The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - O'Toole For The Win - Day Two

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

A rare two day run on the bridge daily for the same Canadian politician! But it's worth the time, and besides there's also some interesting virus stuff too.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily here on tuesday of week 24 do you know what national newswatch is? Ever heard that phrase, National Newswatch? It's what they call a news aggregator. So it's a website, nationalnewswatch.com based in Ottawa. And what it does, it kind of does some of the hard work for you. It pulls together all the big stories of the day, usually Canadian because it's a Canadian website,

but not only Canadian. It pulls those stories together and offers you a quick access to all of them, no matter where they came from, no matter which newspaper, other website, television service, like cbc.ca or ctv.ca. So it does that, and it displays it all in a nice little fashion at its homepage. Right away, like on the first page of the homepage, you'll probably see half a dozen different stories.

Kind of up there, and then you scroll down, there's more and more stories to go. So why do I mention National News Watch today? Well, this is why. Because you don't see this often. But all the stories on the front page of the National News Watch, at least at this hour, because it's now constantly changing. But as I'm flipping through, I see all of them. All the stories are related to the same person, the same event.

And that's rare. They usually mix it up a little bit. And not only do they mention the same person and the same event, they're mostly positive stories. You know, there's no banner headline, scandal, this, that, or the other. They're all fairly positive. And who are they about? you know, there's no banner headline, scandal, this, that, or the other. They're all fairly positive. And who are they about?

They're about the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Aaron O'Toole. Day one. Honeymoon. We'll see how long it lasts. But on day one, I mean, I look at these headlines, and man, he couldn't buy this kind of publicity.

Not saying it's not worthy of his actions so far in the couple of days since he became leader. Headlines like, Aaron O'Toole reaffirms pro-choice stance, says he'll defend rights as conservative leader. Remember yesterday we were talking about one of the first things he has to do is give some distance to that perception that he is in the pocket of the right wing of the party. Because there's no doubt he moved towards them at the beginning of the conservative leadership campaign. But that's not a winning strategy when you go from running for the leadership to running for the country.

So you've got to find some way of moving away from that. So right away, out of the gate, he's moving slightly away from that. But then to ensure that hardcore conservatives don't get upset right away, here's the other headline. O'Toole says conservatives would not do deals with China as he lays out economic priorities. A little China bashing ever heard. Okay? With your base. Another headline. O'Toole vows to ease tensions in Western Canada, build more diversity in the Conservative Party.

Well, those in Western Canada, especially Saskatchewan and Alberta, are upset, feel that they have been ignored by the federal government of this day, the Liberals, especially on the resource front. O'Toole knows where his base is. That rock-solid vote in Saskatchewan and Alberta especially and in parts of Manitoba and parts of British Columbia,

are obviously important to keep. O'Toole pledges to fight for middle class. Well, you can't miss on that. That's where most Canadians, most Canadian voters reside, in the middle class. So you want a fighter for the middle class. You've got to show that front too. And it goes on and on. Right?

Lots more headlines all about Aaron O'Toole. And oh, look, you know, like there's some kind of strategy here for those first few days. Say the right things. Get it out there. Try to shape the opinion that others will have of you before somebody else shapes it for you. And that somebody else, of course, would be the Liberal Party and Justin Trudeau.

And don't think they're going to say, oh, well, you know, look at the headlines he got. Let's give up on that. They'll come firing away too. That's part of their game. That's part of the political game. They all do it. Right? Now, what he's up against, in some ways, is the first story below the fold, if you will, as you scroll down. Trudeau considered best to manage pandemic, revive economy, poll suggests. All right. That's a legé poll. And it's contemplating who's the best leader for our times right now, given the pandemic. And what it says is that Trudeau and his management of the pandemic so far

is favored by the majority of Canadians. And not only that, they think he's the best person to manage the pandemic. And there's no question that in these past five, six months, Liberal support in the country has gone up as a result of the management of the pandemic. Lots of people have criticized certain things, but overall, the impression has been pretty good. Which leads some to believe that some liberals want to have, bang, an election, let's go.

Everybody else is off guard. So that's part of what Aaron O'Toole is trying to do here. His position himself and his party in a much better way than they were positioned in the last campaign. As you can remember, there was doubts about Andrew Scheer and doubts about the way he would conduct government on some of the key issues of the day last year if he'd been elected prime minister. Well, he wasn't, and Trudeau won a minority, albeit, but in spite of running a, you know, very questionable campaign and having

all kinds of problems in the year running up to the campaign. Well, this year, right now at least, he's in a better position in terms of the way Canadians see him. But there's a new player in the game, a new player on the field. And that's why it's so important for Aaron O'Toole to make these opening days. Nobody thought he was going to be leader. Now he is the leader. He can shape the view many Canadians have of him by taking the kind of stance he's taking right now. But it's early. And one of the things that Aaron O'Toole and the Conservatives and the other parties are up against is this belief on the part of most Canadians, according to Leger, that the best person to handle the pandemic in Canada is Justin Trudeau. So, election, no election. What's going to happen?

Well, here's the landscape. Parliament has been prorogued, which means it's basically not sitting, and we'll come back in a couple of weeks and it'll be a throne speech. Now, what a speech from the throne means is the government outlines its agenda, its plans for what it wants to do in this session ahead. It's usually very general in scope, but it does give you a sense of the direction

they want to go in and the things they want to do. And if you're going to go to all this trouble, you better have something different than what you were saying in the old session. And when that comes up, one of the first things that happens is one of the opposition parties will put forward a motion of non-confidence in the government. Now, if it's a majority government, it doesn't matter. If it's a minority government, like we see right now, of course, it does matter. Because if all the opposition parties say, yeah, we're going for that, we don't have confidence in this government, then the government will fall. And if it falls, there has to be an election. So, what does everybody do here? I mean, if the government, if Justin Trudeau wants an election, he could call one today.

But he has said he's going to have a throne speech. And so the option is for the opposition, if they want an election, to defeat him. Now, he could make this speech from the throne so unpalatable for the opposition parties that they'd have to vote against it. So he could force it that way. But let's assume it's a general speech from the throne designed for a time when government is in a minority situation. Therefore, you're trying to hold on to power.

Well, then everybody has to make up their mind. The Bloc Québécois have already said they're the third-ranked party in the House. They've already said they're voting non-confidence in this government unless Trudeau resigns over the WE controversy. Well, that's not going to happen. So they'll be voting non-confidence. So the NDP, the fourth-ranked party, will have to make a decision. And so will the Conservatives and Aaron O'Toole.

So did he say anything today that would indicate that he's prepared to call an election? I don't know. You could take his comments any number of different ways. Here's the way I tend to think. I don't think he wants an election yet. He's got a lot to do, you know, unless he can accomplish all these things in the next few weeks.

He's got to do the kind of things he did today, which is position himself in a better place than he may have been seen to have been just a couple of days before. So he started that process. He's got to ensure he has a caucus that's united. That's tough. In any party, always tough in the Conservative Party. So, keep in mind, most of that caucus were voting in the leadership for Peter McKay.

They weren't voting for Aaron O'Toole. His own seatmates, many of them were voting for somebody else. So he's got to get them back on board. And one of the ways you get them back on board is you give them certain positions within that caucus, within the parliamentary caucus, in terms of their roles as critics of government ministries, who gets what, where they sit, everything. So a lot of those things have to happen and happen relatively

quickly. Finances. Party needs money to find an election. All the parties had their war chests drained to some degree last year in the last election. They got to rebuild them. Conservatives are also just out of leadership race. Didn't cost them what it normally costs because they didn't have to have a big convention. But it cost something. Although they shouldn't pay those guys who were counting the votes.

That's one thing they shouldn't do. Anyway, all these different things, and they've got to have policy. They've got to have policy that they're all prepared to go to the polls on. Erin O'Toole won that race on Sunday because the person who finished third, a social conservative, she pushed her vote toward, or she helped push her vote towards Aaron O'Toole. So he's got to be careful.

He doesn't alienate all those people. Right? And the fourth place finisher, although his vote was much smaller, most of his vote went to Aaron O'Toole as well, I'm assuming. So he's got to be careful. He's got some really difficult navigating to do here in the next little while. So does he want an election right away? I don't know. Some argue the Liberals want one because they're in a good position, indicated by polls like that Leger poll I

was talking about. But at the same time, do they really want to take the risk, the gamble of having an election campaign in the middle of a pandemic. Right now, things look kind of all right, although there have been some worrying signs of spikes in different places, especially in British Columbia and even to a degree in Ontario. But they're all manageable, and the positivity rate, which we talked so much about last week, is still down.

So that's all good. But what if everything goes south? What if a second wave comes in in October, right in the middle of an election campaign, and it pounds the country? And all the things that looked like they were so well managed today look poorly managed then. Then what happens to the government in power? Well, you guessed it.

So how about the spring for an election? Most minority governments last two years. That's the average, around two years. Well, you know, we haven't even been a year yet into this one. Anyway, some things to think about. And we'll see how this goes. I wasn't planning to have done this again today after talking about Aaron O'Toole yesterday,

but I think it was worth it. I loved looking at that front page of the National News Watch because it's rare that happens. That all the stories are about the same thing, basically. Same person. But they're all basically positive. That's rare. Aaron O'Toole should get a, what do you call it, a freeze frame, something shot, screenshot of that first page of the National News Watch,

have it put up and frame it, put it in his office. Because, believe me, it doesn't get better than that. Okay, a couple of other things to mention on this day. Do you remember, I guess it was about six weeks ago, a story came out that Barbados, you know, a popular island for many Canadians,

Caribbean country, that Barbados was offering up a 12-month visa for anybody who wanted to come there and work remotely, choose to take up residence in Barbados for a year. This is a result of the pandemic. Well, two things are clear today. One, that's actually been a fairly popular idea. And two, other countries are looking at it.

Here's why they even mentioned it. In 2019, last year, BP, before pandemic, 712,000 people visited Barbados. Many of them Canadian. This year, in April, May, and June, visits were almost zero. So you imagine what that's doing to the economy of Barbados. They need tourism dollars more than anything.

And this year, not surprisingly, nobody's going. So they come up with this idea. Now, so far, in the first week after they announced it, they had more than 1,000 applications. You've got to go through a process to be approved for this. They had more than 1,000 applications in the first week alone, most of them from either the U.S., Canada, or the United Kingdom. So other people aren't sitting around wondering about that,

other countries. They're saying, hey, that's a heck of a good idea. So who's doing the same thing? Some of the rules are a little different, but basically the same thing. Bermuda, Estonia, Georgia, just to name three others, who have similar situations, plummeting tourism business and the need to have people in country helping prop up the economy by simply living there, buying their groceries, doing all of that. So the New York Times this week has got an article about how several countries,

and I'll just name them, with fragile tourist economies have started to offer visas that allow foreign nationals to live and work for a period of at least six months, appealing to what are called digital nomads, and also people who have a severe case of wanderlust during these months of pandemic. You love that? Digital nomads. In other words, you can work anywhere. You can do your job. It doesn't matter where you are.

So these countries are offering visas, not for unemployed people, but for people who are employed and can prove that they can earn money while living in a different country through their normal job function. They can operate digitally. So digital nomads. Even before the pandemic, says the Times, the number of remote workers worldwide was already growing. Research from the consulting firm of MBO Partners found that the number of independent workers in the United States, which includes consultants, freelancers, and temporary workers, was around 41 million in 2019.

41 million. So, you want that phone number for the Barbados High Commission? I'll tell you, I've thought of it. I like Bermuda. Bermuda's not as hot in the winter, but Bermuda has that sort of kind of old-school Caribbean flavor. I've been to both. Lucky enough to have been to both. I haven't been to Estonia, and I haven't been to Georgia.

But, as I mentioned, I've got a couple of things here. What else have we got? CBS News. Sharing an interesting insight from Valerie Kirchberger, a pediatrician and a coordinator of Berlin's testing strategy. That's COVID-19 testing. She said she was reassured by data showing that after two weeks into the start of the school year in Berlin, data seems to show that schools themselves are not

hotspots, and rather returning vacationers from abroad are the bigger cause of new infections. Boy, I hope that's the case here. First of all, we don't have a lot of returning vacationers from overseas. And second, we still have a lot of people very upset, very concerned, very afraid of what may or may not happen when kids start going back to school, whether it's grade school or college or university. And here's the last thing for this day. Polls done in June by the Manpower Group, What Workers Want. That's the name of this group. It's a survey of eight countries, and it revealed that staff in the U.S. and the U.K.

were more negative about returning to the workplace than their counterparts in Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Singapore, and Spain. We weren't in this survey, by the way. Canada wasn't. Employees have been influenced by a variety of things, such as favorable government response to the pandemic and confidence in the safety of public transportation for commuting. In other words, in that longer list of countries,

they're confident about the safety of public transportation. Not so much in the U.S. and the U.K. I wonder where Canada would fit in that survey. Still see a lot of nervousness out there. All right, Tuesday means tomorrow's Wednesday. Hey, pretty good, eh? I'm still on top of things. And Wednesday means the race next door,

where Bruce Anderson joins me. And we'll talk about one element element I don't think we've finally decided yet what it'll be uh tomorrow I think it's going to be well it's either going to be about polls and which ones we should actually look at and which ones we should ignore or it's going to be about Trump and the power of television, and does he actually understand television as much as he claims he does? I don't know about you, but I watched a good chunk of last night, and I didn't see anything imaginative other than people screaming

and other people looking like they were on something. It was a very strange night. But we'll give it a try tonight and see what happens. And tomorrow on the race next door, we'll see what we end up talking about. If you have any thoughts, you have any comments on anything you've heard today, don't be shy.

The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. So I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.