The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore Butts -- The Impact of Politics in Sports

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

We all were reminded of something when the Olympics ended with Canada's overtime loss to the United States in the gold medal hockey game. When you mix politics and sports, things can get ugly. So what was the lesson? That's one question for James Moore and Gerald Butts in this latest installment of the Moore Butts Conversations. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for the latest Moore-Buts conversation coming right up? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Gerald Butts and James Moore. There's a lot going on in our world right now. I mean, you just have to look at Iran and watch what's happening there and around Iran. It's really across the Middle East right now. That's going on in the U.S. Yet the Clinton's testifying in front of the special committee on Capitol Hill. talking about the Epstein affair, which is not going away,

despite of how much some people would love it to go away. You've got the prime minister and the opposition leader, both in different places overseas this week. So there's lots going on, but deep in the hearts of Canadians is still lingering what happened a week ago at the Olympics in hockey. And it has raised all kinds of questions about sports in politics, politics in sports.

And that's what we're going to talk about here. And this was Jerry's idea. So I'm going to let him start and, you know, explain the thinking behind why we're going to talk about that today. Well, thanks, Peter. And thanks for setting the bar at my responsibility. If this doesn't go well, I really appreciate it. I think James and I may have cursed the team or at least Sidney Crosby last week

by both having Sid's jersey behind us, and then he got hurt right afterwards. So we'll take full responsibility for that. It's Lent. So as a recovering Catholic, I'll take responsibility for all things. I thought it would be an interesting topic of conversation because it becomes the currency of politics

whenever we have a major sporting event. It's the kind of thing you discuss in detail in a minister's office or a first minister's office about whether the Prime Minister or Minister should attend this event and what happens if the team that everybody's rooting for loses while he or she is there. And more importantly, of course, in the context of the ongoing friction we have

with the United States of America and the president's use of the men's hockey team last week as a political prop, I thought it would be an interesting and robust topic of conversation. Well, why don't you launch it by giving us your your sense of what happened last week and how it became such a political issue in many ways and probably still lingers on. It could for some time. Well, I think, look, I've been pleasantly surprised by the Canadian reaction.

I think that Canadians sort of watched that game, realized that we skated the U.S. into the ice and that three on three is a bit of a crapshoot and they won an overtime. So I think we, everybody obviously would have preferred. that we won the gold medal, and certainly the players on the ice would have preferred to have a gold medal hanging around their neck for the trip home. But I think it was kind of strange how satisfied Canadians were with the game. There was a, on Sunday morning, people were quite upset about it. But as the week wore on, I had more and more conversations with people who were like, yeah, we were the better team. We just didn't get the bounce in overtime. And that's certainly my

assessment as well. It was the aftermath of it. And President Trump, Trump's call into the men's dressing room and the context and content of that conversation, I think, that drove the politics. And it's, you know, it's a difficult position for those young men to be in. And we could probably spend the whole podcast talking about hockey culture and how it needs to be improved in minor league hockey especially. But I found it really interesting that for a president who shows no interest in the sport whatsoever, how you can, he can collide with a long-term strategy on behalf of the U.S. If you put yourself in a position of the NHL, if you're Gary Bettman on Sunday,

and I know many Canadians will shudder to put themselves in Gary Bettman's shoes, you've had this long-term strategy to make hockey bigger and bigger and bigger in the United States. And key to that strategy for Canadians who don't follow it has been expanding the audience for hockey. So whenever it intersects with politics, as it did, and Quinn Hughes, I think, stood up for the right side on this during the Pride tape. Carfuffle was it last year or a couple of years ago. Those aren't incidental events in the NHL. They have been deliberately appealing to people who don't watch other sports and largely women.

I read last week that the audience for hockey in the United States is 37% women, which is a pretty amazing thing, I think, and a real marketing coup for the NHL. So you have all that going. You're seeing this as something you've invested in, something you've asked all of your teams to take water in their wine in the middle of a hard-fought season. It's one of the closest seasons in hockey and living memory

and crunching the schedule will create all kinds of problems as it already has. Stars are getting hurt this week. They seem to be dropping like flies. And you've got this magic moment where the United States and Canada, the marquee matchup, the thing you dream of, is playing for the gold medal. And let's be honest, the NHL is probably a little bit hoping that the United States wins. It's the best day for USA hockey since 1980, exactly 46 years later. The whole thing is written like a storybook.

And they probably have marketing plans for the next month or for the rest of the season. and to replay the great moments at games, to feature the players during broadcasts, et cetera, et cetera. And then Trump comes along, and then one three-minute phone call craps all over it and makes everything very difficult. And I think it speaks, it's obviously a really, it's a really unique point at which sports and politics intersect.

But that kind of thing happens all of the time. I mean, this, as usual, with Donald Trump just happens to be on a much bigger, louder stage. All right. James, you've been very patient. You get in on this. What do you want to say? I mean, I thought it was sad and frustrating in a lot of ways the coming out of the gold medal game. My disappointment in the loss of Canada in the gold medal game, half of it, frankly, went away when I saw the really gracious and touching thing that the USA hockey did and some of those players did for Johnny Goodrow and his family. So I was disappointed and frustrated.

We Canada wins that game eight out of ten times. We outplayed them, et cetera, et cetera. I was like, I know what's coming for the next week. This is going to be annoying. And then you snap out of it and you kind of go, yeah, it's a game. It's fine. It's okay. And those two little kids on the ice and Johnny Goodrow's jersey and all that.

So that kind of course corrected. And also as the week unfolded, it just kind of reminded, and then there's a sad part of it for me is just how everything is political now. If you listen to Taylor Swift, you know, you're on one side. If you're a, you know, if you listen to country music, you know, it seems like everything has to be political now. Everything has to be a marker for cultural identity and which team you're on and all that, whether you're a shark or a jet, you're a Hatfield or you're a McCoy or you're this or like it's just, can we just be normal again? Can we just pleasantly and substantively disagree and then have a beer or a burger or go for a walk or talk about the kids now? And it seems like we can't, at least America and increasingly Canada sometimes, it seems like we can't get away from that.

And that's, I think people are getting exhausted with that. And I think they're kind of done and tired with that. I think the way that the men's hockey team, like, do I, like, Brady Kachuk's views on politics or Jack Hughes's view on politics. I care about their view on politics as much as I care about whether or not Pete Heggseth is good at a one-timer from the high slot. I don't care. I don't care. Like, and you know, these, these are guys who are world-class athletes.

and they're brilliant at what they do. They're phenomenal skaters and the way they handle the puck. And like it was just a brilliant. The gold medal game, it looked like lacrosse, the way in which the puck was going from stick to stick. And like there was just no sloppiness. It was so tight and precise.

It was just the game at such an elite level. It was so impressive. I'm not interested in their theories on monetary policy or they're like, they don't know and they're not meant to know. The unfortunate part is I'm surprised at USA Hockey. they don't sit the players down. And I know there's bravado and there's an over-at-top moment. You're popping champagne corks and Cash Patel is there.

And Donald Trump's calling into the locker room and everybody's all kind of dialed up and it's alpha testosterone and this and that. But at some point, like somebody should brief these athletes before they go to these kind of events with the spotlight that they're on and the dynamic that they're in. Just be careful. Like be careful. This is red hot stuff. And like just be really careful. You know, you represent the whole of America, the red states and the blue states. and the blue states, you represent everybody.

And just the bravado of group think of the overwhelming majority of the alpha male guide Dubro culture of hockey, I'm just sort of steamrolling ahead and just going to the state of the union and thinking it's no big deal. That was disappointing. And I think it'll in some ways create a bit of a hangover that I think was not necessary. Okay. Well, let me get this out, though. How did we get to the point where for some reason we think we, we think we,

care about whether it's Brady Kachuk or whomever it may be and what their thoughts are on politics. How did we get to that point? Because I don't think it's all the players' fault and I don't think it's all the media's fault. You know, political parties have embraced that kind of stuff, getting the celebrity on side, standing on the stage with the candidate, doing all that stuff. And that celebrity could be Taylor Swift or it could be, you know, a hockey figure or a football figure. How did we get to that? And why did anybody think that that would be important, that that could sway votes? Jerry? Well, it's a really simple and straightforward answer to that, Peter, because elections, especially in the United States, and to a lesser extent here,

I don't think we're infected with the same kind of celebrity culture and politics as we are, as they are in the United States. Elections have become of a turnout game, right? So you look at someone like Taylor Swift who has, however, umpteen million numbers of fans on Instagram and Facebook, and you think that what she believes will motivate her following to vote. So what you're really trying to do from a marketing perspective and a lot of the people involved in American politics, I think Canadians fit. We've talked about it before on the pod, Peter, that American politics are really a very advanced mass marketing machine with billions of dollars behind each campaign at the presidential level.

And so what they're looking to do is assemble a winning coalition. And they look around like any marketer would, like the CMO at Coca-Cola would, and try and figure out which celebrities have sway with their target audience. And they assemble that group of people in specific states, in particular the five to seven states that decide the presidential election every four years. and they will move having an earth to get those celebrities on side in the hopes that the 10,000 people that they can create an incentive for to vote in Pennsylvania or Michigan will swing the election.

It's really a numbers game. James? Also, I think, you know, the way sticking with the gold medal game in Milano, like, as was pointed out the other day, I heard somebody point out and I looked it up, so it's true. but America won 12 gold medals. Eight of the 12 gold medals were won by women. And sort of the ham-handedness of sort of the rhetoric, well, I guess, well, we'll have to invite the, sorry,

we'll have to invite the women along to. You know, like, it's a little raw, a little, a little, a little obvious with the sexism, a little obvious with the, oh, yeah, those other athletes, you know, they're not really athlete. Like, we know what Donald Trump thinks about women and female athletes, that they're not real athlete. Like, it's obvious, right? And when it's so on display, it's self-evident,

it's just really, really grading in and so ham-handed. And then the team walking around, it's the president of the United States. Like, Sidney Crosby won the Stanley Cup when Donald Trump was president, and he went to the White House. It's an American team in a big city in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh won the Stanley Cup.

He went to the White House, Donald Trump was president, and he nodded and went along because it's an honor to go to the White House. It is an honor to go to the White House. And it was early in the Trump universe. Fine, but it's an honor to go there. And but now it's tough because you're being,

and then you're asked you to wear the hat and you wear the hat and you make a political statement. It's like, well, if you're going to, if you want the heat, if you want the attention, people are going to have some opinions about that, especially after the shootings in Minneapolis, especially about what's happening in Iran, especially. Like, these are really hot times and it's very, very dangerous. And by the way, I would think the same thing would be true. if this had happened.

You know, if the miracle goal in 1980 had happened in the 1972 or 76 games or trying to pick my date correctly, but around the Winter Olympics and there was a Vietnam War. And they didn't want to be. Like it's the circumstance and the and the ham-fisted nature of it. And Cash Patel, you know, flying over there on a jet and drinking champagne. Like it's just, it's all very, it's all very ugly. Yeah, I think it was beer or not champagne.

I don't know whether he. What was he doing there is the question? What was he doing there? Can you imagine if the head of the RCMP showed up in the Canadian locker room? It's kind of ridiculous, sir? Like, what the hell was he doing there? It's bizarre. You know, you mentioned Crosby in whatever year that was, the Pittsburgh one.

And he went to the White House with the team because it's the thing they do in the States. whether it's Trump or Obama or whomever it may be as a president at the time. But I remember I was watching that video again a little while ago of Crosby there. And he, often the captain is like right in the front of the center of the picture. And you can see him. Crosby was in the back row at a far end. Yeah. So he knew what he was doing.

Homer Simpson back end of the hedge. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I had a, I had a, I burned myself when I was, so I was heritage minister and I can't remember what year it was. But I said, there was, it was a year where the connects, I think were steaming forward into the second round of the playoffs right on. It was a big victory year. And we, we got into the second round of the playoffs and the Montreal Canaanians were in the second round of the playoffs. So by the way, for listeners, viewers who don't know, Peter is the Toronto Maple Leaf guy, Jerry's the Habs guy. And I'm the Kinex guy.

So this is a bit, you know. So, so, yeah. I'm the heritage minister. And they always say, don't talk about hockey, don't talk about hockey. And I said, and I put, I think it was early Twitter or I can't remember where I said it. And I said, you know, the Vancouver Connects are Canada's team in these playoffs. And they've got those. And I said, and they've got those handsome blue and green uniforms and Canadian alliance colors.

And, yeah, I see? There's the response. Right. You said, ooh. And so I thought I was being funny. It wasn't funny. So I said this. we go and I'm thinking, oh, well, I said it.

And there was a little bit of blowback. And I thought, ah, well, a little bit of blowback. Well, whatever, we'll go through it. It came up in question period prep. Like, we're in government. And I'm a cabinet. And they said, James, where are you going to say when they ask you why you're insensitive and, you know, East West and Montreal Canadians? And what happens if they throw? And I was like, nobody's going to actually throw it. No, it came at me. Like, what are you going to say? And so I had to sort of back down and say, I was just sort of joke. Like, there's no sense of humor about this stuff. No sense of humor. And I had to, and I had to, And if you Google James Moore, Montreal Canaanians Canucks are somewhere. There's a thing on this.

And I had to sort of backtrack it. And then invariably, the Canucks lost in the second round. Shocker. And the Habs won in the second round. Shocker. I had to show up in the foyer of parliament with the Habs jersey on and pretend like it. And it was just, you can't joke about these things with some people. And that was mild compared to the environment in which the Team USA did what they did in the United States.

You know, we had a similar thing happened in the Kearney campaign last year. Peter, that it just so happened every time that then, I think he was prime minister, it was during the general election campaign, I think. Every time the pre-read with the Oilers. Yeah, every time the Prime Minister tweeted about the Oilers, they lost. So we literally had this discussion at the top of the Carney campaign, should he be tweeting about the Oilers? Because, of course, it was coming out late in the night and Eastern time

where a lot of our target audience was, if I could put it that way. But I also remember one of the first pictures we posted in the Carney leadership campaign was Carney in an oilers jersey drinking a beer at some festival in Western Quebec. And Michelle Remple and some of the other terminally online conservatives were all over at calling it phony, right? That here's this elite banker pretending to be a hockey fan. And I was like, you guys should have done more research on this. He's actually a real hockey player. And it turned in our favor. But it shows you it goes both ways.

But what about, you know, I've always remembered during everyone covering premiers and prime ministers over the past that there was always, you know, should he or should she go to the game? Yeah. Do you want to run that risk of sitting in the, you know, in the arena or the ballpark as a politician. And it's nothing really about the teams or even the game. It's simply, do you want to run that risk? This is going to be a reaction when they see you're there, you're announced that you're there. Would you have discussions about that? Well, there was a

story. I remember people saying that Peter Lohy knew that it was time for him to step down as Premier of Alberta when he went and did the coin flip, I think, in an Eskimos game and he was booed by the crowd. Famously, more recently as well, I think it's known within political culture in Canada that Doug Ford when he went to the Toronto Raptors celebration party, I think it was a Nathan Phillips Square, and the Raptors were up there and Kawhi Leonard and all that. And then introduced Doug Ford and he got booted. This is early in his time as Premier. And he hadn't really done anything particularly offensive. It was just people just didn't really like him on that in that moment. And he there was a mental switch was flipped and he pivoted away from being

sort of a maybe sort of a wrote traditional conservative to being more of a populist and being prepared to burn old bridges to build new ones. And it really shifted his brain and his thinking about politics. So there is kind of an immediate feedback mechanism that does get triggered when you do go in front of a crowd. Stephen Harper, when we were in government, there were four different occasions over the nine years that he was prime minister where a Canadian team went to the final, the final Santa Cup finals.

Ottawa once, Calgary once, Edmonton, once, Vancouver once. We lost all of them. And the last one was the Vancouver one in 2011. And I remember, but the details of it matters. This is why Cash Patel is getting heat. You don't take a government jet and then you go into the locker room. You act like a member of the team and all that, especially when you've been a penny-pinching, you know, nominal conservative in the past

and saying that, you know, we need to think about the excess and the cost of everything. And as conservatives, we knew that as well. And so I remember in 2011, the Vancouver Canucks one game one soundly. We won game two soundly. And I remember we were like, oh, my God, this is, this is happening. We're finally going to win this Stanley Cup. But the first time it's 93. And for Vancouver, this is like, never going to happen.

So here we are. And so he asked me if I was interested in going to Boston for game four because surely we're going to sweep, right, green one, two, three and four. And I said, yeah, let's go to Boston. Let's go. And so we went and, you know, Prime Minister Harp had a thing. Never sit in the box. He stood in the bowl with people. You pay for your own ticket. And so, but we had a protocol.

So he and I went. We sat in the lower bowl. And I wore a Kinex jersey and we sat there together. We're there for Team Canada. But a bill came due. And the formula was you have to pay for the face. value of your ticket, you're paying for the ticket. And whatever the commercial cost for flight would be to and from Boston, you write a check.

And I wrote a check receiver general, and it was $585 for my, and in the memo, you write flight. And then I took a screenshot of my ticket that I paid for. And we put it all in a thing and I sent it to the PMO communications shop. If anybody asks, there's the copy of, like, I'm paying for it. Like, down to the penny. I, if I was just a regular citizen going to the game, I had to pay the upfront cause. There's no freebies here.

Protect, and this is coming out of the 08 recession and the cause and people being nervous about things. And I think you have to act that way. Assume the taxpayers are going to know what their cost burden is for having done. I mean, you get heat for going there anyway, not sitting in your office and reading a book. So you better account for what the costs are up to the penny. So, you know, I find that, you know, fascinating. But it's it's not really at the core of what what this past week's been about. Because, you know, it's one thing about going to the games.

It's one thing about politicians getting booed at games. And it's not about which team they're cheering for. Usually it's because they're a politician, because they're a premier. And people who are upset or a prime minister. What do we take away from last week? What's the lesson of last week, whether you're a political figure or a hockey player? I mean, I got upset like a lot of people did about the way

some of the players reacted to some of the things that were said last week. But I also fall back on that other part where I say, they're hockey players. They don't spend time in the dressing room, talking about politics. And yet suddenly they're in the middle of it all. I don't know. What's the lesson? Well, I think at a human level, what the game showed us and certainly the aftermath of the game is that your behavior can help you snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, right? And you can conduct yourself with integrity and dignity and defeat, which I think

the Canadian team did. Almost, I can't think of an exception. I don't, I don't remember. any story of any Canadian player being a sore loser. And also, I think, to put it a different way, Peter, there's the only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner. And the Americans, at least the players and the president and the administration are the supreme sore winners. And I think that reflects badly on them. And it's indicative of the political culture that they foster. I also think, and this is the Mr. Bright side of me is that like, you know, social progress is always two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, two steps back, four steps forward, one step back.

This is like in the macro, forget Canada, US or us being self-righteous Canadians and, you know, having a pity party and saying, oh, look how bad the Americans did in the moment and all that. You know, obviously there's been a taste of that here in this conversation and elsewhere, but everybody's learning from this. Everybody's learning from this, right? you know, the Donald Trump thing about the sexism and what he said in the call, it's what it is. That's a time capsule. That's an element of who he is and what he is. But this will be played and replayed by hockey USA, hockey Canada, you know, everybody around the world in all different formats and all different sports and all different levels.

Just be really careful. Be smart. Be judicious because I think the American victory here. And look, the Americans played brilliantly through the entirety of the tournament. They had a phenomenal world class team, one of the best teams they've ever put on the ice. And I think it got dinged. 10%, 20%, 30%, I don't know, whatever, but it got dinged. And there's a bit of a shade over the fallout from all this.

And that's really unfortunate because they really were great athletes who did a really impressive thing for their country in a time when the country needed an inspiriting moment. Like we did, frankly, at four nations. And we would have liked to have had this moment as well. But everybody will learn as a communications exercise about how to care yourself. And as a member of Parma, I was used to think to myself. And I know I failed at this more than I wished I had. But sometimes I would sit in Parliament, and I would look around and I would say, on average, every member of parliament represents about 100,000 Canadians.

So that means that there's five Rogers arenas or five bell centers of men, women and kids, or men and women, adults who vote, but 100,000. But five bell centers, five Rogers arenas, who I represent on there. There's only one person. Of those five arenas that gets the privilege of sitting in this green velvet chair in the parliament of Canada, and sit in this room and to be a voice for them. And that's me. So, you know, straighten your tie. Sit properly. Speak appropriately.

Walk with pride. Be dignified. Respond. Don't react. Be thoughtful. Because there's a lot of people who are looking at you. And you should act accordingly. And that's true of athletes.

It's true of everybody, I think. You know, I tried to think, was there something special about the Olympics that ended up, you know, delivering the kind of controversy afterwards? Is there, you know, is there an Olympic? thing, especially the Winter Olympics, because we're a winter nation, and so we're a lot of the other ones, obviously. Here's what I came up with. I, you know, I went back and looked at the last dozen years of Winter Olympics. 2014, Sochi, I was there for that. And at the opening ceremony, I sat, not many rows behind Putin. And, you know, I sort of looked at him thinking, you know,

what's going on in that head? What's he got? What's he got? What's he planning, you know? And within days after the Olympics ended, he invaded Crimea. Yeah. Then you go to 2018. They were in South Korea. What happens days after that? The Americans, the Brits and the French, bombed Syria.

Okay. 2022, four years ago. What happened right after the Olympics? Ukraine. Mm-hmm. And now this year, right after the Olympics, America does Iran and Israel with America. Now, is that just a fluke?

Very interesting point. Yeah, it's a very interesting point. I certainly shuddered to remember the Russian invasion of Crimea, which happened right after the gold medal game and the then leader of the third party who I was advising said something. to advise that I will not recall for the public. But on Tune Mon-Aaul of all places, yeah, that's a really interesting coincidence.

I mean, it may be that leaders are thinking about their interactions with other countries at that moment. You have to, you want to believe that these things are planned long in advance, but sometimes. But sports like the arts is a time when a lot of people, I mean, in the United States, you know, half the public doesn't vote. In Canada, a third of the public. who can vote, doesn't vote. Plus, you know, people who are in landed and have a landed

immigrant status who are. So in Canada, if you take those who can vote but don't vote and those who have landed and paying taxes, but don't vote, half of the Canadian adults don't vote. But when it's a gold medal game, everybody's paying attention, people who vote and don't vote. So the audience is much broader and it's passive viewers and people who are engaged in politics. So the scrutiny is higher. The audience is more vast. So the opportunity to play politics with it, to appeal and to frankly tap dance in front of a new cohort of potential voters is there. But the risk profile is there as well. And if you look at a lot of different Olympics, you know, 72 in Munich and the terrorist attack,

80 and the exclusion of the Soviet Union because of what was happening in Afghanistan. You know, 84 in the morning of America and the Los Angeles Games and what that meant. Canada, even in 2010, having received the Olympics from Beijing in 2008, I mean, I was minister for the 2010 Olympics. I remember having some of these conversations. We received the Olympics from Beijing in 2008, where they spent 10x what we did in terms of their infrastructure spend and the jingoistic thing that they did there. And their Olympics happened right at the start of the 08 election campaign.

So David Emerson, it wasn't running again. We sent him instead of me because we had to handle the politics of it in a delicate way because we were receiving the Olympic torches from them. And then it was London 2012 and the Diamond Jubilee. So we had to do it well. We were coming out of the recession in 2008 and 10. And so there's this idea of we're hosting this amateur sporting festival for millionaire Olympic hockey players in Vancouver,

three blocks from the downtown east side where there's horrific and tragic poverty. And these millionaire hockey players are getting this fantastic arena and this big party thrown for them to win a gold medal and the juxtaposition of that against the backdrop of the 08 recession. How do we narrow? These things are very political and sensitive. And you have to be very careful about Olympic games and what it means in terms of priorities and perspective about things.

And in the end, for Canada, 2010 was a smash hit, huge success story. It elevated the spirit of the country when we needed it. But there is a risk associated with these things for sure. And the politics of it, you pointed out the violent part of the Peter and the foreign policy stuff. But when you're on a global stage and everybody's watching for different reasons, it attracts a spotlight that can be uncomfortable. Okay. We're going to take a break.

come back and talk about something else for a couple of moments. But first, this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Moore-Buts conversation for this day. And we appreciate, of course, both James Moore, former federal cabinet minister in the Stephen Harper government and Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau after the 2015 election. Okay, this is more up your alley. it's straight politics. And it's a question of rebranding and whether you can actually do that, especially if being around for a while.

Rebranding a political figure. Earlier this week, we had Pierre Polyev on the program. For an extended interview, about 40 minutes, I know you've both heard bits and pieces of it. My takeaway was this is a very different Pierre Polyev than the one I would have interviewed a year ago. or two years ago or 10 years ago. And this follows his election loss, the party's loss,

his personal loss in a riding and in a by-election victory. And then sort of managing to hold on to the leadership after a review vote in Calgary a month or two ago. But it does raise the question rebranding and whether it's possible because already the debate kind of rages about, you know, is that a real, is that the real peer of Pahliav, or is that just one where he's trying to, you know, get away from the past and some of the criticisms of his actions in the past? Can you rebrand? Can you rebrand as a politician? Not political party, but the way you're seen by your voters. James, what are you starting? It kind of depends on how badly you botched the first attempt.

I think that's true, right? I mean, like, if you come out of the gates and you crash and burn on the runway, I don't know that you can rebrand and put the wings back on. That's not the case with Pierre. So, I mean, can he shift in alignment with the time? Like, to be honest, I think technology has shifted in a way that's, that's accretive to Pierre in this regard. Any other politician who wants to sort of refocus or re-represent or rebrand themselves

and take another run at it? because I actually think that old school media where people had fewer glimpses at political leaders, if you made an impression, it's hard to turn it around. I just think attention spans are so short now. News cycles are so short. I mean, Tumblr Ridge. Tumblr Ridge was a week ago,

and it's not on the headlines anymore at all, tragically. I mean, in the region it is, but the rest of the country, we, you know, the community will deal with it for a long time. There'll be a long tail to it for a lot of people in a lot of ways. but next day, we've kind of turned the page and we're focused on new crises and new challenges. And so I think that's actually true as well of political leaders. It's like, oh, here's, here you are again. Okay, now what are you telling us?

And so I think if it's seen as insincere, it won't work. If it's seen as a retooling and a re-representing of your perspective and approach to things is a consequence of circumstance and the reaction you got the first time, I think the public will take another look at you and we'll let you on offer. And also, I think the public, we do have deference to authority and we do have difference to other people's judgment. And in the context for that for Pierre is, I think most people, most Canadians don't really, they know, but they kind of don't know about the way in which leaders emerge from political parties, but they kind of say, we said no to Pierre Paulyev.

We don't want it to be our prime minister. We still gave him 41 percent of vote. We still gave him 140 seats in Parliament, but we prefer Mark Carney right now. And the Conservative Party retreats for six months or a year. And they come back and they say, We've thought about this and we really think that Pierre Pauly, we want you to take another look at him. We've given him an 87% mandate. We've re-nominated him. He's back in parliament. He won a by election.

Take another look at him because he really is an impressive person and we really think that you should consider him again. I think a lot of the public will go, okay, if that's what you think, if that's what you think you want us to do, we may not have a different judgment, but okay, fair is fair. If this is your best on offer, we'll take another look at him. And I think that's kind of where we are. And Pierre recognizes the mission of the country, which is to reposition ourselves globally to have more diversified trade, to be more serious and studious about Donald Trump. Don't pretend that the elephant's not in the room and speak plainly and clearly about remedies going forward. And if he does do that, I think Canadians might say, okay, we'll take another look at you. And certainly that's what Pierre is hoping for.

And I think Canadians are pretty fair-minded about that. And they're deferential to political parties to say, no, no, no, I know you didn't reject him. But we think you should take another look at Pierre. and voters may well do that. Okay. Jerry, I want your thoughts on that, but just before you do, let me say something about the Tumblr Ridge situation, as you described it, James, because it is one of the failures of the media, and I've seen this over decades.

When the big story hits, you're all over it, and then suddenly it's gone and you disappear. Now, there's a story still in Tumblr Ridge, how it, you know, survives, how it tries to put itself back together as a town and a community and families. So what do you do? Do you keep going back? I mean, there are other elements to the story, of course,

that are in fact still being followed, the influence of AI and perhaps knowing what was about to happen there. But this issue of the community itself, because I talked to a couple of people who were on the ground during this. immediate aftermath of the shootings. And they said after three days, they were already getting, you know, the wide eye from residents.

You know, when are you leaving? Get out of our town. You know, we don't need this. We don't need cameras around every house and corner. So it is, you know, it's one of those dilemmas for the media on how you cover these stories and how you do the follow-up. to the story. My comment was less about the media than it was about the public and their ability to sort of scroll.

How did they get their information, right? Their information to think about it and discuss it. And keep it on their mind by the media. So it is one of those issues that constantly confront the media. And I never had a good answer for it. When I was directly involved in day-to-day news, you want to follow things up. But then you have this other side of it, too. Anyway, back to rebranding, Jerry, if you want to.

Well, I just said on the point you just made, Peter, I think probably my earliest recollection of an interaction with the media was the tragedy that happened in my hometown when I was a child. We had coal mine blew up, and you were probably there in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. It was, in fact, it was February 24th, so we just passed the anniversary of it. 13 men killed. I had a lot of kids in my school and several in my class lost their dad that day. And I do recall it's vague recollection, but it was branded or imprinted on me at the time.

I should say just how urgently the town wanted the media to get lost, right? And they didn't want, this was obviously a very different age, but people did not want to do their mourning in front of the cameras. They did not want to adjust their behavior. because Peter Mansbridge or somebody else was in town, people just wanted to be with each other and be able to be themselves. And I suspect that the folks in Tumblr Ridge are an even smaller town than the one I grew up in where everybody knew everybody. And there were 26,000 people in my hometown. So I can imagine what they're going through in Tumblr Ridge is very much the same.

Everybody get away from here and let us try and look each other in the eye and give each other. some comfort in a very difficult situation. On the branding point, I think it is possible. And I think James and I, whether we would think about it at the time, have both been on the positive receiving end of a successful rebranded politician. In my case, Dalton McGinty, whose office I joined after an election loss in 1999, and that experience gave him a very clear idea of what kind of politician he wanted to be and where he thought he'd made his mistakes in the 99 campaign. And he meticulously, methodically built a new brand for himself as someone who was kind of a man with a plan who had solutions to the problems that Ontarians at the time were worried

about class sizes and wait times and all that sort of thing and won a smashing majority government in 2003. But he really put in place a plan to, to do that over the course of four years. And I think Stephen Harper is another example of someone who was widely seen when he was an opposition as too extreme to be prime minister. He shaved off the rough edges, most famously with a blue sweater in the campaign, but also with his day-to-day behavior, and you could probably see where I'm going with this, Peter, his day-to-day behavior over several years, both as opposition leader and as prime minister,

so that it made Canadians comfortable that he wasn't going to do something crazy. And he was rewarded with a majority government at the end of the day. The challenge, of course, and when you said you wanted to talk about this, I looked at where we get the concept of branding. And of course, we get the concept of branding from the red-hot iron that is imprinted on the rumps of cattle. And that was done so that if one of my cows wandered into your pasture, you could look at their backside and say, well, that's not my cow.

And to a certain degree, I think it's the same thing with consumer products and leaders. And I think that it's possible, but it's really hard. And it takes intense discipline over time. So where we're really going to see the fruits of Mr. Polyev's behavior is whether he can maintain this new brand. And I think that's going to be a real challenge for him. Yeah, I, well, that is the challenge. I don't know that it's going to be a real challenge for him, in my view,

a time will smoke out who's right or wrong. But I think there have been far more dramatic shifts, and I think in British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, the Gordon Campbell that presented himself to British Columbians in 1996 versus 2001. I'm not going in the way back machine here. If you look at, in 1996, he literally had a guitar and like a Mac jacket. He was trying to be a pot. I mean, he's mayor of Vancouver trying to appeal to the Okinaw and the North and North Vancouver Island and all that.

And so, like, he way over corrected, got rid of the Gucci loafers and put on like, you know, work boots in the guitar and tried to be Mr. Blue Collar guy. And that really reacted very badly and came back to ground and was authentic. I think the question, what works is authenticity because the people can see in their phones, you know, who's real and who's not and who's sincere and who's not. And so Gordon Campbell came back to what he really was. And he didn't really take off a suit for the next four or five, well, more than that decade as a premier. And because that's who he is and be who you are. Preston Manning, between 93 and 97, you'll remember Peter.

He did a more dramatic. Frankly, he looked better. He looked more appropriate. He looked more prime and hysterial. But it was really obvious what he was trying to do. And it was a little too marked turtlenecky and no glasses and a little, little too much dipity-do in the hair. It's like, that's not the Preston Manning that we've come to know.

And I can see you coming. And that's not quite what we were thinking of, right? So, anyway, so I don't think Pierre is, I don't think this is a massive pivot. I don't think it's a makeover. I don't think it's a rebrand. I think what you see with Pierre is a re-rationalization. And people have asked after the election of what's peer strategy. I think when you now actually see it on display, right, which is for six months,

find out whether or not there are problems within the party, get a seat back in Parliament in the bullwraper by-election, come back as leader of the opposition, get an 87% mandate from the party, and then now a couple weeks later, repivit back to the big issues that the public is focused on. You can't force people to care about an industrial carbon tax. You can't force people to care about pipelines.

You can't ignore people's passion about the threat to Canadian sovereignty and Donald Trump. You have to address the issue in the room. Okay. I'm going to have to call the day for this conversation, but a good one, as always. And we'll talk again in a couple of weeks. So thanks to Jerry.

Thanks to James. The bridge will be back tomorrow. Don't miss it. Bye for now.