The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore-Butts - Managing a Caucus - How To Spot Problems?

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Apparently, some in Mark Carney's caucus don't like the way their leader treats them. He "yells at us" claims one. If these stories are true, does this warrant concern? That's one of the topics for James Moore and Gerald Butts today in their latest conversation. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday. That means more Butts today. That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Gerald Butts and James Moore. It's another conversation and a couple of interesting topics today. We'll start with this one.

Twice in the last week, a major newspaper in Canada, has done reporting, suggesting that there are 10,000, Let's put it that way within the liberal caucus meetings between the prime minister and those who are in attendance. There have been the occasional testy moments. Now, it's being denied by caucus management. I don't think it would be surprising that there weren't were testy moments within any caucus at different times. But how do you, as both of you have been in caucus one way or another, Jim, James is a member and Jerry as a principal secretary to a prime minister and also earlier than that as a

premier in Ontario. Not Jerry as a premier, but as a principal secretary. How should we look at this kind of a story? James, why don't you start? Also doing business, normal push and pull of things. When Prime Minister Carney is, though, at the mid-40s and the conservators are in the mid-30s, so you have this strong gap in terms of electoral outcomes. Like some people say, well, he's really popular, so why are people speaking out?

I think people speak out or leak out, at least to Altheiraj, because they think that they can and there's not really any consequence to it. Prime Minister has lots of strength and support. He has his majority in Parliament that will probably be a durable one, depending on how the by-elections go and other floor crossings and if other block MPs leave, the whole dynamic we know. But if it turns into a durable majority and he's got wind in his sales, well, maybe now's the time to speak out.

Maybe now is the time to sort of, you know, let my elbows out. If the, you know, what, seven of the last eight elections have yielded minority parliaments, six of the last eight, rather. And so when you have a minority parliament, you feel really kind of bound in by the risk of the limits of your mandate. You've got to support the leader. We've got to be careful. Things are thin.

We can only, we're trying to accomplish what we can. but now that we have this, then people can start speaking out. To give credit as well, frankly, to the prime minister, it shows that he's trying to do stuff, that he's willing to offend people and upset people. And that's okay, because I think there's room for that. Another part of this is also just a very human element. You know, 175 people in a room, you know,

these are 175 different people who come from different parts of the country who might actually have a different cultural workplace expectation. And so there's actually cultural divides in Canada, about how you deal with one another. There are people who have been elected for 20 years. There are people who came in with the, frankly, with the Justin Trudeau crew, who I would hug hello's in a different way of doing things. At least that's your perception.

Jerry can clarify. But there's a different sort of habits and values and mores and dispositions and way in which you sort of operate on a daily basis. Mark Carney has a different one. Some people like the Trudeau one. Some people like the Carney one. The inverse is true. The people who don't like the status quo are going to whine a little bit.

this is all kind of ebb and flow normal stuff. You know, the fact there's a story about it, maybe it's a slow news week. It's not a slow news week, but it's an interesting news week. And so, yeah, I don't think it's a big thing. It could spin out of control if he's seen to be obtuse and you have a cohort of people from a particular region or a particular ideological window of the liberal universe who might coalesce around this dissatisfaction of style coupled with substance that could then weaponize against the leader. I don't think there's any evidence of that yet.

Okay, just to be fair to Althea, she wasn't alone on this story. She was alone for a while. You know, she was alone for a while. And the focus was on her. But by the weekend, the Globe ended up doing a piece too, perhaps even more detailed. Different kinds of examples, but nevertheless, they fell under the same bucket, so to speak. So it wasn't just one news organization. It was two and two of the best in the country. So it's interesting. Jerry, where are you on this? Oh, well, this is dancing through a minefield for me, Peter,

because I know some people involved. I'll try and stay true to our obligation to our audience here and just tell people what I think. It's, I always find these stories, and every prime minister or premier deals with a version of this story at some point. that they're disaffected members of caucus or there are people who don't like the way he or she does business. And there's always, as Richard Brennan once said to me,

you need to learn that plain lands is not a story. So there's always a market for problems being caused by the prime minister's behavior or his relationship with caucus or a premier, et cetera, et cetera. And I kind of put these stories in that context. but there are a couple of really interesting things about them to me. And the most interesting question is never to me the story itself, but why those stories are happening now, right? And I think that a couple of things are worth observing.

One is that these are three very senior women journalists on Parliament Hill that have a lot of respect because we talked about Althea Raj, but it's also Stephanie Levitts and Marika Walsh. These are people who have broken stories themselves in the past and who command the respect of their colleagues. So the thing you're worried about when you're the subject of these stories, and we all in different ways have been the subject of these stories over the years, is when is it going to stop?

Is it going to create a trend? And what can I do to arrest the worst case scenario? And another thing that's a perennial con. complaint from journalists is that they don't have enough access to what's happening or in the prime minister's office or what's the prime minister's thinking behind things. Those complaints are around Parliament Hill now with this prime minister. So to me, I do agree with James that it is a normal cost of doing business. But sometimes normal costs of doing business can kind of get out a hand and you have to arrest them before they become a negative thing. I think in this particular

case with this particular prime minister and this particular caucus, and I'll try and talk about the structural issues, you've got a person who didn't really know a lot of these people when he became their leader and vice versa is also the case. I don't agree with those who say that Mark Carney hasn't been as advertised, and you hear this complaint on the, uh, mostly on the left. I think Mark Carney is exactly as advertised. I think this is who we built a campaign around a year and a half ago. This is the core promise that he made, that it was going to be a change in policy direction, style, and substance from the Trudeau years. And that's exactly what people are getting across a broad variety of fronts. From a policy perspective, that he's probably done stuff.

stuff that has surprised people who voted for him, but that's always the case. And in his case, he doesn't have a long track record on a lot of the issues that were cataloged in these stories. So his caucus is probably learning how he feels about them for the first time. Um, overall, I don't, I also don't agree with people who are like, yeah, he got elected so he could kick the crap out of liberals. That's not what happened here. And you're probably terminally online if you, uh, think that that's germane to the discussion. I think he's got to be. make sure over time that he keeps his team together. Because as we've seen and prime ministers,

first ministers of all kind, learn at their peril, that if they don't keep their team together, they don't keep their job. And I don't think we're anywhere near that with Mark Carney. I think the last dynamic I'll describe, which again, I think has happened in the past, is because he has a majority, the media has decided to be the opposition, right?

I think a lot of people have written off Pierre Paulyev as leader of the opposition. I'm not one of those people, as you know, but I think a lot of people have written him off. And the media has decided it's their time to not. Journalists are proud people, as you know, better than anybody, Peter. And they don't like being shepherded into consensus opinion. And I think what you're seeing here is some of the most senior journalists on Parliament Hill saying, we're not going to roll over for this government. You know, we had a saying in the 70s when Pierre Trudeau had the majority from 74 to 79

and was the EPO, the extra parliamentary opposition and the EPO was the media, right? And they were having to take the role as the Conservatives were somewhat disjointed. You know, Sandfield was on his way out as leader. Clark eventually was on his way in. Let me ask you the question this way about, because I think for the vast majority of Canadians, probably have no idea of what actually a caucus is like when they have these kind of caucus meetings. It's unusual. And most people who arrive in Ottawa as politicians have no idea because there are many training.

They have no understanding of what a situation like that could be. And in this case, you have a prime minister who's never, and through all his various moments in business and in the civil service, probably had no idea what a caucus is like. So before we get back to this particular example, how would you explain to somebody who's never been in a situation like this, what happens in those Wednesday morning caucus meetings? Like, how do you prepare yourself for what happens in that kind of a format?

There are 340 members of Parliament, and typically at least this has been the norm for all. all the, certainly the governing parties, is that you, you are in, frankly, families. And so the, the British Columbia for, when we were in government's conservatives, the British Columbia conservative members of parliament, we would caucus, the House and Senate members. We would caucus on Wednesday mornings, I believe it was like from eight o'clock till 9.30, 8 o'clock to 9.00 or something like that. The national caucus meeting goes from 930 to noon.

So you meet for an hour, hour and a half, and you talk about British Columbia specific issues, whether it was, you know, policy stuff, political stuff. You have a chair of the regional caucus, a vice chair as well. And only British Columbians are in the room. We would have a staffer from PMO whose desk assignment was British Columbia defined issues. And we would have, so part of it is cathartic, right? You come into a room, you're only British Columbians. You've all sat in the same flights to and from BC together.

You sit in the same room. And you talk about BC issues from a BC lens with the BC nomenclature. And did you see what happened in the provincial side? Do you see what's going on? and there's some venting and there's some catharsis and all that. And then sometimes you would have a motion, you would come to an agreement and then you would say, somebody needs to talk to the House leader that they need to have this position on this or somebody needs to talk to the leader.

And typically it would be the chair of the BC caucus who would then reflect that view upwards into the system and all that. And then you would break and then you would walk across the street from, we would meet an East Block, you go into Center Block, then you come together for the National Caucus meeting. So all the regional caucuses come together. National caucus, meaning typically at the front of the room, the prime minister sits in the middle of the room,

the full leadership team, House leader, whip, caucus chair, Senate leader. They sit at the front of the room, usually up on a dais. So eye contact, body language, we can observe each other and have proper connection and all that. You have microphones too set up in the room. So members of the caucus can speak. There's an agenda. The prime minister usually speaks first, talks about the week that happened, talks about the week ahead, the wins, the losses, warning signs.

And sometimes they're really happy meetings, sometimes they're really dark meetings, all the usual stuff. And then the House leader will give a speech on our talk about what's happening in Parliament. The whip will give a talk about what's happening with the votes. Senate leader will give an update on the Senate. Then there's, we would typically have an open mic moment where individual members of caucus can go to that will queue up with the microphones. Open mic. And you can say for a minute or so, this happened last week. I love it.

More of it. This happened last week. I hate it. Less of it. can ask for different cabinet ministers. Sometimes it can be really uncomfortable. Sometimes more often than not, it's just kind of, you know, people venting and all that. The prime minister typically would stay at the front, would make notes about everything that was observed,

would wait until the end, and then would comment one by one on each of the items to collect his thoughts. And also to allow a bit of pressure to relieve. You don't want to respond right away because you might actually have a back and forth moment that would not be helpful. So that it's wise to the prime minister to sit, wait, let everybody do their thing, take note. and say, I'll make some comments at the end, let the pressure come out of the room, 20 minutes goes by. Prime Minister can then wrap up and say, you know, this member mentioned this. I'm, you know, here are some thoughts.

Or I'm going to follow up. This member mentioned this. I'm going to ask the finance minister to get back to you within the end of the week. And so it's a gathering of everybody together to sort of get everybody on the same page, have a moment of venting, have a moment of sort of reconciliation, and then have a moment of moving forward. All off the record. Yes.

It's meant to be. That's not always the case, obviously. Depending on, frankly, depending on where you're on the polls, depending on how the follow-ups are followed up on or not, depending on whether or not the whole exercise is performative and garbage or whether or not it's actually meaningful and structured. Caucus meetings are really important. I know the Prime Minister Harper, I know it's true,

or I'm told that it's true about too many people for not to be true that Prime Minister Mulroney and others, the caucus meetings are enormously important because you might have a majority of 211 seats or 175 seats or whatever, But if five members of caucus stand in unison down in the press room and they say, this prime minister doesn't get it, they don't understand our region, they don't understand our, it blows apart. It all blows apart.

It doesn't take much. It doesn't take many John Nanziaviz. It doesn't take many people to knock a government completely sideways and off message. And so caucus meetings are enormously important. And I know it's true of Prime Minister Harper, other prime ministers have their approach, but he would have his chief of staff in the room. I frankly, often sitting to the side, but sort of angled to the front. that the chief of staff could observe the room and the body language, not as like a,

nothing awkward, but to try to get a sense that they said their thing, the prime minister saying his thing, the house leader said his thing, they're trying to reflect back. Did we read the room right? What's the follow up? Who in the room said nothing, but it's clearly visibly really upset who needs to be reached out to? Like you're managing, you know, 200 people of really different personalities and egos, frankly, life cycles. Some people have been in politics for 20 years and this is their last chance.

People are new and they're fresh and they're keen and they're maybe have a misperception of things. But it's a big group of egos and personalities that have to be managed. And you have to take it really serious. So this is a warning sign coming back to Prime Minister Carney. This is a big moment for his government and for his caucus management because he is new to this part of it is that these are, you know, wildly different personalities with different expectations. Everybody wants to live a life of purpose. Most people have chosen public office as they're one shot in life to do something really significant, high profile for themselves, their family, their community, their country that they think they can do something meaningful in. It matters to them.

And it matters to them when you're asking them to reverse themselves after 10 years of doing, going in this direction on carbon taxes or whatever. It matters to them that they're taking seriously and that you understand you're asking a lot of them to swallow a lot of pride and dignity and reverse themselves. They're prepared to do it if they can be assured that this is the right thing to do and they have a proper narrative and they're not being made fools of. These things matter. Jerry. Yeah, I agree with all that.

I think the only point I would add, I had a similar position to the one that Nigel, I think you're referring to Nigel, right, mostly James, that I would go to caucus meetings, both at Queens Park and on Parliament Hill. And I would mostly, and I did this for all speeches, actually. I think I'd give this advice to any staffer, don't watch your principal speak.

You know what he or she is going to say. Watch the room, right? And you can tell a lot. There's a reason one of the oldest clichés in the English language, Peter, is read the room, right? And that is one of the most important rooms in the life of any first minister. Because I do, I think James is on to something really important at the end there. that for the prime minister or the premier and a lot of the cabinet ministers,

the caucus meeting is just one meeting that happens, a variety of really important meetings with really important people, sometimes self-styled, in any given week. But for a lot of the people in that room, it is their most important meeting of the week. And it is their one chance to look their senior. your colleagues in the eye who are all peers. Let's remember, this is a caucus meeting, and when you walk into that room, you are a member of caucus, right? Obviously, you carry a title

if you're the prime minister or a minister, but it is supposed to be a meeting amongst equals where issues are erred and resolved or paths to resolution are identified more often, has been my experience. I think, and I try not to give backseat advice, but I do think the caucus, this current caucus, made a mistake in kicking staff out of this meeting. And the most importantly, for practical reasons, the prime minister is a very busy person.

And if you're expecting him to keep a list of all the things that you need done, then leave this two-hour meeting. go have another hour-long debrief with his staff, remember everything correctly, and then farm out all of the tasks that need to be associated with the issues that have been aired in that caucus. It's just a very inelegant way of solving problems in my view, and it's going to create friction that will build up over time.

And, you know, I'm fond of this axiom, that there are three kinds of conflict in any organization there is process conflict, which is, I don't like the way we're doing this. There's content conflict, which is, I don't like what we're doing. And there's interpersonal conflict, which is, I don't like you. And you can usually solve the first two. If they become the third, it gets really, really difficult to solve. And I think that this is one of those moments, and James said it, this is one of those moments

in the life of a government where, and for Mark Carney, a lot of the stuff is not. new. You know, I was chuckling when you said he's never been in a caucus before, James. Goldman Sachs resembles a lot of things. The Bank of England resembles a lot of things. Probably the closest he's ever come to a caucus

as a hockey team. Yeah. And as he has for the last 14 months, and apparently if you believe the polls, with great skill, he's got to learn new skills, new things as he goes along.

I agree with all that. Can I tell you a story that I think is apt to all of this? And it's a warning sign for this life cycle in the government because you have, he's ported over so many people from the Trudeau time. And then he's trying to onboard his new people and all that. And so he's in this transitional phase of understanding his caucus and all that. Everything, I don't agree, don't disagree with anything that you said. One of the warning signs that happened, and I'll mention her name because she's told the story publicly. So I don't think it's in any way unfair. Shelly Glover. For those who don't know, Shelley Glover, Shelley Glover was a conservative member of parliament elected in St. Boniface, Manitoba, a writing that pretty much since the, not by accident, pretty much since the invocation of the Official Languages Act has been a liberal riding, but it went conservative when we won a majority in 2011, because obviously a large francophone community outside of the province of Quebec, they thank the Trudeau government of Trudeau Senior and therefore passed on to Junior

why we lost it in 2015 with protecting the French language. outside of the province of Quebec with the official languages act. But in 2011, there are 20 writings outside of Quebec that have more than, I think it's 15 or 20% of the population that speak French first. And the conservative party, we won like 15 of those 20 writings. One of them was the St. Bonapest, in part because Ignatiof wasn't saleable and yada, yada. Anyhow, we won this riding. Unique riding. We don't typically hold the writing.

St. Bonapis, Manitoba. Shelly Glover, a Maitzi woman, perfectly bilingual, ton of energy. police chief with Winnipeg police, tough, smart, really aggressive, and comes into politics, gets elected in 2011. She was my parliamentary secretary when I was official languages minister. That's why I know some of her story background. And then along her term in parliament, she got to be parliamentary secretary to Jim Flaherty at finance. Well, this is great. You know, she got to learn from a great finance minister and a great cabinet colleague.

She really enjoyed that experience and learned a lot. And then she was elevated and she became heritage minister when I went from Heritage to industry minister. And so I got to know her really well because I helped her sort of port over the files and get to know some of the stakeholders, all that. Then she got to the end of her term and she decided not to run for re-election. I think she elected in 11, and not away, but in any event. But she was a borderline rotting. We win government. We win the running.

We lose government. We lose the rotting. And then she became Minister of Heritage. And she enjoyed the portfolio to a point. And then eventually she decided she wanted to leave politics. And it wasn't because of polls. It wasn't because we were on the bubble. She might have been competitive in the next thing.

We ended up losing the riding. But she decided not to run again. And I remember having a chat with her about it. She said, James, I ran for office because I wanted to talk about justice files. But the system in our party in the universe sees me as a Métis woman, as I openly sort of describing her here, people see me as a bilingual Métis woman from outside of sort of the normal form of sort of conservative politicians. And so I got to go to finance.

I learned a lot from Jim, but then I got pigeonholed back into being the heritage minister. It was a great privilege. But I want to talk about justice issues. I want to go back to Winnipeg and I want to be a cop again. I want to sort of slide across the hood and grab the guy who was about to punch his wife and get him to the ground and handcuff him and get him in the police car and stop him and stop him from punching his wife.

That's what that's satisfying. I want to get into a car chase and pull over a drunk driver and stop him from smashing into a bunch of kids at a bus stop. That's satisfying to me. I want to deal with justice files. That's why I'm here. But she never found her voice to articulate that I'm in politics because I'm a cop. And now I have an opportunity to change the laws that I was forced with enforcing.

And I'm frustrated by justice issues. And her ability to tell her story about why she was in politics was never fulfilled and realized. And so she was dealing with the Fisual Languages Act and arts groups and, you know, the Juno Awards and giving awards to artists. But she's like, I'm here because I want to arrest bad guys who punch and beat up their wives. That's why I want to be in politics. And the prime minister never seemed to understand that. Or I never got my opportunity. And I'm just, I want to go back to being a cop.

I want to start arresting people again because that's more satisfying than being a cabinet minister. It just is. And so Mark Carney in this moment in his life cycle, he needs to know who is going to continue their journey, who's coming on their journey. And why are they there? Because you'll get, you know, dramatically more output from them, more sincerity from them, more versatility from them as legislators and as members of your team.

team if you know why they're there, what they care about, what they actually want to do. And they will be prepared to do so much more if they know that they're exercising and they have this window of opportunity to do something meaningful about something that they care about. And you have to one on one with all of them and find out why are you here, what you care about and then try to deploy them as best you can. Well, and I think, Peter, if I can just add a quick thing to that. This particular, again, this particular caucus, right, you think about the headspace they were in going into 2025.

when, you know, Freeland shot Trudeau, metaphorically, obviously, and the whole thing was starting to unravel, or probably past starting on arrival, if we're being fair. They were all dusting off the resumes, right? They all thought that they were going to be in a very competitive job market, many of them with each other, and they thought their political careers were over, because whatever they say in front of the microphones,

these people are not stupid people. And by definition, they understand what's going on in their communities, and they would have spent a lot of time knocking on doors and having pretty frosty receptions. So they knew what they were in for. And then they had this almost miraculous reprieve where they find themselves, it's a joke for people of a certain age, but it's like the Bobby Ewing shower scene in Dallas.

It's like we're going to pretend none of all of that stuff ever happened and the liberals are back in a majority government. And I think the fact that they've been there for a decade, they will have developed habits and muscle memory that are very difficult to break. And that includes relationships with reporters. It includes a manner of speaking about and to one another. And I, you know, it's true that it's a moment for the prime minister to be careful of. But I would argue it's also maybe even more so a moment. for this particular liberal caucus to be careful of because you do not want to end up in a situation

where nobody feels they can speak their mind in caucus because they're going to read about it in the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star. The coil that's packed the most tightly explodes the most violently. Yes. Be careful. You really dated yourself there, Jerry. I have to, you know, Dallas, Bobby Ewing. My wife is seen.

That's 40 years ago for crying. I know. Well, I'm 54. Did you see the Three Stooges episode or Moves? All right. Well, at least we get to talk about AI. Okay, yes. And we'll do that right after the break.

But just before we get there, all I need is a yes or no answer. The line that seemed to get the most attention out of Althea's piece, which was once again the first one, was he yelled at me. Really? Like, I mean, there must be yelling in caucus.

I mean, I've been enough meetings that surround the CBC where the yelling was not an unusual thing to happen. Well, I'll give you a slightly longer answer, Peter, and having been in a lot... It cuts into your AI time. I've been in a lot of meetings with Mark Cardi, and I've never heard him yell at anybody.

I've heard him be very direct with people, but, and maybe sometimes, they experienced that as yelling. But he's not a man who raises his voice, at least not in my experience. Stephen Harper ever yell? Never. No, no, it's Stephen, like,

I would say this about the prime minister Harper. He could be quick to temper, but he was quick to cool, but he never forgot. Yeah. But look, you know, you're operating under an incredibly tight timelines. I remember he's,

he's staffed to the cabinet minister once, who we were getting ready to go into question period. And frankly, the cabinet minister on a particular file that was high profile, that was a nagging file, he clearly didn't know his file and didn't know the answer. You know, like how many of this is going out, like it was, I'm not going to try not to give it away here, but it was very minister redacted, didn't know his file because minister redacted did not do his homework. And it was clear that minister redacted did not have any way to communicate himself out of this box.

And it was really obvious and that frustrated him. Okay. Let's leave it at that. Very good, James. Very good. All right. I do know that's before we start. You can be releasing the Epstein files with that coming.

Yeah, that's right. More redactions than in the Epstein files. Okay. We're going to take a break, come back, talk a little bit about AI. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Tuesday episode of the Bridge. And this week, it is the Moore-Buts conversation.

James Moore, former Stephen Harper Cabinet Minister, Gerald Butz, former senior aide to Prime Minister Trudeau are with us. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, are on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. A quick reminder, question of the week this week for Thursdays, your turn is about the World Cup, soccer or football, as it's called by everybody else in the world,

starts later this week. A couple of games in Canada, one in Toronto, one in Vancouver. The question of the week is, do you care? Do you care that the World Cup is being held here? Do you care about the World Cup in general? What is your reading on World Cup events? Let us know. Write to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

Have it in by Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. That's tomorrow. Remember to put your name and the location you're writing from in the letter. And finally, under 75 words, please. Okay. Our final segment is about AI last week. The government announced its ideas behind for its strategy. It was a few months late, but nevertheless they put things down. It's kind of had a mixed reaction to it. Some very little. Others sort of, that's okay. It's not okay. Here's what I want to know. What role, I mean, AI is going to, as we all know, it's a cliche, it's changing our lives. It's changing everything about our lives. But how much of a role does government, should government, play in how AI develops and changes our world? Jerry, you start this round. Well, as usual, possession is nine-tenths of the law, Peter.

And I think the real challenge that everybody's facing with AI, who is not in either the United States and China, is how do you keep up with that technological advancements that are happening in both of those countries? I personally think that there's a potential, very substantial role for this to help from a content perspective fill out the middle power strategy that the prime minister articulated at the World Economic Forum this year. And I know why people are nervous about it. Believe me, I have, well, one teenager now. My son just turned 20. And it's kind of a terrifying technology. And I think you put this together with climate change. the next 10 years are going to be one of the most interesting, to use the word diplomatically, decades in human history. And I think that there's been an understandable backlash against this technology, especially but not exclusively on the left, and especially but not exclusively in the United States.

This is all happening, right? There's nothing the government of Canada can do to stop the advent of this. technology. We are in a position where we either have to build our own assets so that we can have a greater chance of controlling its positive and negative outcomes, not as a government, but as a country, or we're going to have the terms of it dictated to us by someone else. And that, to me, given the justifiable anxiety that the general public feels, and just to put it in perspective for our listeners. AI is viewed most negatively by two countries, the United States and Canada. And my own view, the reason for that is that the ghoulish figures that are leading the movement

in the United States have become such caricatures of James Bond villains, whether it's Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or whomever, name your favorite tech bro or least favorite tech pro in this case, that it's colored people's approach to the whole technology. And as someone who's been following this a long time, going back to my time at Queens Park, it's truly miraculous the things that this technology is going to make capable, make us capable of doing. But it's also truly terrifying the amount of power it's going to concentrate in the hands of already incredibly powerful and too often misanthropic people. And we've got to got to get our heads around this. I think the strategy, the government released is an excellent

first step, but nobody should think that this is like a strategy to rebuild the Navy. You know what I mean? This is something that is going to become more and more of a fact of life for people's daily existence for the rest of our lives and for the lives of our children. So, you know, I predict boldly, Peter, that this is not the last time we talk about AI on this podcast. And it's going to be one of the two or three most important things the government either gets right or wrong. James. Well, I mean, for over 30 years, we've still wrestled with the whole issue of intellectual property, privacy, slander, things like revenge porn or plagiarism in university campuses. And that's the

internet. So for 30 years, we're still wrestling with all those issues and how to mitigate them. What does it mean? The rise of Amazon. cost of and that has for retail businesses and Monpaw stores versus big box and like and that's still super disruptive. AI will be, I think that, you know, times 10 and could has the potential to be. So I think people are right to be anxious about it. On the politics of it, I think the government is kind of missing the moment in terms like I wouldn't this is Monday morning quarterbacking.

So I know this may be a little bit cheap, but my assessment is there have been a couple of big weeks here. They, you know, Evan Solomon and the government they did. their big announcement in Vancouver, and there's a lot of focus on it in Vancouver of their AI data center in the downtown core of Vancouver, and it got some blowback. And then we had the prime minister taking more center stage this week and talking about a broader AI policy. And so we have a little bit of context here for these two announcements on the infrastructure side and on the sort of the broader policy side. And I think they're a little bit too triumphal. I think

they're a little bit too happy about this technology in the face of, to the Jerry's point, clear public anxiety about what this means. I would have now that I think we've read the room a little bit better now, I would have, frankly, more of a neutral tone if I was the government and talking about AI as opposed to saying, this is a great technology, this is really good, you're not a tech bro. The government's job is not to be a tech bro. And the truth is the government is intervening in a file that is still in the germ stage

of its maturity in terms of what its impact is going to be, the massive capital expenditures in the United States and how it's having the case-shaped warped economy on the markets, the job destruction that's happening and the re-rationalization of things, we don't know where that's going to go and what it's going to look like, the adoption of the technology and what that looks like and how that's going to take shape, what this means for information, democracy, and all that. We don't know what that's going to look like. So I imagine a scenario where a year from now, the narrative around AI is really dark. It could be really good, really hopeful, really,

really bad, really dark, and it could be like this until we get to a stasis point of absorbing this technology and what it is and what it means. And I think if the government comes in as being too triumphal when the dark side of the stuff starts there, then the government risks being the champions of a technology that destroyed a lot of jobs, the champions of a technology and approach that was environmentally unsustainable and was negligent with people's privacy. And so I would have more of a cautious approach to the technology and letting Canadians know that we're aware of what this is, what its disruptions are. Here's what we're planning on doing. We're keeping on this. We're partnering with industry. We're considering regulation. We want to have

adoption of the technology. We're mindful of privacy. And I think if they were wise, they would ease back on the throttle of their enthusiasm about the technology because the public is not there right now. That in a way is kind of what I'd like to get at for a second, which is why isn't the public there right now? I know people are scared. They're fearful of what it may mean for them personally, certainly for what it may mean for their kids and their grandkids. But I found that last week it kind of, it was like one of those things that drops in the lake and the ripples disappear fairly quickly and people moved on to other things, including whether there's a problem in the Liberal Caucus.

You know, what is it? Is it that it's still too confusing a story with too many unanswered questions? or is it this fear factor? Like it just didn't seem to get a lot of, you know, reaction, discussion around the announcements. Well, I mean, to answer the question, why are people afraid? Whoever is in charge of PR for AI needs to do something else for a living. Because, you know, the pitch has been, in the short term, we're going to raise your electricity bills. But don't worry, in the long term, we're going to take all your jobs.

And every step along the way, we're going to help these companies you already hate, the social media companies, poison the minds of your children. Right. So it's just a terrible, terrible sales pitch for a new technology when people are already predisposed to be fearful of new technologies. And we're coming out of, I don't think we're really out of. I think there's still a lot of deeply unacknowledged trauma from way back in the pandemic. The 2020s have not been a fun decade for a lot of people, you know. And I think it's been characterized by a couple of big picture trends, the most important of which is people feel like they're losing agency over their lives, right?

And also, I think that there's been multiple cycles of shattered trust with the public with, trust us, the internet's going to be good, really? it kind of destroyed my small business. Trust, social media is going to be great. It's going to be fantastic. Really? I know a lot of people who are bullied into suicide. Yeah.

You know, like, you know, Facebook, really? Google, really? And the privacy issues, really? You can stack these things up. This next one's coming along. It's going to be really great. Really. I'm anxious.

I like, frankly, the way in which the debate is going. Maybe it's a little bit overtork, but I think it's fine. But the NDP should be rightfully the voice of displaced workers and they're resuming that mantle. and this is a good issue for them. And it's a proper issue for them to sink their teeth in based on their traditional voting base in what it'll mean and all that. The conservatives are ringing the bell in the dark night about the issues of privacy. And Melissa Lansman was very articulate about this.

And that's appropriate. That's a good flag on this. The Green Movement has talked about the energy issues. Fine. These are all good conversations. So we're talking about it. But where AI is a year from now, nobody really knows. But I think everybody is at the barricades and is looking at this with the more jaundiced than they have in the past.

And I think all of that is, I think is positive and is good. People are right to be anxious about these things. They could have consequences far beyond what way. I think we properly understand. Well, and let's not forget the one, I agree with all that, James. And I'd add to that. Facebook, connecting the world, it's going to be great for democracy. We've gone from the United States being the most important exporter of democratic ideals for most of our lives to be.

the biggest exporter of technologies that are destroying democracies everywhere. But yeah, but I want to your point, Peter, but, but, and I think you hinted out, and I hope I'm not misrepresenting it, is that, uh, we do have a Darwinian impulse as human beings. We look for the dangers and things. We look for the risks and things. We look for the patterns of things that could threaten the species and threaten jobs and threatened health and live. That's a good instinct. It can run out of control and can, you know, cause crazy paranoia. But it's overall, it's a good instinct, it properly contained and funneled into a system that properly assesses and then mitigates this.

But that's kind of where we are. But AI does have some really remarkable good news stories. A personal example, my son has a very rare bone disease. Not that, he's only 13. We knew that there were challenges in utero. He was born. He's now in the world. We didn't know until he was, I think, two years old what his condition was because

it's a very rare bone disease. Rare diseases are, it's a massive footprint of what rare diseases are in all different ways. And at that time, just 10 years ago, to find, we had to pay about $12,000 just to find a diagnosis, let alone a treatment, let alone the course of treatments that he's now on with regard to his condition. And the way it was done then, it was you would do a blood sample and you would basically you would shop it. And a bunch of people who were geneticists would look at his profile, look at all of his markers and sort of create a profile. And it was a global thing. And it was really complicated. I imagine that in the current

circumstance with the massive mushrooming growth of rare diseases that we have, that AI is finding diagnoses way faster, way cheaper, way more effectively, for sure with the margin of error, but way more reasonably and effectively in saving people's lives and getting people treatment faster than otherwise would be the case with a massive cost barrier. There are kids in the world who have my son's condition who don't know what they have and their parents are panicked and they're scared. We know and we're giving him appropriate treatment. We have that, we have that luxury. A lot of people out there who have kids in similar circumstance lay awake at night, not knowing what's going on or why.

And I feel for them, maybe AI can be part of a remedy for them, right? That's one example of, I'm sure, thousands. Well, on that hopeful note on AI, we'll call it a day on this program for this moment. I thank you both for your straightforward answers on all this, as you always give us.

Thanks to James, thanks to Jerry. We'll talk again for our final one before the summer break in two weeks, time. Thank you now. And for all of you, thanks for listening. Be back in less than 24 hours.