens whose livelihood, sense of identity and purpose going back generations as being respected by the country.

So I think it's a deeper thing. When I used to teach political science, we always tell students that government is answering the question, how should we live together? That's what government is. How should we live together? We don't live as, you know, how big should government be? How much you're prepared to pay for? How much do you circumscribed freedom?

the question of how do we live together? And if you have the view that the project of Canada doesn't respect and doesn't understand and doesn't treat you fairly and you have a certain perspective on that, and a family member with whom you have laughed and cried and bled and loved and all that, and they think that you're wrong, that's a very, very deep personal disagreement. And if the rest of the country doesn't pay attention to it or just kind of treats it as, oh, Daniel Smith doesn't understand it. Jason Kenny is stoking the fires. No, this is not good. This is just about Justin Trudeau.

Well, as people to get together over Thanksgiving weekend and people get together every now and then and you look across the table and you see somebody close to your family who doesn't get your sense of belonging within the country and how you feel it's being disrespected, that's big. That matters. And it's more than just, let's just choose a politician for the next 24 to 48 months to be my MLA or to be my member of parliament. Now, this is, for a lot of people, it's very deeply personal. And the rest of the country just sort of treats it as, you know, well, there goes Alberta again. Like, yeah, it's personal.

And I think that elections are serious and people take it very seriously. And when questions of identity and your place in Canada happens, I think, and you don't feel the rest of the country understands what you're wrestling with in your family and your personal life, I think, I think that it has an emotional rebound. Gerald. Well, Peter, I mean, I think that as someone who has a lot of family in Alberta, I think that the vast majority of people who want their province to remain part of their country are extremely stressed out about the people who have thrust this debate upon them without any deliberation in the election. And I hear where James is coming from, that you never want to be in a position where you're Hillary. clinton people who disagree with you. And I certainly am with him on that. But I also think that

we've got to be clear about how this whole thing came about. You know, Daniel Smith did campaign on having a referendum. There was no talk of Alberta leaving the country during the last provincial election campaign. Yet here we are with the threat of a very aggressive and very, you know, real threat from the Great Republic to our south, which is just licking its lips and enjoying watching separatist talk in different parts of the country. So I think that I agree with James, and you really want to be careful about how you argue the case for Canada.

But the case has to be made, right? And I think that a lot of the people in Alberta who are making, the case are doing a good job of it. I think I predicted back in the lot of just before we broke for the summer that Stephen Harper would intervene decisively in this campaign. There's still a week left. I hope he does. I know he wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail, but I suspect that writing a piece in

the Globe is not the best way to reach swing voters in Alberta. So I hope that he intervenes. I'm sure the Prime Minister will have something to say about this. this week and hopefully the vote goes in the right direction decisively. But let's not paper over the fact that we shouldn't be here. And if we were to get here, one would hope that you would get here in a transparent way unlike the opposite of the way that the government of Alberta has brought us here. Yeah, I'm more sympathetic to Jerry's worldview on this.

That's sort of where I align. I'm just sort of, you know, trying to be empathetic to the other side and all that. I also think that there are, you know, there's a lot of, when David Cameron went down the road playing games with Brexit and after, geez, I look what happened. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like a decade or two later, yeah, look what happened. Here we are.

And so the gamesmanship about trying to keep your coalition together by placating some dark forces, I don't think it'll be realized in Alberta as a course of the referendum, but I think it will be within the United Conservative Party. And so they're going to have, but there's going to be a very long tale to all of this drama they've imposed themselves. But I also think that, you know, we always, you can't avoid you saying the name. But Donald Trump in 2016 had a shock effect, right? I mean, three hours before that election was, and the polls were closed in the west coast of the United States, you know, New York Times, the best brains about, you know, analytics on American politics said there was a 99% chance that where Clinton was going to be president in the United States. Here we are. you know, again, you know, more than a decade later with that trauma and people are sort of figuring that out. So I think anytime you roll the dice and you call a campaign in a very passionate thing with things like foreign interference with the digitization of information and the manipulation of things and hot tempers and real issues and grievances and all that, you roll the dice, that yeah, yeah, you can roll snake eyes.

It can happen. It can happen. Okay. Let me, you've both opened up a number of avenues that are worth pursuing. And first of all, I mean, to be fair to Stephen Harper, I think that PC Road also ended up in the Calgary Herald and the National Post or he's written a series of them for different papers. I don't know. But it's been around. But you're right. He hasn't made the big speech somewhere yet. And that may well happen in the final days of this campaign.

And also to defend my former boss, he didn't start this mess. He criticized heavily Daniel Smith when she created the. that process. And, and yeah, I know we're not specific partisan. He wasn't Justin Trudeau, who stoked a lot of the flames and fires around this. And Alberta was quite happily in content in Confederation at the time when he was Prime Minister. Yeah, James. Not to start a fight, not to start a fight. You could go ahead and counterpunch, counter. Well, I'll count this all, this all started with a firewall letter 20 years ago. Oh, 30 years ago. That's why Alberta's pissed off in one time. No, it's not. It's not why, Albert. But you raised David Cameron and

David Cameron is a germane example here that lots of people on all sides of the political spectrum, my party in Quebec more times than I'd like to see, especially, and they got burned for it, especially under Michael Ignatius' leadership, have played footsy with these forces all over the country. And sometimes the case is the case that is to be made, the case that is often made, I should say, is that you'd rather have these people within a big tent party than outside, agitating and creating fractious movements. And you can make that case. But James, honestly, the caucus of the Conservative Party right now,

and the Conservative Party, as it exists, is a creature of Stephen Harper. And I'm not, I don't want to go down that road. But I would, go ahead, finish. But just to finish, the Conservative caucus in Alberta has said, precious little about this. And Alberta, if you look at their electoral record in the last 90, almost 100 years, there have been 53 elections in Alberta, provincially and federally. In 52 of those elections, the conservative option on the ballot has won the majority of seats.

So the Conservative Party and all of its various manifestations has been running the province of Alberta for a century. And here we are. Well, look, the conservative party, The current federal conservative caucus in Alberta is a creature of Stephen Howard. No, you can count, I think, on one hand the number of them who are actually members of Stephen Harper's caucus. The conservative caucus of Stephen Harper is found in people like Jason Kenney and Ronna Ambrose, the late Jim Prentice, James Rajat, others who have been aggressive, forceful voices on the other side. You know, Ted Menzies, I can go on and on. The number of current members of conservative caucus who are from Alberta who served under Stephen Harper is very, very small.

So that's not a fair thing to say. And second, those who were members of Stephen Harper's caucus and cabinet from Alberta are some of the most aggressive voices condemning the separatist movement on social media and elsewhere who are in the fight and doing all that. Dane Lloyd, for example, who's been tasked by Pierre Paul Yev and all this. I don't doubt. I don't disagree, Jane. We've talked about this before.

The Trump impact. And I think it's the current conservative caucus in Alberta has deeper roots, frankly, with Andrew Shearer than it does with Stephen Harper. And there is a difference. There is a difference. I think, look, I'm not trying to criticize Prime Minister Harper. I think he's conducted himself really well in this. And again, I wouldn't be wishing for him to more forcefully intervene if I didn't think he could be a constructive force.

My point is not about the conservative caucus in Alberta being a creature of Stephen Harper, but the way the conservative party is currently constituted is a creature of Stephen Harper. And we can go down that rabbit hole, if you like, but it's the way it's fun, it's the way it chooses its leaders. There are, of course, members of the caucus that you served in who are loud voices on the other side, Grant Hill being chief amongst them. But, you know, this is probably not a productive route to go down

because we want to bring everybody together. And this is the point, right? Yeah, on that point, let me hear your, you know, your experiences that can help in a professional way. One of the letters I got was, from a person who said they've had great relationship with their next door neighbor for years. They can't even talk to each other right now because one believes that Canada is not the future

and the other believes that Canada is the future. But they literally can't talk to each other. They can't look at each other. That's the depth of which it's got for them. I don't know how typical they are of the situation in Alberta, but it's stark when you read it. What do you say to them? What do you say to this guy who says, what do I do?

How do I deal with this? Well, I think you got to keep talking even if it hurts, frankly, and try and find the Paris as the capital of France, part of the argument that you agree on. Maybe they're both Flames fans, maybe they're both Oilers fans, Maybe their kids are in the same, on the same soccer team. Like, who knows, but you've got to work hard in moments like this. I was living in Montreal when the 95 referendum happened.

I was a very terrified grad student because the campaign started the same way. You're eerily reminiscent to the comments I've heard on the election in both the PQ government and the start of this Alberta campaign. Don't worry, we're way ahead. Nothing's ever going to happen. And then we come within what, 1.1.1. and two percentage points of losing the country, something like 50,000 votes. So I think that the constructive conversations and situations like these begin with an

acknowledgement of how the other side is feeling. And it sounds like our listener is having a hard time being empathetic. And I get that because they feel like this person is causing irreparable harm to my family and my community and they can't see it. and the other person is thinking the same thing. But, you know, if your neighbors, you got to figure out a way to reach across the fence and just talk about something that has nothing to do with politics, would be my advice. Yeah, I think that's sound advice.

I mean, that's just sort of an EQ human relations kind of thing, right? Like you talk about the flames, talk about the oilers. God, I hope they sign McDavid. Like, you know, there's a little subtle things where you look for a moment where, you know, you're going out and you're picking up your garbage cans and bringing them in at the end of the day. You kind of look at each other and you kind of go, how's it going? It does quite a storm the other day, hey?

You know, hey, but I saw you got a new truck. Like, it sounds, it sounds, you know, dumb and cheaper. Like, for those little moments, and I've had to cross some of those bridges. I, I, in the conservative, it's super personal, but like, in the conservative movement, since I left politics in 2015, there have been two big cracks for me and a lot of people who are members of the conservative, broad conservative family. One is Donald Trump. I've been a number of Trump conservative from.

day one. And in the early days of Donald Trump in 2015, 16, 17, there are a lot of people who went down that road and, you know, almost all of them have now drifted back. But, but a lot of people thought it was fun. It was interesting because he's anti-left and all the sort of origin story of Trump and why some, you know, you can sort of empathize, but I never thought it was interesting or fun or funny or cute or a cool adventure. When he mocked a disabled reporter, I mean, just with my son and his health challenges, I just instantly found him offensive and wrong and awful in every single way. And I've never left that stance.

And it cost me some friendships. And some of those friendships will never come back. But there are certain things in which I can never understand why people tolerated the intolerable. There's that. And the second one was COVID. I'm pro vaccine. I believe in science. I believe in health science.

And again, through the lens of my son, he's because of his health condition and his scoliosis and his limited lung capacity. If he got COVID, it could kill him. could have killed him. And so where your personal freedom begins and my son's right to live begins, when those things come in collision and you refuse to take reasonable precautions in order to protect the most vulnerable, I have a real problem with that. And when you yell in my face, freedom, freedom, freedom, I look at my son and I say his life, his life, his life. And so for, for me anyways, like it was deeply personal. Some of those friendships have slowly melted from the

thaw and come back. Some of them never will. And the, There are moments where you just, I'm prepared to let some friendships go. And some of those friendships had a time horizon of, you know, 2000 to 2017. And it was fun while it lasted. But there are certain things about which I just can't and I need to move on. And other ones, we will talk about the Canucks. We will talk about hockey. We'll talk about life.

We'll talk about other things. And we'll repair. But the fullness of time will present those people who are prepared to be reasonable and understand my perspective and be respectful. What is the role of political leadership in a moment like this? Now, once again, I don't know how representative these letters are of what's happening generally in either Alberta or BC, and we'll get to BC in a moment. But is there a role for political leaders who are involved in this debate right now, in how they keep in mind what's happening at the level of those who are we going to be doing the voting.

And what is it that they should keep in mind and how should they act as a result of that? Jerry? Well, I think it's true in all times in my view, but it's especially true in hot moments like this, that political leaders, it's their job to articulate a positive vision of what the country has been is without without papering over its faults, but what it can be in the future. You know, we've got at our,

we are lucky to live in probably the most improbable, but amazing country that human beings have ever thought up for one another. And I know James and Peter you both agree with that. And it's easy to lose sight of that because it's human nature to take for granted the good things in your life and focus on the bad. And I think that political leadership and moments like this needs to remind people in Alberta

and people everywhere of all the amazing things we've done together. You know, I know there are lots of debates and disputes about Alberta's ability to develop its resources in Canada, but, you know, I, for one, who take kind of a global view of this by virtue of my work these days, you look at this century, which is now 26 years old, and there are only two countries in the world that have increased their oil production and exports

more than we have in Canada, and those are the United States and Russia. So, you know, there's a lot to be proud of in how we've developed Alberta's resources together, how Albertans have done it, with the support of governments of different stripes. You know, the capital cost allowance back in the 97 budget really kicked off

the rush and the oil sands. The Harper government certainly supported it. It even grew under Trudeau, notwithstanding the rhetoric you hear to the contrary. And of course, you have in Prime Minister Carney, someone who's very anxious to build infrastructure that will help get those resources to market. So I think if you're in a position of political leadership

at a moment like this, it's incumbent upon you to remind people of how far we've come and all of the things that are possible if we stick together. I think that's right and I think is well put. Somebody wrote a piece years ago called the missing tile syndrome. And the analog was you're seeing in an incredible theater and you look up this beautiful, ornate theater and this incredible waiting for a show to start. And you see this in the corner, there's this one tile that's missing.

And you look up and you say, I wonder what happened there. Where did that tile go? How long has it been missing? When are they going to replace it? Is there another tile that's going to fall down? I wonder if you stick your head to that tile and you look around, what's up there? Is it going to leak? Is something going to fall out of that?

What's going on? And you miss the entire gorgeous, incredible fear that's in front of you and the majesty of what you're sitting in and this incredible architecture and the beauty of this moment. And you just kind of can't stop looking up in the corner of this one missing tile and think, what the hell's going on there? And when is that going to be fixed? And it's part of human nature. And it's a Darwinian impulse, right? where are we, and it's human beings, we're pattern seeking mammals. We look into the horizon.

We try to see what's wrong and how to fix it. It's a survival instinct that we have as human beings. And that's good and it's great. But it's even better is if you know that that's what your instinct is and you need to take in the majesty of the whole theater. And in Canada, you know, there's a version of that. And you're, you started the question, Peter, by saying, you know, what is there a role for political leadership and all this?

I think, yeah. when we had a terrorist attack on Parliament Hill, and a young man was killed at the Senate, and a parliamentary security officer was shot in the foot, and that whole trauma happened. The very next day for Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau to share a moment, and Tom Mulcair as well, to share a moment, and to come into the floor of the Parliament of Canada,

and shake hands put their arm around each other and say, you know, we've got this, we're good as a kind of, like those little subtle things. I always kind of like, and it's kind of got me, a little bit corny, but I was kind of like in the leaders' debates around where a moderator will say, you know, say something positive about the other leader. What do you like most about them and whatever? And it's just kind of a moment where you kind of realize that, you know, we, we disagree aggressively on a few things, but we all agree on this brilliant project of Canada

or British Columbia or Alberta. And it's just a slight wink and telling the voters disagree, put your fangs away, put your fit, unball your fists. It's okay. It's okay. And by the way, The next government, they'll get some stuff wrong. And then the other guy will get a chance. And then you'll get a chance. And then you'll get a chance. And then you'll get a chance. Relax.

You get to have lots of redos in this project of Canada. And there are lots of safeguards. We have a charter. We have laws. We have courts. We have other jurisdictions. We have shared. Like, relax.

We'll be fine. Yeah. And if I could just add to James, James's point, that's a vivid analogy. And if I could torture it a little bit, I'd say that the appropriate analogy now is as if there are snipers on the roof of the theater are trying to call your attention to the tile that's missing, because they really want to ruin your night out, and they want you to never want to go to the theater again. And of course, a lot of those people are in the United States. They are supporting secessionist movements in Canada.

That has now become public knowledge, thanks to some great reporting at the Globe and Mail and other places. And it's not going to stop, right? So we've got to figure out a way to gird ourselves against this stuff. It's as old as the Cold War, the concept. I'd invite our listeners to look up the concept of a useful idiot, which was popularized during the Cold War. But we're facing this from the United States. We're facing it from Russia.

We're facing it from China. There are a whole bunch of malevolent actors out there in the world who would like nothing more, even in the United States, which this would be a great act of self-harm. But these actors would love to see chaos. on the 9,000 kilometer border we share with the United States. So, you know, we need, to a certain degree, I hope that this has, if there's a positive here, it's serving notice to political leaders across the country

that playing with fire, if you're playing with fire on this stuff, there are a lot of oily rags around. Well, I can say with some confidence that anybody listening to this program, this podcast, who goes and sits in a theater, they're going to be looking at the ceiling. They're going to be looking for that missing tile and try to figure out what's behind it. Okay, we'll take a break, come back,

talk a little bit about BC, all that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Tuesday episode of The Bridge. That is the Moore Butts conversation this week, alternating Tuesdays with the Raj Russo program. It was on last week. So that's James Moore, the former Stephen Harper Cabinet Minister,

and Gerald Butts, the former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau. You're listening on Sirius XM Channel 160, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel, or you're listening to us on one of our various podcast platforms. Glad to have you with us. Okay, let's flip the dial on what we're looking at here and look at the BC situation, because I had similar letters from a couple of people in BC. You don't want to overstate it. But still, they were well thought out letters,

which basically boiled down to, does the rest of Canada understand the issues that are at play in BC? Often we don't kind of look at provincial elections if we're not in that province. But these letter writers are saying, listen, what's happening in BC right now, the decisions that are about to be made by whoever wins this election, are going to have enormous impact, not just on BC, but on the country itself.

You're there, James. You agree with that? Yes. The politics in British Columbia, in spite of how they seem scrambled, are actually quite predictable. But British Columbia has always been a very polarized province in sort of less traditional sort of red-blue ways, right? Like, it's always been a binary choice, the NDP versus the other,

for basically the half of the existence of British Columbia and Confederation. There's the NDP, then there's the other. And if the other is splintered and broken up in any kind of professional and organized way, the NDP will pretty much always win. The NDP have a hard floor of 35, but they have a hard ceiling of about 41, 42. So if that stays together and the other part doesn't stay, coalesced than the NDP can win. They've had more success lately than in the past, but David D.B.

may be tempting fate on that. But British Columbia, it's always been a very polarized province in this sense. It's been north versus south, island versus mainland, Lager versus Environmentalist, Aboriginal versus non, urban versus suburban versus rural, new Canadian versus not. And those tensions kind of pull in different ways and they represent themselves in politics in different ways. And so when you have effectively a binary two-party system and all those tensions exist within those two parties, then it can create some really fractious things. I think what you're getting from people who have written in, Peter, is that, yeah, British Columbia

is really consequential. Third largest province, but fourth-largest economy, but we are the gateway for Canada to all of those global markets for the most part that Prime Minister Carney talks about in terms of diversifying from. The biggest employer in the city of Vancouver is the port. The port of Vancouver is three times larger than the second biggest port in Canada in terms of its export. And that's with current capacity, let alone increasing a pipeline, let alone expanding the terminal down in Delta port and getting that expanded, having more container traffic going out of Delta through South Fraser Permanor Road. So British Columbia is on the doorstep of being one of the most important portals for Canada's prosperity for a really long time. And then we're subsumed with this drama of this provincial election campaign that is completely unnecessary. David, he put it upon us.

And we might have an alternative government by the lead, a new government led by Lauren Dirkson, who most people don't know. He's never sought the leadership. He never ran for the leadership. He hasn't gone through the acid test and the stress test of running for a leader of being fully exposed and fully examined as a prospective CEO of the third largest province of a G7 country. And then he's going through that now in a truncated campaign. And so people know who David E.B. is and what they like or don't like.

And then looking at Lauren Dorkson, they say, I don't know if I have enough time to figure this out while there's a municipal election going on. And we're going to choose a premier for the next long time, binary choice, which means it's almost always a majority government. So we're choosing someone for the next four years to figure out how we're going to build a pipeline, how we're going to expand the port, how we're going to reconcile coastal first nations, how we're going to deal with a real estate crisis, how we're going to deal with urbanization. And you want me to judge this guy in three weeks?

My God, this is a lot. This is a lot. And a lot's at stake here, not just my riding, but the whole country. And so there is a pressure cooker in D.C., but that's what people are struggling with right now. It's a big choice about who we are, what we are, where we're going. So hopefully I've done it justice. Jerry. Yeah, well, I agree with everything James said.

And I think that sometimes, you know, when you're in the midst of big in our business, we would call macro trends, you kind of look around for local reasons why you feel pulled in many different directions without seeing the big picture. And the big picture here is the fastest growing parts of the global economy. are all in Asia. Some of the fastest growing parts of Canada are in British Columbia. We cannot access future economic growth without modern infrastructure around the coast of British Columbia that's built in a way that is not just acceptable, but has the full participation of First Nations in British Columbia. And therefore, yeah, there's a lot of stake here.

I remember during the 2015 campaign, we shot this ad for. from the top of Grouse Mountain where Trudeau said, you can see the future from here. And I think that that's true. That was very true then, and it's even truer now, because, and of course I didn't even mention what's going on to the south of us, which I think we can all take as red. But look, the future of Canada runs through British Columbia,

and it's going to be more so as the years go on for all the reasons that James articulated and that I, I just said. It's not something we're accustomed to in the eastern part of the country. And that's not to say that Ontario's not 40% of the economy and Quebec's of fundamental reality and all those things we all know to be true. But the truth is British Columbia, every year of my adult life has become more important than it ever has been before. And that is not going to change. Do you think, I mean, there's quite a statement to make. The future of Canada runs through British Columbia.

Absolutely. But how many people in Central and Eastern Canada do you think, think that way? Not enough. That would be my... But look, Peter, I am proud to say that I've been part of liberal campaigns that have won the first, second, and third largest number of seats in British Columbia for a liberal party. And understanding the future of the country and how integral British Columbia is, to that future is the main reason why that was possible.

So I think that you have in the federal government, and certainly in the prime minister, whose mother lives in Animo with his sister, and who knows British Columbia intimately and certainly understands global trade patterns probably better than anybody who's ever sat in that office. He knows how important all this is, and I think that most of the people around him know how important this is.

And we would be done, doing the rest of the country a service if, you know, people like, people like James were listened to more often about this topic, both within his party and more broadly. Well, I can say it's true. But like British Columbia is, you know, all politics is local as the cliche. There is a lot of truth in that. And because of the shrinking participation of people in partisan active politics is that political parties tend to be taken over.

And in British Columbia provincial politics, that's very, very much true. The New Democratic Party in BC, there's sort of like five sort of constituent pieces of it. Public sector unions, private sector unions, the Green Movement, sort of urban youth, the hard left ideologues. And then there's just kind of the middle class people who just want a government that's out for the little guy. Like generally speaking, they're often in battle with each other within NDP leadership races. They haven't had a full, fulsome leadership race for a really long time to express all that. So there's internal struggles and then the party for the prominence of those different, constitutional pieces. In the conservative family, as we saw in full display in the last leadership

race, is that there are, you know, social conservatives and put it crassly, like just openly blunt antagonistic to First Nations voices and genuine anxiety about sort of the legal predicament British Columbia is in because of the untreated footprint and all that, but also it's exploitation thereof. But they're also sort of mainstream urban, you know, capitalist and there's the developer community. Then there's, you know, they're also our own. and people who want a government that's just out for the little guy. And then like, then there's just sort of the broad middle class who wants a party that doesn't, and wants a government that doesn't spend too much and tax too much.

Like so, and they're often in battle with each other. And you have low participation. So constituent ideological groups that are well organized can take things over. Then you have, frankly, the, the, you know, instant membership dynamic and people flooding the party with memberships based on religion or ethnicity or region. And so it all gets toxified. And it's a real problem. That was on full display in the conservative, latest conservative.

campaign. So the politics in some ways is broken and all that. But at the end of the day, the voters get to judge and sort of figure out where we're going to go. And voters in British Columbia, it has to be said, they're pretty smart at the end of the day. And so it's a, you know, not to end romantically about this, but there's a, there's something about politics where at the end of the day, the voters, almost without exception, they get it right. And it's just, it's what, people say, well, voters are always right. Voters always get what they deserve. But, but, but But the voters almost always have this uncanny capacity to get things they write. And I'll tell you a story.

And I don't want to burn friendships with this. And I don't think I will because we're far enough removed. 2013. Now I want to hear this. After I tell the story, I'll try to repair the damage of them. It's a quick story. 2013, I was the regional minister for British Columbia under prime minister Harper. Christy Clark was the incumbent premier.

She goes to an election campaign after she replaced Gordon Campbell. She goes into an election campaign. comes out of it, Adrian Dix is the leader of the NDP. Adrian Dix is against pipelines, against LNG, Christy Clark, that's her whole reelection on expanding LNG in British climate. She was all in for pro-development, pro-growth, all that stuff. The election results come in, and Adrian Dix, who was supposed to, he was like Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the United States,

and there was a front page of the famously of the Vancouver province that said, if this man kicked a dog, he'd still win the election. Adrian Dix loses. Christy Clark wins a surprise victory, and she wins more seats than Gordon Campbell did when he won his last majority. But she lost in her own riding. Interestingly, she lost in her own riding in West Vancouver Point Grey to a six-foot-six-inch tall young lawyer named David Eby. So the election is over.

Christie surprises everybody, wins a big majority government, and the NDP lose after having been expected to win, and Christy Clark lost in her own riding. She later on ran in the Okina getting won her seat back. I fly back to Ottawa. They were the cabinet meeting. And Stephen Harper looks at me and he says, so wait a minute, let me get this straight. The NDP were going to win. And then the election started. And then the voters paid attention.

And they listened to the NDP. And they rejected the NDP. And they elected with a bigger mandate, the Free Enterprise Coalition, to be in favor of more exports to the rest of the world. And then Christy Clark personally, she personally lost her rotting. So the NDP were rejected. Free Enterprise won. Christy Clark was personally defeated. How did the voters get that exactly right?

They got that exactly. I said, now, sorry, anyways, I said, well, it's a mystery. Now, to be fair, Christy Clark did become premier, Stephen Harper, and they're our friends, and he misjudged her, yada, yada, and they got along very well and did a lot of very good things together and all that. But at the time, it was one of those things where you kind of sit back and just say, yeah, like one hopes, to Jerry's point, in the fullness of time, voters, recognize the importance of what's in front of them,

that it's not just about this super short-term issues, but cast a long view on what's going on in front of you and what the opportunities and responsibilities are. And voters, for the most part, they make the right call. I trust in democracy. And what's Christy Clark doing now? Well, among other things, she has her own podcast. And guess who was her very first guest?

Why? Why? I don't know, but we had a good time. Yeah. And unless you have an anecdote to add to that jury, we're going to wrap it up, but I'll give you that opportunity. Well, I do, but I'm going to hold it for a future show, Peter. James was so good. I just think it should take up the space. Well, it did.

And it's that kind of charm that Stephen Harper displays personally and privately that he should take to the hostings in Alberta this week. Yeah, nobody sees him that way there. Right? I mean, you hear these stories like the ones James tells about Stephen Harper. And for most people, they go, gee, I never saw that guy. He was prime minister for 10 years. I never saw that, Stephen Harper. Yeah. It's tragic. But I will say just one last thing, not an anecdote, is I think the point James made, I've often said internally in campaigns when people are sort of being too instrumental,

bordering on cynical with things we should do. I would always say, I am firmly in the people are not stupid school of politics. So let us not treat our fellow citizens like they're morons because we will pay for it in the end. And I think, you know, the point James is making about the voter having an almost mystical ability to generate the right outcome. We just saw not that I want a peccist government in Quebec, but one with 28% percent of the vote is probably the best possible outcome for the rest of the country. Well, for the moment it is. For the moment.

We'll see where it all ends up going. Yeah. All right. Jerry, James, thanks both for this. A great conversation, as always on the more buts conversation. We'll talk to you again in two weeks time. Bye for now.