The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore Butts - When Is The Right Time For A Leading Politician To Retire?

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

It's a very difficult decision to make whether you are a professional athlete or a practising politician. When to retire. How do you decide the time has come for you? That's one of the questions for James Moore and Gerald Butts during their latest "conversation" right here on The Bridge. 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? It's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with James Moore and Gerald Butts, our latest conversation. And it's the last one before the summer break, so we'll make it a good one for you. Stay with us. Here's the topic one. We've kind of talked about this before. It's dealing with the issue of when a politician, how a politician, should consider that the time is up, that it's time to quit. And usually that revolves around some indication that this person's

perhaps not as popular as they used to be, especially when they're in a leadership role. But still, nevertheless, it's a tough decision. One assumes it must be very difficult for somebody who's gone through their life wanting to be a politician and wanting to be a political leader to suddenly say, you know what, I don't think I can do this anymore. So what do you think about when you're in that position. James, why don't you start us off? So much of politics is wrapped up in pride. And I think a really unhealthy way. You come into politics. You go to your, you know, when you think about running for office, you go to your closest family and friends, you're kind of no BS friends who will tell you the honest truth, that people will tell

you that sure doesn't fit right. People will tell you your heritage is not working. Those people are the people that you rely on in politics. And so you go to your, when you think of running, you go to them, you say, I'm thinking of running for office or running. running for mayor or running for whatever. And they'll either do two things. They'll laugh at you and say, come on, really? You? Or they'll say, yeah, yeah.

And so you pass the laugh test. And so you build from there. And all of the, I would say all of that, but a lot of the benefits of public office and being in public life are all front loaded. You decide to run and people get, oh my God, excited. Yeah, you, of course, you. You're great. You'd be great.

You'd be wonderful. Here's some money. You know, put a sign on my lawn. Let's brandish your name and let's boast about you. It says, pump you up on social media. So all of the benefits of, the immediate feedback, the, the endorphin rush of people like me. People think I'm smart.

People think I'm impressive. People think I do a good job. Oh my God. This isn't. So you get this flood. And so it kind of offer a lot of people, I think skews your perception of who you are, what you are, what you can be, what you will be. And then to climb down from that and to kind of push that away and to be a realist about

how public life is supposed to be a temporary stop in life. It's not meant to be a career. It's meant to be a contribution. It's meant to be a perspective. It's meant to be a push to fight for an idea, a person, a remedy or something. But it's not meant to be a way station in life that you just sit at and don't move from. And so when you're in politics for a really long time, you come in with all the benefits up front emotionally, all the benefits,

all the validation of who you are, what you are, what you can be, plus the money and the office and the staff. And if you're lucky to be in cabinet, all the things that are associated with that, that to then sort of clearly have an assessment and say, you know what, it's, it's time for me to go home. It's time for me to walk away. You really have to sort of see through the fog. And sometimes you see through the fog because you get cracked by reality. You, you know, I think Prime Minister Trudeau may have had that when he lost the Toronto-St. Paul by-election.

Sometimes there's a crack of reality because you have a sort of a fissure that's presented to you in your family. you have a health crisis in your family or your spouse says it's it's us or this and you need to decide and all of those things happen in a very human way and so I think it's always really important when you when you enter into public life is to have a sober assessment of what is it that I want to do what is it that if I accomplished I would honestly consider to have been a meaningful contribution to public life in a way that I will be proud of and get to talk about for the rest of my life and then call that good enough and then turn around and go home and let somebody else move on. And the problem with politics is that once you have success, it earns more success, it earns more

opportunity for more success. And you kind of can't get off the ladder without being seen to be either betraying your success or quitting on your team or quitting on your leader or quitting on your constituents or quitting on a movement. And so you can kind of get wrapped into this momentum of things that can then spit you out unexpectedly, not on your own terms. And I would say three quarters to maybe 90% of people leave public office in a way that provides them a sense of comfort and satisfaction. And I think that's an unfortunate thing. Okay. Jerry, what's your opening thought on this? I obviously have not had the firsthand experience that James has had on this. And And that's always an important proviso to make that staff or staff and elected officials are elected officials.

And it's a completely different thought process. But I will say that, you know, as is often the case, I've mentioned this person many times on our podcast, Jim Coots, who was a really important mentor to me, gave me great advice about public life and both for my own sake and in counseling the people that I had the privilege. to advise while I was there about leaving. And frankly, you know, it goes back to something my dad said to me when I was a kid that comings and goings really matter in life, right? So how you enter public life and how you leave public life is really important. And both of those things will be remembered far longer than many of the random monotonous Tuesdays you spend in public life.

So pay close attention to how you enter and how you leave. But Jim said to me, when I was thinking about leaving the premier's office, and I wish he'd been around when I was thinking about leaving the prime minister's office. But he said, look, always go when more people want you to stay than want you to leave. And it's really difficult to assess that because the minute you enter these really important, difficult, almost impossible to do jobs, you start accruing people who want you to leave. every single day you probably add to them every day you're in the office.

And for politicians, I think polling can be a lagging indicator, right? Sometimes you don't see the change in the public mood until after it's happened and it's in the rearview mirror. And then that creates a really bad circle of incentives for you to try to turn things around. And you probably know in your gut it's not going to turn around. and you get past a point, and then it's sort of people start writing that you're holding on to office too long. And by the time it gets to that point, you're kind of already tumbling down a cliff looking for a branch to hold on to. And I think that's where I would really agree with what James said, that the only durable sense of satisfaction in politics, because it's full of ups and downs, is what you accomplished while you were, you had the privilege of being in one of those offices.

And that's why you're kind of designing your own ending from the minute you walk into those buildings that you're, are you going to spend most of your time working on the things that are important to you? And therefore, when you leave, you don't, you aren't filled with regret that you wasted all that time, right? And the only thing you can really control in public office unless you're the prime minister or the premier. And even then, there are lots of things you can't control about. your government and you can't control who the Americans elect president of the United States, where war breaks out, et cetera, et cetera. The only thing you really can control is how you spend your own time. And I've had the privilege of knowing a lot of effective political leaders in my life and the ones that are really at peace with their time. And James, I would put you in this category

as well, who are at peace with their time in public office, are those. who felt like they really lean their shoulder into moving the rock they cared about while they were there. And when that happens, you hopefully get a chance to plan your own exit. Sometimes you don't. And the people who are really regretful a year, two years, three years later are the people who kind of wasted time worrying about what was being written about them and whether somebody liked them or not and what the polls said while they were there. Okay, just a couple of things before I move on. Jim Coots, for those who don't know, was the principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau.

And Lester Pearson. And Lester Pearson. Yeah. So he had enormous experience in the highest offices, you know, advising in the highest offices of the land. And if you're interested in some of his story, there's an excellent new book out. It's basically his diaries, Jim Cootts Diaries. Yes, the Coots Diaries. And there's some surprising stuff in there.

I mean, I lived through part of that time when he was there with Pierre Trudeau. And there's things that I never knew about to pop up in those diaries. Anyway, let me get back to the kind of, you both touched on it in a way, but I want to try to understand this. When you're at that point deciding that enough is enough, is it any different if you're the leader versus if you're, say, a backbench MP, it's still a huge decision that you're having to make. Well, yeah, to answer your question, though, is that, yeah, it's enormously more consequential, obviously, because you have a weight of an organization that you're responsible for versus an individual. And also because when you've decided to run for a leader, you think that you're really special, frankly. You know, when people do the self-assessment of, can I be the CEO of G7 country?

By God, I can. Like, you have a really special self-perception, you know? And we all know a lot of people who have done that assessment. And often it's you kind of look left and you look right at the people who are in the room or the people who currently have the job and you say, I don't know if I can do it, but I know that I can do better than that person. So I think there's a lot of that assessment. But no, look, when you're when you are the CEO of a G7 country or the premier of a province, you can't just quit. You actually have the affairs of state to be burdened with. You have succession matters.

You have operational matters. You have day-to-day matters. you have national security implications. You have economic implications. Plus you have, you know, legislation before Parliament. You've got G7 meetings coming up and G20 meetings coming up and NATO meetings coming. You can't just quit. You can't just bail.

You can signal that maybe you're not going to run again and start a process. You can do certain things. But the climb down, you have enormous responsibility in order to steward the ship of state in a way that's responsible. So when you become the prime minister of the country or the premier of a province, the burdens of responsibility that you have invited to be the steward of, that has to come first ahead of your personal reputation, obviously, ahead of the political benefits of your party, all of that stuff.

If you are worthy of being prime minister, by the way, the public will know, public instinctively knows that. And they can look people in squarely in the face of who's offering to be the prime minister of the country and to know whether or not they have the character and the understanding of the enormous responsibilities and privileges of being in office, which includes, the obligation to put the country first on your exit, how you exit matters enormously. So, but yeah, look, when you're looking at polls that are increasingly sagging,

I mean, I think we, you know, I suggested this topic in part because I'm here in British Columbia and I look at David Eby, Premier British Columbia. And I just, he just sends up all the, all the signals that this is somebody who is planning an exit. He has, he has a government, he has time on the clock. So he doesn't, he doesn't, he's not being pushed out. He's not being forced out yet. But you can see that his personal popularity,

in the low 30s. You can see that his government doesn't have an agenda. You can see, like, objectively, this is not a blue, red, orange team thing. You can see objectively that his government doesn't really have an agenda. You can see objectively that they're kind of at the mercy of events that are happening to them, and they don't really have a pushback. The fiscal situation is deteriorating. The trade situation with the U.S. is deteriorating. The Aboriginal reconciliation question is he's struggling with. His caucus, he's like, you can just see it's falling away. and so he needs to think about whether or not he's going to choose change for his party and for the province or the voters will choose it for him. And so he needs to do some real sort of personal reflection, frankly, over the summer months, talk to his family.

Talk to, like I said this to a previous podcast. I think it's really important for everybody who's running for office. Mayor, you know, leader, member of parliament, have a true proper kitchen cabinet of people who are interested in your self-interest and people who will tell you the honest truth and say, just so you know, what happened last week was really bad. That was not good. That was like, I mean, I'm just telling you as a friend, that was not good. And you're going to have to explain that for a long time. And I just don't think you're going in the right direction. Like the people who will cut through and not sugar code it, the people are not paid to give you advice, the people who are not worried about their next paycheck being you thinking of them in a good light. And so you have to have people who are

really honest. And I hope that Premier Eby, for the benefit of my province and the third largest province in the country in a difficult time, I hope that he has people who are being honest about him, about you seem to have run out of steam. You seem to not be enjoying the job. Your government seems to be responding to things as opposed to leading things. And I'm worried about you and you being seen as a failure. And you don't deserve that. And I think you should think about what you want to do next and sort of nudge him in a direction to be responsible.

He's not the only premier with bad numbers right now. You know, like Doug Ford's got equally. Yeah. So Doug Ford's numbers are so bad. You know, he called it a fake poll. and now he's got the pollster, you know, threatening legal action. So, you know, they, these are... On brand.

It's... If you got a thought on this, Jerry, on the, you know, on the leader situation versus, you know, someone who's not a leader, somebody's sitting in the background. And I guess one of the reasons I raise it, when you look back at, say, prime ministers of the country, there are not many who call it on their own when to get out. Yeah.

You know, most of them sort of leave after, you know, a really bad election loss or what's about to look like a really bad election loss. And you go back through the various prime ministers of the last 30, 40 years. I mean, who was the one who left on their own terms? I guess. Yeah, well, that's another thing that Jim said to me many, many years ago, two other things. one, when you do leave, try and make your departure useful for the people you leave behind. Right. And when you're talking about a prime minister or a premier, the ultimate bar for judging whether

or not your departure was useful was whether or not you left your party in a position where they can win the next election. Right. And he also said to me he couldn't think of a prime minister in Canadian history who'd left the office thinking they could win another election, which is an interesting thing because there's always been speculation about Pierre Trudeau and whether or not he recognized the state of affairs in 1984 or whether he retired thinking that, you know, those lungheads, I could have beaten them one more time. But that'll tell you that Jim, Jim probably knew what Pierre thought at that

moment. And he didn't think he could win another election. So I think with prime ministers and premiers, with first ministers, it's a very different situation because you have all of the things that James described, which I won't repeat, but you also have the political health of your organization in your mind, and ultimately you're deciding whether or not the party would be better off with you or with somebody else's leader going into the next election. With ministers, I think it's a combination of how you feel in your own personal heart, whether or not you should continue, and whether the people who love you think you should continue, because there are very few exceptions. I mean, if you don't shoot the sitting prime minister on the way out metaphorically, like

Minister Freeland did, there are very few examples of a minister's departure that materially altered the course of a government. In my view, I'm not the deepest student in political history, but I know a little bit about it. And certainly, maybe you could argue John Turner in the 70s. But at the end of the day, ministers are ministers and prime ministers are prime ministers. And one matters a lot more in the minds of voters than the other. In general terms, what's harder?

Making the decision to get in or making the decision to get out? Get out. Because to get in off, I mean, people come from different walks of life. But to get in, it's kind of your enthusiasm can often get the better of you and you haven't thought through. what's in front of you. A lot of people also, seek mentors in life and no matter what it is that you do,

whether you're planning on running a marathon a year from now, ask people who've done it before. If you're planning on going on a trip, ask people who have been there before. If you're thinking of running for office, ask people who have been there before about what the lessons learned and regrets and all that. So I think it's easier to get in

than it is to get out because the momentum of things. But to get out is hard because you do have, there is a team aspect of politics that you do want to be loyal to your friends, you don't want to leave people in a lurch. You're, you know, all the people who, you know, little grandmothers who come up to you and give you $50 because it's all they can afford, but they really like your speech and hope that you do well.

You feel like you're letting them down. Like there is all of that. Plus your family has sacrificed a lot and you sometimes feel like maybe you've let them down. So plus you think often that you're more than what you are and that you're the indispensable person. And as George Will says, all the graveyards of the world are filled with indispensable men. So like we're all dispensable. We're all replaceable.

often when you're in there, you think, my God, who's going to come after me? Surely not him. him okay like you think only i can do this you know and but yeah to exit i think is uh is significantly hard and also there's the great unknown of when you leave politics what next like what is it like especially if you've been in politics for a long time i was in five terms 15 years 10 in government eight in cabinet and sort of the what's next question does kind of hang over you like am i is it going to be a step down am i going to be embarrassed am i you know is my um you know are are my opportunities going to evaporate? If I leave and our government loses, what does that be?

Like, you do do that math. It's a human thing to do. And so I think there's a lot of anxiety because there's comfort in the certainty of public office. If you're in a safe riding and you can just sort of run forever, that's not how the system is supposed to work and that's not how you're supposed to think. But if you're in your prime earning years of your life and you have a young family, yeah, that stains and influences and torques your decision.

So to leave, there's a very human element to all of this. And it's, and it is what it. is. And so to leave us, to leave his heart, because we all know there are many horror stories of people who have left public office and have spiraled into depression, suicidal thoughts, unemployment, a sense of social disgrace and all that, because, you know, I got rejected by my community. And it's, it's, as they always say that coming up is exciting. Being at the top is never as good as you think it's going to be, and the come down is brutal. And that's true. I got to say that, I remember more than a few federal politicians from different stripes who lost in elections kind of unexpectedly, at least going into the campaign, they didn't think they were going to lose.

But then they ended up losing. And they really had a hard time recovering from that, the fact that they'd been rejected by their writing, which they may have represented any number of. times in the past. But I think we, we tend as citizens not to recognize that kind of impact on a person who puts themselves up for public office. Yeah, I think that's right. It's kind of like yelling at people from the comfort of your car or these days from your keyboard. Do you think it's a free way to expel negative energy rather than something that lands on people and has consequences? And, you know, it's interesting. As I was listening to James, I was thinking, and I agree with this. I think you're basically saying it's easier to get into politics because you don't really know what you're

getting into. And it's easier to leave because you know what you're leaving behind. And I think that both of those things are really true. That I remember when I decided to leave the premier's office in June of 2008, I left, but I told the premier after the election. in 2007, I was not going to be there for the long haul and that I would get through the transition and the budget, but I really wanted to leave. And coincidentally, I spent the first two weeks after I left at Jim Kutz's place in southern Alberta. And I remember saying, he said, so why do you want to leave this job? And I said, well, everything I love about the job has gotten weight, has gotten to be routine. And everything I don't like about it is driving me crazier and

crazier. And there were lots of other personal reasons. Jody and I had two very young kids at the time, which were not around when I joined Dalton McGinty's operation. But ultimately, it was about, are you willing to make the professional and personal sacrifices to accomplish what it is you set out to accomplish in the first place? And I kind of felt like the things that I helped Dalton McGinty think about running on in 2007, we did them all. So why am I hanging around here? I remember when I left Peter, my dad, I said to my dad, I said, dad, just so, you know, I'm going to be announcing it.

You and I've talked about it a lot, dad. And, you know, I asked your advice on it, but I've decided I'm not going to run again. And I'm going to, I'm talking to Prime Minister Harper this week and I'm going to let him know. So it'll come out sometime. But I just want to let you know that, that I'm, Courtney and I, we talked about it. And I made the decision, I'm not going to run again. And my dad kind of goes, yeah, well, you know, is, you know, you know, I've talked about it's probably the right call because, you know, in part, when you think about it,

you know, you've been in office for 15 years. I mean, if you were, if you haven't gotten stuff done, you know, you probably would have done it by now. So thanks, dad. Great. Happy Father's Day. Let everyone know we're recording this on Father's Day. But there's an element of truth of that. It's like, yeah, it's like five terms, 15 years, 10 in government.

and Aiton cabinet and majority conservative government. Yeah, yeah, I guess there's probably some truth in that. Thanks, Dad. Well, and if you subscribe to the view that every year in politics is a dog's year, which it most definitely is, then your dad makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're going to take a break. I'll come back, switch topics.

I've got an interesting one here for you before the summer starts, but we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the latest episode of the, Moore-Buts conversations. James Moore, former Stephen Harper Cabinet Minister, Gerald Butz, the former principal advisor, principal secretary to Justin Trudeau after the 2015 election. So, you know, we talk about the difficulties of a politician trying to determine when is the right time to get out. Here's a very, very different kind of question about elected politicians who were elected to either

a federal parliament or a provincial legislature, who are now openly saying in Alberta that they would vote against the province staying in Canada. How should their parties, or their party, I guess, provincial conservative party or UCP in Alberta, and the federal conservative party in Ottawa? How should that be looked upon? James, you sat with some of these people.

Yeah, I mean, so in Alberta, there are four former conservative colleagues of mine, Val Meredith, who is from, who served in British Columbia from South, Surrey White Rock, Rob Anders from Calgary, Labar Payne, and Art Hanger also from Calgary. Four of them who are federal conservative members of parliament, proud federalists have all said that they would support the separatist cause in Alberta. really disappointing, really unfortunate. I mean, it's just really sad. Val Meredith of the four, you know, she ran as a separatist in the past. She ran as a Reform Party candidate, I believe in 88.

So it was in 84, 88, but in the past, she was a member of Western Canada concept party. So she has had that in the past. And so maybe she's returning to that. I don't know. Rob Andrews has always been kind of out there on a bunch of things. And it's just whatever the most right-wing thing is, he needs to be the most right-wing thing of the right wing thing. And then there's a new right wing thing. He needs to be the most right wing of the right wing thing. I don't know why that's his instinct. And he always sort of

seems to be that way. He is authentically that though. He's very predictable that he is that. And he actually is a guy of principal. So I mean, a lot of people can go out Rob Anders for a bunch of reasons. But he actually is a very consistent principal person. But I've just always viewed that if you believe in Canada, you believe in Canada. And if you don't, you don't. And if you don't, you shouldn't pretend that you do. And I just, like, I get why Albertans are frustrated and upset and annoyed. But I also hope that a lot of Albertans understand that a lot of the rest of the country really is rooting for them to get it right and to be happy and to be a properly,

fully integrated and engaged part of Confederation. And a lot of us and the rest of the country are frustrated by your sense of frustration and why things haven't worked. we had hoped that almost a decade of Stephen Harper being the prime minister of the country with some of the most powerful cabinet positions in the country being held by Albertans, whether it's Jason Kenney or Jim Prentice or Ronna Ambrose or others who had the steering of the ship of the country for almost a decade would satiate and get things done in a way that would be satisfactory to you. Some of the most powerful voices in Canadian politics and premierships

have all come from Alberta. And even after all of that, you still want to go. Like I don't, I understand, you know, Justin Trudeau and Stephen Gilboe and the blowback and the disappointment and all that. But I don't, there has not been a moment of betrayal that warrants giving up on the country as I assess it. And I don't understand it. I don't understand how one can say that we've lost, you know, three, four elections

in a row, therefore the country's broken because I don't get my way. There are reasons why Andrew Shear was not prime minister. There's a reason why I are no tools, not prime minister. There's a reason why Pierre probably I've been in a reason why Peter Paul, I've didn't win last time. And electoral politics in Canada is really complicated and it's hard. But the Conservative Party has always done really well. We're the official opposition on the doorstep of forming government

and doing a lot of the things that you want. But to give up on the country, yeah, there's certain acts in life that are kind of you don't come back from. And if you're telling me as a learned adult who's been in public office, who's had the privilege of being in the federal parliament that you're giving up in the country now because you've lost a couple of elections, I've lost a ton of respect for you. Should they be tossed from their party if they're still in it?

I don't know. I don't know that you can, right? I mean, how do you prove a loyalty test? I mean, they should not want, I'll put it this way, Pierre and Pollyev should make it so clear that our party is so federalist that they shouldn't want to be in the same room with us. That's the trick. It's not about throwing them out.

It's about them going, whoa, no. So I think the missing middle voter or the missing swing voter that Pierre-Poliev needs to earn or the conservative party needs to earn in order to have the privilege of being in the government should be not just an element of the tent growing so big that we can't hold so many people. And part of success is people saying, I don't want to vote for you. And part of success is saying, you see who is rejecting us? Yeah, minus one equals plus two. Let's go. Okay. If you're watching this on YouTube, you're watching that I'm being dive bomb by.

a fly, a single fly. It's got to be the only fly in Scotland. I think it's Rob Anders that fly is. They will be. Where are you on this, Jerry? Oh, I'm, look, I'm a pretty staunch, small

liberal on all this stuff. I think that it's a free country. People can say whatever the heck they want, but they should be prepared to be judged and to face the consequences of whatever belief they intend. They are espousing at any given moment. And if you have served, as some of these people have, a decade and more, in the federal parliament in a federalist party, and you are currently advocating for breaking up said country, you better have a good explanation for what changed your mind.

And I don't think, other than, as James said, they haven't been able to win an election in more than a decade. They have a good explanation for why they've changed their mind. They don't like the country when they're not in charge of it. And I think that that's a really poor idea of civic responsibility. And it's certainly not one I or I suspect the vast, vast majority of Canadian share. But, you know, at the end of the day, it is a free country and they can say whatever the heck they want. I hope that the – I also agree with James that it's fundamentally an issue of leadership, that the real issue is not these four people.

The issue is how do we have federalist parties that have within them groups of people who want to break up the country if they don't get their way? And how do you deal with that when those points of view start to materialize? And ultimately, as all things in partisan politics, it becomes a test and a way to reveal character in leadership. And I think, you know,

I think that the opinion is at best split on Pierre Puellev's so-called unity speech. We, of course, have dealt with the situation in the past, Peter. You know, Lucien Bouchard, before he led the yes side and the 95 referendum was a minister in Brian Mulroney's government. And we have a whole party in Parliament that is devoted to breaking up the country in the Black Quebecois. But at least in that case, it's part of the raison d'ette. They're not kind of pretending to be federalists for a long period of time waiting for the moment to be ripe where they can advocate for breaking up the country.

And, you know, I think that people who want to break up Canada should spend time in countries that are not Canada because it's, you know, there really is not. I know it's a cliche, but there really is not a better place in the world to live. and there's certainly no freer place in the world to believe all the things that you believe in and do whatever the heck you want to do with your life. So I think that there's a deeper problem with people who want to end all that than which party they belong to. It's not uncommon for people to identify more with a region or an ideology than the whole of the country. I mean, in the United States, you have California Republic flags or Texas First flags or rebel flags in the deep south.

You have people who, you know, Jean-Lac's not. Pierre was a federalist and he's a separatist and he's a separatist and he was a was a was a lucian bouchard was a federalist went block quebecua uh nick leblan was a federalist went block ikebecquo came back and supported stephen bergnev voted for supported step was a federal cadence like people float in and out val meredith was a western canada concept and then she's apparently on the other side so you can kind of float in and out um but uh sort of your satisfaction with things but but i just think there's a declarative moment when there's a question in front of you,

and if you stroke an X in favor of giving up in the country, I just have a really hard time with that. I just maybe I'm a romantic, maybe I'm overly simplifying things. We have a really hard time with people who give up on this country, especially when I know some of these people and how sort of patriotic and jingoistic and flag waving that they were in government and,

you know, standing with the troops in Canada and remembrance day and all this. And then now they're going to give up on it because what? Like, like insufficient tax cuts or pipeline? Like what are we talking? about here. Like we can, we as a country have an enormous ability to stare down challenges and build big things. And if you, you've given up on that vision and you think a standalone

Alberta will be more patriotic, like the same frustrations you have in Ottawa. If you know, if you're from, if you're from Grand Prairie, you think you're frustrated with Ottawa, wait until Edmonton and Calgary run the province. See how satisfied you are with it. You know, like, like, the grass is not always greener, my friend, you know. Okay. We have time for a a prediction element here. Oh, no. Yeah, no, I know. I know you guys will do anything to try and not make predictions.

But I'm going to ask you to anyway. We're going into a really consequential period for the country, for some of the individual provinces, and certainly for some political leaders. We touched on some of that earlier. So give me a couple of predictions. about what you see, you know, evolving over the summer months and into the fall. We won't hold you to these.

Obviously, if you're wrong, we will never mention it again. If you're right, we'll, you know, we'll champion that cause for you. James has started all the segments so far. So, Jerry, why don't you start this one? Give us a couple of predictions. And we want to hear about how the HABs are going to do next year. We're dealing politics here. Yeah, well, a couple of things.

I think that the group of first ministers that will sit around at the Council of the Federation meeting this summer, at least three of them will be different next summer. And I think there's a group, there's a candidate group of five or six, but I think three of them materialize. and they're somewhere. I think James mentioned David Eby. I think Doug Ford, and I'm sure people will love me saying that. I think there's, if I'm Tim Houston, I'm thinking about my future now.

It's been a rough year. And he's a great example of James's description of the arc of politics earlier, that it's really great on the way up. The top is not what you think it is. And then when it starts to fall, it really falls quickly. I think he's in that group. The only two premiers that seem to me to be six, and obviously we've talked about these people in the past,

but the only two premiers who seem to be relatively secure in their jobs right now, and Susan Holt has had a bit of a dip in the polls, if you believe the Angus Reed quarterly survey is Wab Canoe, right? So that looks like a very different table going into next year than when we're having this conversation next year than this year. And then the other, I think, real wildcard, and it is a real wildcard. It's actually two wildcards. One is how much has the energy price crisis baked inflation into the economy going forward?

And if it has baked more than the central bankers, as they did last time, are expecting it to, then it's going to be political trouble for every incumbent of every political stripe everywhere. that's one big if and the second is where some of your i know because i get feedback from them some of your listeners peter spend a lot of a lot more time than the uh mainstream media does these days on climate change and we are heading into an el nino period that is going to be really difficult so the parts of the country um west of manitoba wildfire season is going to be brutal. You probably saw the floods in Montreal yesterday. All of these things tend to bring that issue back into the public's mind. And it's starting now and it will last for a year. So we'll

see whether or not that shoots back up onto the radar screen. But my sense, my instinct is that it will. Okay. Just before James, I know Doug Ford is not doing well in the polls. Yeah. I saw that earlier. We mentioned that earlier. But do you really believe, Jerry, that he's vulnerable? Yes. I mean, polls are one thing. Vulnerability and election campaign is another. A hundred percent, I believe he's vulnerable.

I think that the Ontario Liberal Party and or the New Democratic Party of Ontario need to get their act together. And they really haven't in the past decade. But I think he's mostly vulnerable for the reasons that the most underappreciated value variable in any equation, Peter, is the value of the variable T time. And Doug Ford has been premier for a long time now. And the last few years tend to erode support more quickly than the first couple of years build it. And when you look at past Ontario premiers, you've got to go back a long way to find someone who's won four elections. And I think that's really hard.

I think it's really hard. and I think that his shtick is wearing thin on people. All right. James, predictions. Yeah, I suppose too. The separatist movements in Alberta and Quebec will both fail spectacularly. I think in Alberta they'll get 20 to 30% of support, which is an uncomfortably high number,

but it will be seen as a failure. And if they were to crest and rise above 30% in the polls and creep towards 40, I think they would start getting treated seriously by the media as opposed to what they're being treated as rubs now. But I think if they start creeping towards 40, they'll start getting serious scrutiny. And the serious scrutiny will collapse their numbers down because these are not a group of people

who are ready to govern anything, let alone the fourth largest province in the country. And I think you almost kind of want the numbers to rise up a little bit so they can be exposed for how unsurious a proposition this is. So in Quebec, I think the change in leaderships across all the parties, well, two of the three part, but even even, um, but the shift and the leaderships of all the parties there have created a mix and the regional, you know, outside of Quebec, we look at Quebec numbers and we look at the, like in Canada, we look at the numbers across

the province, but you break down Quebec into the regions. It actually is increasingly hard to see one party getting a majority. Like it's fractious and it's very divided. A lot of, a lot of elections will be decided. Very few people will break 40%. in the polls, put it that way in Quebec. It'll be a lot of hand-to-hand fighting, you know, get-out the vote organizations and all that, at least as it seems right now, unless something spectacular happens in a leadership debate. So that's one prediction. Second one is Donald Trump's going to get worse.

And in the sense that I think he is a lower bottom to this? Yeah. Well, it will, he'll get worse in a sense that'll be consequential to Canada that we need to think about, right? A lot of people are cheering for Republicans to lose in the midterms. natural, understandable, given the run of the show that he's had now for almost two years. But as current prediction markets show, Democrats, when the House, Republicans hold the Senate, that the next two years of Donald Trump's life, he just turned 80. Years 81 and 82 are going to be really, really dark, really, really tough and really, really divisive.

After every midterm at the end of a president's run, those last two years are typically very partisan, very toxic. as both parties try to destroy the other and to tear down and to be very aggressive, such as to sort of lay waste so that their savior can come in and present themselves in the 2028 election cycle. Donald Trump loses the House. I mean, I do imagine that there'll be impeachment proceedings. I do imagine that everything will grind to a halt on the legislative side. I do imagine that his last two years in office will be very full of investigations and ugliness. And Capitol Hill will sort of grind to a complete halt, not that it's, you know, a, a phenomenal scenario right now, but you get my point.

It's in response to that, that's what I'm predicting will get worse. In response to that, Donald Trump could very well get that much more belligerent. He will get that much more aggressive. He'll be that much more willing to use the tools of the presidency, including tariff powers, including perhaps war powers, including undemocratic measures in order to be the tough guys so that it'll be seen as the whole, I told you the swamp is against me, the swamp is still against me, no, the swamp is still pushing against me. They don't want America to be great again.

and they don't believe in us and our people, nudge wank, and they don't think that we should be able to rise up. He will not go quietly into the night. He will fight and scrap his whole way through and he'll drag anybody and everybody down with him. And I think it'll be very dark and very ugly. And I predict that those last two years should the prediction markets go that the way that they are,

I think you'll see a more ornery and angry, less lucid, less temperamental, even than what we see right now, president, who will be incredibly dangerous. We can isolate as best we can and try to mitigate that as best we can with the things that the prime minister and others talk about. But I think the years 81 and 82 of President Trump's life are going to be very dark if what predicts to be happen will happen. And the world will be watching an 82-year-old man just flail. Okay. Neither one of you chose to look at the future for Pierre Polyev.

So let me ask you, will he still be leader at the end of this year? talking to me talking to you talking to you I think you will be but I don't think you should be I think that the the conservatives that I've spoken to recently and I saw a lot of them in Toronto last year at our last week

at our Kennedy U.S. summit you know they mostly think that there's no point in changing leaders now because Carney's too popular and let's wait until we get closer to an election and see if there's not a real chance to contest it. And I can understand from a strategic point of view why people believe that,

but I think the country would be better served with a leader of the opposition that is doing more than throwing mud every day in question period and what's worse, entertaining the most fractious elements of our country. Okay, James, do you want to dance through this one? put the skates on and yeah Pierre Pierre is the leader

no no Pierre is the leader no no look I know Pierre will be the leader I think he will stay on his leader there is nobody who is who is openly trying to bring him down but you know you know events could could skew things right

like if there's a bad event a bad question period moment I undersold and underappreciated his moment where he was sort of chastising attacking the RCMP what sort of toxicity that that had. And I think if Pierre doesn't learn from those things of being too hot, too constant and counterpunching every day, Canadians clearly have warmed to the concept of a statesman as prime minister,

a state person as prime minister. And Mark Carney, they like that. And I think conservatives succeed when we're being optimistic and we're being statesman-like and we're being vast as a country as opposed to nitpicking of little things. And I just think little things like, you know, petitions on liberal racism. and, you know, culture war fights. And Andrew Shear doing videos talking about, Mark, Mark, where are you?

And these little, like, these sort of skittish, childish, childish stuff, I think all of that is toxic. It makes us look small. Makes us look like children. That's that? And the cakes, presenting cakes in Parliament for the Prime Minister, it's ridiculous. And I would add a prediction, Peter. I think that Stephen Harper will intervene in. this Alberta tussle, and it will be decisive.

And I think that he will, in doing so, both reveal that the vast, vast, vast majority of Albertans are extremely proud Canadians, and they want to be full participants in building the country and not tearing it apart. But I also think that, and this is far secondary to the first point, he'll reveal his own leader, the leader of his own party to be a very small man. He'll give the speech that Pierre Paulyev should have been giving for the last six months. That's what I think's going to happen. All right.

Well, we'll file all those away and see who's right and who's almost right. There's some good ones there. All right, gentlemen, have a great summer. And we'll talk again when the summer's over and we're into the post-labor day days. God knows what will be witnessing then. I think we'll be talking about the midterms a lot. Yes, I'm sure we will.

Thank you both. Take care. Thank you, Peter. Thank you.